Sarong, Farewell!

When's the last time you went to the movies and saw the leading man in a sarong? It's not a common occurrence, but maybe after a glance at these men you'll feel it ought to be.

The first three photos of this collection are from The Pagan (1929) with Ramon Novarro as the title character, a half white-half native young man in love with Renee Adoree, a native girl under the stern guardianship of white man Donald Crisp.

Of course, King of the Sarong was Jon Hall, famous for a string of adventure epics opposite Maria Montez and for The Hurricane (1939) with Queen of the Sarong Dorothy Lamour. The exhilarating climax of this disaster epic still holds up today!

Also in the film were Thomas Mitchell (who played Scarlett's father in Gone with the Wind that same year) and Mary Astor. (This film was remade in 1979 and you can read all you'd ever want to know about it here and also towards the bottom of the page here.)

Hall followed up The Hurricane with South of Pago Pago (1940), which costarred Frances Farmer.






  
He's seen below with Olympe Bradna, a French dancer and actress who left the biz after a few years to enjoy a seventy-year-long marriage to a California social notable.

Although an obvious cash-in on the prior blockbuster, it lacked the direction of the great John Ford and in spite of any positive attributes is close to forgotten today.

Donald Houston took a turn with this look in 1949's The Blue Lagoon with Jean Simmons. (You didn't think Chris Atkins and Brooke Shields were first at bat, did you? They traded in sarongs for loincloths in their 1980 update.)

Interesting that Houston and Simmons' little newborn baby has the same hairdo that Atkins sported in the remake!

1951's Bird of Paradise featured a rather yummy-looking Louis Jourdan in a sarong opposite the beautiful Debra Paget.

Also wrapped up in the story is Jeff Chandler as Paget's brother (!) and who is caught in a pretty wretched brown wig.
  

This was itself a remake of an earlier film, Bird of Paradise (1932) , which featured Joel McCrea in a sarong opposite Dolores del Rio.  

You can read (and see) more of the handsome Mr. McCrea here.

As evidenced by this lackluster photo of the ordinarily-attractive Jourdan, Paget and Chandler, sometimes spending most or all of a movie's running time in a sarong can wind up making one look like a "boob." Since trotting around shirtless in brightly-colored fabrics would likely be considered corny or campy today, I doubt we'll be seeing any of today's stars giving it a whirl, but who knows. Maybe some sort of story will warrant it again!