On the Question of Whether to Tuck or Not to Tuck

Larry David confronts a tucked in videographer (played by Mike Castle) 

about his sweater wearing tendencies in a season 11 episode of 

Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, 2021) 

 

 

I.

 

One of the disadvantages of living with a Greek woman who likes to cook and bake is that you inevitably end up eating more than you should of things that you probably shouldn't be eating in the first place and, as a result of that, one - just as inevitably - puts on weight.

 

Thus it was that my waist measurement ballooned from 32" to 34" and even 34" was beginning to feel tight.

 

Now, I don't really care about raised blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the threat of type 2 diabetes or any of the other health issues linked to obesity that doctors try to scare you with - but looking fat was not something I was prepared to accept ... And so, action had to be taken!

 

And, as a matter of fact, it proved quite easy to lose weight: eat less, eat healthier, and move more; it really is as simple as that. So now I'm back to having a 32" waist and can once more pass naked before a mirror without (too much) embarrassment and shame. 

 

 

II. 

 

Now, however, I have a new problem: the trousers bought a few months ago with a 34" waist keep slipping down unless I use a belt, which, unfortunately, I don't like wearing. 

 

To try and get around this, I have decided to tuck in my sweater; even though I have never been a natural tucker in of clothes and would drive my mother nuts when I was a child insisting that my shirt be pulled out and the cuffs and collars always left unbuttoned. I hated the idea of looking neat and tidy like a good little boy (is there, one wonders, a punk gene?).          

 

However, times change and people change and - to my surprise and amusement - I now discover that I like having my sweater tucked in! Indeed, I'm almost tempted to say that it is the more stylish option, depending of course on the type of sweater; it's material, its construction, its fit etc. You don't want to try and tuck a bulky jumper with a ribbed hem down your trousers as this does not result in a good look.

 

I used to think tucking in a sweater was always something of a fashion faux pas. But now I know it isn't; that it can create shape and help define one's waistline. 

 

 

III. 

 

And so now I watch a little differently the scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm in which Larry David gives a stylish young videographer a hard time about the fact he has tucked his sweater into his pants, asking him how long he's been doing it; do people comment on it; has he ever noticed other people doing it; were there other tuckers in his family, etc. [1] 

   

According to Larry, the only other person he's seen tucking in a sweater is James Mason (playing Humbert) in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation of Nabokov's darkly comic novel Lolita (1955) and he even treats us to dialogue from the movie: 

 

"Lolita, do you think I should tuck in my sweater? Does it look good? What would you do? What would you advise me? Would you advise me to tuck?" [2] 

 

It should be noted, however, that this scene and these lines are either misremembered or entirely invented by David for comic effect. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Curb Your Enthusiasm, 'What Have I Done? (season 11, episode 8), dir. Jeff Schaffer, written by Larry David and Jeff Schaffer (first aired 12 Dec 2021). The videographer is played by Mike Castle. The scene can be watched on YouTube by clicking here.   

 

[2] Dialogue from the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm cited and linked to above.  

 

 

Fond Memories of The Wicked Lady

Fig. 1: Portrait of Katherine Ferrers (c. 1848)
Fig. 2: Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady (1945)

Fig. 3: Faye Dunaway in The Wicked Lady (1983)

 

 

I. 

 

According to popular legend, Lady Katherine Ferrers was a bored young gentlewoman and heiress by day, but a notorious highwaywoman by night; one who committed crimes for the sake of the danger, not the money. 

 

Known as the wicked lady, she terrorised the good people of Hertfordshire as they went about their business; apart from robbing travellers at gunpoint, an entire catalogue of wrongdoing was attributed to her, including arson, slaughtering livestock, and even the murder of a local constable.  

 

Sadly, Katherine was to succumb to a gunshot wound sustained on Nomansland Common during an attempted hold-up in 1660, aged 26. 

 

Her body - still disguised in male clothing - was  discovered by her loyal servants, who carried their mistress home to be buried. It is said, however, that Katherine's ghost continues to haunt the Common - just as she continues to feature in the cultural imagination ...

 

 

II. 

 

In 1944, Magdalen King-Hall published a novel - The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton - whose story was looslely based on the (contentious) events surrounding Katherine's life. 

 

The following year, a big-screen adaptation entitled The Wicked Lady - directed by Leslie Arliss and starring Margaret Lockwood in the lead role (here named Barbara Worth) and James Mason as her lover and partner in crime (Capt. Jackson) - smashed British box office records, pulling in an audience of over 18 million.

 

The British, it seems, have always loved a costume drama - even in wartime. 

 

Unfortunately, the American censors were none too pleased with the movie and several scenes had to be re-shot before it was given a US release; it seems the low-cut bodices worn by some of the more buxom actresses were a bit too much for our puritan cousins across the Atlantic.  

Ideas for a sequel were discussed, but came to nothing and the viewing public had to wait nearly forty years for a remake ...

 

III.

 

This infamous 1983 remake of The Wicked Lady, starring Faye Dunaway (as Lady Barbara Skelton) and Alan Bates (as Capt. Jackson), has all that one might hope for from a film written, produced and directed by Michael Winner - including, controversially, a whip fight between Dunaway's character and a topless Marina Sirtis as Jackson's (unnamed) girlfriend (or doxy) [1].     

 

Winner described his vision of the film as a period romp that combined elements from the story of Bonnie and Clyde with those of Tom Jones (I'm assuming he refers here to the 1963 film, rather than Fielding's classic novel of 1749).

 

Writing in a retrospective review, David Hayles pretty much nails the appeal of the movie:

 

"Winner updated the film the only way he knew how - with sex and violence: by the time the opening credits have rolled, the film has already earned its 18 rating. We see a crow pecking the brains out of a corpse in a gibbet, a man with a rope around his neck dragged across a field by a horse, and a naked couple copulating in a barn."

 

He continues:

      

"The tone is somewhere between the rustic horror of Witchfinder General and the softcore romp Young Lady Chatterley 2, with lavish costumes and beautiful shots of horses thundering across the countryside. The likes of John Gielgud and Denholm Elliot play it very straight, yet veer into overwrought camp melodrama filled with appalling stunt work and, as was Winner’s penchant, nude women at every opportunity. Somehow, it all comes together to make for a delightful feature." [2]

 

The movie premiered at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square, on the 21st of April, 1983. Although we were not invited to either the screening or the party afterwards, my friend Kirk Field and I were hanging about Soho that day and happened to pass through the Square as some of the guests were arriving and someone - I don't know who - took this snap ... 

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The British censor insisted this scene - which is in the original film, although not the novel - be cut before The Wicked Lady could be given an X-certificate. An outraged Michael Winner encouraged friends and colleagues to write letters of protest to the censor; these figures included Lindsay Anderson, Kingsley Amis, Derek Malcolm, and Fay Weldon.

      Although at the time Marina Sirtis said that filming the scene didn't bother her in the slightest - and despite the fact that she appeared nude two years later in Winner's Death Wish 3 (1985) during a brutal rape scene - she later complained about her treatment by the director, accusing him of sexual exploitation and expressing the hope he would rot in hell for all eternity. 

      In contrast, Faye Dunaway would insist that The Wicked Lady was the only movie she ever truly enjoyed making.           

 

[2] David Hayles, 'The scandalous folly of Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady', published on the Little White Lies website (1 July 2016): click here.

 

 

To watch the trailer for The Wicked Lady (1945): click here. 

 

To watch the trailer for The Wicked Lady (1983): click here.