"What color was Claire Trevor's dress in Stagecoach?" Topic

Do any of you know a good source for finding costume detail for old black & white movies? In this case, I'd love to find out what colors were in the plaid dress worn by Claire Trevor in John Ford's 1939 classic "Stagecoach."

The only thing I've been able to find on the dress is that the costume designer made a mistake where on one side her petticoat was longer than the dress. Ford thought it was a stroke of genius for the "soiled dove" character until the designer apologized for the mistake.

The link below has images of Stagecoach lobby cards:

link

They look like they may have been hand-colored, so there's no telling whether the costumes match their original colors or not. Besides, costume designers often picked colors for how they looked in black & white, not how they would appear in real life.

Ron

I would guess the original plaid was a bit more complex than the lobby card colourist made it appear.

Judging from this picture my guess would be that there were some reds and greens involved along with white or yellow:

Maybe something like this?

+1 to there're meant! The picture says it all!

There is no 'black and white' Terre, just shades of gray…

I found another image for Ms. Trevor's costume. Once again, it's a hand color separation over a halftone image. I also found an auction image of the Duke's bib shirt from the movie, but it was blue (so it seems that the poster colorist didn't know what color anything was, either).

The costume designer for Stagecoach was Walter Plunkett.
Plunkett was also designer for Gone With the Wind, so one can find all sorts of info online for that film, but not so much for Stagecoach.

Ron

I would go with what Coelacanth wrote. Costumes were colored for the cinemagraphic effects, not to be accurate. For example, Humphrey Bogart's suit in "Maltese Falcon" is actually orange, but it photographed as a deep grey. I learned that nugget from TCM.