Written on the Wind: Rock Hudson’s Beige Tweed Jacket for a Fall Picnic

Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind (1956) Vitals Rock Hudson as Mitch Wayne, oil company geologist Texas, Fall 1956 Film: Written on the Wind Release Date: October 5, 1956 Director: Douglas Sirk Costume Designer: Bill Thomas (credited for gowns) WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Background German-born director Douglas Sirk’s third in a trio of lushly photographed melodramas starring Rock Hudson, Written on the Wind, premiered in London seventy years ago this week on October 5, 1956. This Southern Gothic melodrama follows a Texas oil dynasty, adapted from Robert Wilder’s 1946 novel of the same name—a roman à clef inspired by the scandal surrounding torch singer Libby Holman and the mysterious 1932 death of her tobacco-heir husband, Zachary Smith Reynolds, at his family’s estate. Threats from the Reynolds family kept a film adaptation out of production for a decade, until screenwriter George Zuckerman transplanted the drama from a North Carolina tobacco dynasty to a Texas oil…