MovieChat Forums > The Trouble with Angels (1966) Discussion > wearing purple?

wearing purple?

posted 17 years ago by whimsical5
7 replies | jump to latest

Has anyone else noticed, at the Christmas party at the old folks home, all the old ladies are wearing purple? I wonder why

nice socks, man.....

[–] godfreye 17 years ago

YES!! I have seen this movie a dozen times (love it!) and just noticed this for the first time last night on TCM. Every single elderly woman in the home is wearing purple or lilac, or a similar shade. Don't know why. Any thoughts out there?

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] lroy77 14 years ago

I never got the Advent part (I wasn't Catholic yet).

There is also the poem...When I'm old I will wear purple.

Once I'm 50 (which is two years from now), maybe that's what I'll do. Maybe I'll wait until I'm 55.

[–] Clothes-Off 17 years ago

I agree w/ Nena902 that it may have been an advent thing. But it also reminded me of a scene in Rosalind Russell's other well-known film Auntie Mame in which her friend Vera feels she's been milking her tragic widowhood too much by still wearing all black ten months after his death and she says

"Really Mame, can't you go to purple?" So maybe at one time it was a widow's transitional color of choice when she was through with the initial period of wearing black.

Just a guess, but I thought it was interesting for it to come up in two Russell films (albeit indirectly).

"Well, for once the rich white man is in control!" C. M. Burns

[–] view123 14 years ago

The advent theory would have worked for me, if not for the color of Gypsy Rose Lee's costume. It also has vibrant shades of purple, lavender etc.; I don't think it was anywhere the advent season and Mrs. Phipps was no weeping widow (a merry one perhaps). Even Mary Clancy's uncle is sporting a small violet colored boutonniere.

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] LindaY 10 years ago

They're also all probably widows. When your husband died back then, you wore black for a certain amount of time, then went into violet. Since they were in the home all by themselves, they hadn't "gone back out into the world" so to speak to possibly hunt for another nice gentleman to marry, and might never have taken off their "widow's weeds."