I'm wondering why they found it necessary to make actor Michael Murphy wear blue contacts to disguise his brown eyes?
It doesn't seem that it was important at all for the story.
Also, I notice in his final scene, one of his contacts is missing, showing him with one brown and one blue eye.
The mismatch in eye color might be deliberate. Maybe it was supposed to indicate that his character wore blue contacts to make himself look 'cool'... and, as with so many of the other characters, his mask of competence and control slipped at a key moment.
Personally, I didn't know contacts that disguise one's true eye color were even available that long ago.
Update: Well, I guess they were available, because in 'The Fortune Cookie' (1966) the ex-wife says, "You can get them in color now."
I agree, I think they were supposed to indicate vanity on his part. When he first appears in the hotel room and is unpacking, you see him pulling an absurd number of what appear to be cologne bottles out of the bag in the bathroom. His luggage is full of garish/fashionable sweaters that look even more ridiculous in contrast with the plain uniform the other cop appears in at all times, even at home with his family. Instead of rushing off to the station he changes his sweater and stands in front of the mirror to coordinate it with one of the many different colored holsters he has to choose from. And then there's that hilarious line over the radio about his piercing blue eyes. As soon as they were pointed out it seemed they had to be fake, and it was awesome later on when you saw his mismatched eyes and it was confirmed, like the jolt of the crash popped the contact out and, as you say, the mask slips when he loses control of the situation.
The pretty boy thing is part of his 'superstar' persona, he's a parody of the handsome, perfectly-coiffed and styled infallible supercops you see on tv and movies. In a way he's the most competent one on the case and he resists much of the special treatment that comes his way thanks to his reputation, but in the end he's revealed to be just as too-good-to-be-true as he has to be.
And I'll bet the emphasis on his turtleneck sweaters is a direct shot at Steve McQueen's Bullitt.
shareWithout those blue contact lenses, we wouldn't get that great line I still quote to this day: "His eyes are extraordinary. They're the most piercing blue I've ever seen!"
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