Figure 1.--Here Tommy Miller (Mickey Rooney) with his mother (Spring Byington) wearing short pants with long stockings. It is difficult to tell, but he does not seem to be wearing stocking suppoters. The film was made in 1935, but depicts an ealier period.

Tommy Miller (Mickey Rooney) wears short pants with long stockings. Tommy wears a white shirt, knee pants, and black long stockings which barely cover his knees so there is an awkward gap between the hem of his pants and the tops of his stockings (figure 2). Tommy apparently wears no hose supporters or round garters so that his stockings are always falling down to just above or even below his knees. I'm not sure how common this was. We rther thought that all but the poorest children had some kind of stocking supporters. Certainly this was the case for formal potraits. We are less sure about every day wear. His outfit looks to HBC not quite correct for 1906. The kneepants are too short and the long stockings not long enough. Although falling stockings were probably seen occasionally in the America of 1906, most boys wore supporters to avoid looking so untidy. The falling stockings may be intended as an added bit of comedy to enrich Mickey Rooney's performance, but the effect seems historically inaccurate. In real life respectable middle-class parents would probably not have permitted so sloppy a look. Rooney was about 15 at the time, I wonder if it bothered him playing a much younger boy and wearing juvenile clothes. A HBC reader comments, "I agree that the absence of hose supporters in Tommy's costuming is historically inaccurate, but the effect may be deliberate because Tommy is portrayed as something of a problem child and the untidiness is perhaps an aspect of his character. In the same film we see one of the highschool graduates giving a public recitation and wearing a knee pants suit with long black stockings. This still from the film has already been loaded on HBC. The highschool boy is a bit older than Tommy, and his stockings are neatly held up (undoubtedly by the customary supporters). They are also long enough to cover the awkward gap between the stocking tops and the hem of his trousers. So the costumer of the film obviously knew how a boy with knee pants and long stockings was supposed to look."

Created: 4:20 AM 7/26/2005
Last updated: 3:01 PM 7/26/2005