Figure 1.--Ra Hould here wears a check short pants suit. The image is undated, but we would suspect it was taken in 1937 when Ra was about 13 years old. We are unsure if this was a suit selected by the studio or Ra's parents. Nor do we know to what extent Ra had an input in selecting his clothes. Suits like this may have been common in New Zealand, but in America they were less common for boys Ra's age. |
I am not sure what kind of clothes Ra wore when not in movie costumes. we do have a number of studio portraits for publicity purposes. We are not entirely sure to what extent this reflects his own clothing that he wore when not at the studio. Ra is not wearing costumes for many of his publicity photographs such as the one here with Santa Clause (figure 1). What we do not know id if the studio probided the clothes he wore for these publicity stills or if he just wore the clothes that he an his parents selected. Also we are not sure to what extent these clothes represent clothes that he picked out or that his parents selected. Of course boys at the time had less to say about the clothes they wore than modern children, but even so boys by the time they were 12 and 13 years old began to have some input in their clothes. Short pants suits like the one Ra is wearing here may have been common in New Zealand (figure 1). They were, however, less common in America for boys Ra's age. Many boys still wore knickers, but short pants, especially short pants suits, were generally worn by younger boys.
While we have no information specifically about studio policy toward Ra and his clothing. A HBC reader has, however, provided us some information about studio policies in general. He tells us, "My understanding is that most of the clothes for all publicity shots were selected by the studio and not left up to individual stars. On A&E I saw a biography of Cary Grant. There they mentioned that the studios were very concerned that the stars working for them maintained the image created by the studio. Therefore the studio chose Cary Grant's entire wardrobe and even his automobile. They also mentioned that this was common and occurred for Clark Gable and Tyrone Power so it was not just one studio. If they did it for adults I imagine they probably did this for children as well."
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