To avoid another big hole in the posting schedule, I’ll present another entry from the early 1930s. The greatness of the decade’s fur fashions did seem to rise, quickly, to a beautiful pinnacle right at the end, before the ’40s kind of pulled the rug out. This is somewhat different from the ’80s, which seemed to experience a fairly steady plateau of awesome before the giant, dark abyss of the ’90s. There are quite a few gems from those early years, though. Pull up, it’s time for The Crash.

The Crash – The Film

Dipping back to the era of the nation’s first most famous financial crisis, The Crash brings us the story of a woman who leaves her husband after he loses everything in the stock market, an event in which she figured quite significantly. Ruth Chatterton stars as Linda Gault, who dumps her husband, moves to Bermuda, and falls in love with another guy. As she prepares to run away for good with him, she swings back by New York and runs into her old hubby, where she has a change of heart and presumably lives happily ever after with him in abject poverty.

The Crash – The Furs

Usually, I like to point this out myself, but hey, even some dude at the IMDb figured it out:

Anachronisms: Although the story takes place primarily in October 1929, and immediately thereafter, all of Linda Gault’s clothes are from 1932 (styles changed dramatically during those three years).

Yep, exactly; otherwise, we wouldn’t have much to talk about here. This is the magic of the 1930s.

Here we have Linda chatting with a guy she’s having an affair with, a banker named John Fair. She’s doing so wearing this rather full fox wrap.

As seen here, this is, technically, a fox-trimmed wrap, but it’s my favorite kind, the one where the trim comprises 90% of the wrap. The Crash is front-loaded; this is probably the best fur in the film.

Despite the wrap, Linda can’t get the stock tips she needs from John, whose willpower must be immense. This leads to her husband’s downfall in the market.

The film shows us 1929 fashion via a quick glimpse at a fashion mag. I included this merely for curiosity’s sake, as the mink wraps are pretty drab and boring compared to what appears seconds later. It’s also amusing because the film seems to be flagrantly advertising its fashion anachronisms.

Cut from drab minks in the previous still to this. Literally, they move from that shot to Linda wearing a full, beautiful fox wrap. Hard to ignore the difference.

This is that sad occasion, though, as we’re seeing this because Linda is selling it to make some cash. The prospective new owner is decidedly less worthy of it, unfortunately.

At the end of the film, Linda prepares to run off with her latest paramour and swings by her old place to pick up some stuff. She does so stylishly in this large silver fox collared coat.

The hat isn’t quite the kind of bad girl accessory it could have been. It could have been a fox, too; that would have been an even better choice.

She takes it off near the end. This sequence is pretty long, so it certainly boosts the film’s fur ratio.

Not a bad outing. Ruth Chatterton is not among the Garbos, Harlows, Stanwycks, or Deitrichs, but she wears a large fox wrap well. The short runtime and the long sequence at the end push the ratio up to a very respectable 10%. It helps that movies were not much more than an hour at the time.

Fur Runtime: approx 6 minutes
Film Runtime: 58 minutes
On-Screen Fur Ratio: 10%