When Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) invites her gardener, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), to join her in a cup of coffee on a whim, it seems innocuous enough. She politely inquires about his work while he gives her laconic replies until their discussion turns to his new passion of growing trees and his eyes brighten. Despite Ron coming to Cary’s house for the past three years, she has never really noticed him before and only just now introduces herself to him. Nothing about their meeting is exactly extraordinary, and yet we can tell that it has touched something within the lonely and recently widowed Cary that she wasn’t expecting.
And then, one crisp autumn day, everything changes.
Arriving home, Cary finds Ron has returned to finish his work. He tells her he is giving up his nursery to pursue growing trees full-time. Disappointed she won’t be seeing him again, Cary is surprised when he invites her to his place to check out the silver-tipped spruce they had discussed when they last met. She turns him down, already anticipating the gossip that would spread through town, but then she calls out Ron’s name. Wearing tan slacks and a dirt-smudged white tee underneath a long-sleeved red plaid shirt, his black hair styled into a pompadour that almost collapses into a messy curl over his forehead with a serenely blue sky behind him, Ron removes his work gloves and smiles at Cary in a way that makes me weak in the knees. Walking closer to the camera until his gorgeous face is captured in a close-up, he excitedly realizes she has changed her mind and their romance hesitantly, delicately begins.
To my mind, there is no cinematic image more comforting, more sigh-inducing, than this: dreamy, 1950s-era Rock Hudson sweeping an emotionally fragile woman off her feet with nothing but kindness, a knockout smile, and a deeply cozy plaid wardrobe.
In the world of All That Heaven Allows, plaid isn’t just a frequent sartorial choice for the character of Ron; its evocations are intrinsically tied to who he is and what he represents to Jane Wyman’s Cary and the story at large. As a pattern, plaid is one of the most snug, its checkered lines conjuring up comfy nights by the fire and playful adventures in the snow. Ron offers these things to Cary. Every time they are together, he takes care of her with a reliability and sweetness that are unlike anything anyone else is offering her. There is no doubt: when Cary is with Ron, she is loved, completely and unconditionally. Surrounded by an empty house, her awful children, and acquaintances who sneer at her behind her back, Ron and his plaid are a safe harbor amidst the condescending words and withering glances.
For Ron, and so many other men who do manual labor for a living, a plaid shirt is akin to your work uniform. It is low-maintenance and unfussy, and it denotes a casualness that befits Ron’s relaxed earthiness. As we see when he and his friends wear different variations of the pattern as they laugh, sing, and hang out together, plaid is associated with working-class people as opposed to the stuffy suits on the men at the cocktail parties populated by Cary’s social circle. There is a warmth to plaid that doesn’t fit the coldness of the upper crust, thus making Ron — steady, fun-loving, confident Ron — that much more irresistible.
After Cary has broken things off with Ron to appease her children, she is plunged back into the suffocating isolation she thought she had left behind when they met. When they bump into each other at a Christmas tree lot, she mistakenly believes he is already seeing someone else and instead of choosing “their” tree, a silver-tipped spruce, she angrily picks another. As she decorates it at home all by herself, she hears children outside singing “Joy to the World” while snow blankets the streets. Looking out the window with tears quietly streaming down her face, Cary is utterly alone — and, for the only time in the film, she is wearing plaid. Just when she needs him the most, she swathes herself in the pattern that reminds her of the man she loves.
Is it silly to think this much about a pattern? Probably. But you can’t convince me that Rock Hudson in plaid isn’t one of the most swoon-worthy, indelibly romantic images that was ever put on celluloid. Honestly, the moment that cinema peaked has to be when Ron comes inside from feeding a deer in the snow and removes his plaid coat to reveal that he is wearing more plaid underneath. All That Heaven Allows offers so much — ravishing Technicolor, complex symbolism, elegant performances, sharp critiques of ’50s suburbia — but when all is said and done, seeing Jane Wyman cling to Rock as he wraps her in his plaid-covered arms, her anxieties assuaged by his tender consolation, will always be the thing I cherish most.
All That Heaven Allows will be screened at IU Cinema on February 3, kicking off this semester’s 5X Douglas Sirk: Magnificently Obsessed series.
If you’d like to hear me discuss Douglas Sirk (and yes, Rock Hudson), check out my recent conversation with David Carter on IU Cinema’s podcast, A Place for Film.
Michaela Owens is thrilled to be the editor of A Place for Film, in addition to being IU Cinema’s Publications Editor. An IU graduate with a BA in Communication and Culture and an MA in Cinema and Media Studies, she has also been a volunteer usher at IU Cinema since 2016. She never stops thinking about classic Hollywood, thanks to her mother’s introduction to it, and she likes to believe she is an expert on Katharine Hepburn and Esther Williams.