Paul Schneider and Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Vitals
Paul Schneider as Dick Liddil, smooth-talking outlaw and incorrigible “innamoratu”
Missouri and Kentucky, Fall 1881
Film: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Release Date: September 21, 2007
Director: Andrew Dominik
Costume Designer: Patricia Norris
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The James Gang committed over 25 bank, train, and stagecoach robberies from 1867 to 1881. But, except for Frank and Jesse James, all of the original members were either now dead or in prison. So, for their last robbery at Blue Cut, the brothers recruited a gang of petty thieves and country rubes, culled from the local hillsides.
— Hugh Ross’ narration from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Based on the last few months of the infamous bandit leader’s life, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford illustrates how Jesse (Brad Pitt) and Frank James (Sam Shepard) had fallen from their notorious “glory days” of riding with the Youngers, now reduced to a band of fanboy ruffians like the simple-minded Ed Miller (Garret Dillahunt) and brothers Charley (Sam Rockwell) and Bob Ford (Casey Affleck). One of the more capable members of this new iteration of the gang is Dick Liddil (Paul Schneider), though even he seems more interested in how many women he can “diddle”.
The real-life Dick Liddil had been recruited into the gang two years earlier in late 1879 and was reportedly well-respected by Frank James over the course of several robberies together, which explains how he ends up with the envied spot right by Jesse’s side during the takeover of the Blue Cut train in September 1881. Dick’s smooth-talking ways (“you talk good,” purrs an impressed Ed Miller) make him popular among the gang, all of whom look up to him for his self-professed mastery with women as illustrated by his crude aphorisms like “poetry don’t work on whores.” One can only imagine the kind of despicable podcast Dick Liddil would host in 2025.
The real Dick Liddil, circa 1883.
This philandering eventually lands Dick in hot water with his fellow bandit Wood Hite (Jeremy Renner) as the two men compete for the affections of the Fords’ widowed sister, Martha Bolton (Alison Elliott)… though we never see her recognize the ironic love triangle where she finds herself forced to choose between Wood and Dick, so to speak. Much to Wood’s violent dismay, Dick uses his “real pleasant disposition” to seduce Wood’s young stepmother Sarah (Kailin See) during an outhouse assignation where he kissed more than just her dainty nubbins… despite the inevitable stench of their surroundings.
On December 4, 1881, a now-bearded Wood’s quest for .45-caliber vengeance leads him back to Martha’s rented Ray County farmhouse, where he corners Dick in an upstairs bedroom. The resulting gunplay left Wood dead—shot in the head by Bob Ford, who was probably all too happy to make good on his threat to shoot the bandit who had bullied him months earlier.
As Wood Hite was Jesse James’ cousin, Bob and his brother Wilbur (Pat Healy) bury the corpse in the snow and conceal their crime from their feared gang leader, allowing Dick to recuperate from his Wood-fired leg wound in their attic crawlspace. However, it’s only a matter of time before Dick and Bob are arrested, surrendering themselves to Sheriff James Timberlake (Ted Levine) at Martha’s home on January 21, 1882, 142 years ago this week. The arrest set in motion the series of events that would result in Bob Ford turning on his boss and infamously shooting Jesse James to death less than three months later.
What’d He Wear?
Among the ruffians that fill the ranks of the James’ gang for the Blue Cut train robbery, only Dick Liddil comes close to maintaining the levels of wardrobe and grooming decorum as Frank and Jesse themselves—perhaps even surpassing both brothers in formality as he’s the only bandit to wear a tie. His particular neckwear is a strip of black silk, looped around his neck and then tied over itself like a droopier variation of the “crossover tie”, with both ends hanging over the chest like dog ears—all held in place with a gold stickpin.
Dick always wears white cotton shirts with a neckband that can be fitted with detachable collars. Aside from a brief occasion where he wears a wing collar and tie, Dick typically wears a club collar—characterized by its rounded edges. Aside from its neckband which takes studs to attach these collars, the shirt’s button-up front placket and button cuffs demonstrate how much men’s shirt design has remained generally the same for over a century.
In 1957, author, historian, and sartorialist Lucius Beebe wrote for The Deseret News that “the Stetson myth” was one of the greatest hoaxes of Western lore as his research uncovered that the derby hat was the true “hat that won the west.” This round-crowned headgear is known as a “bowler hat” in tribute to Thomas and William Bowler, the English hatmakers who designed it in 1849.
Costume designer Patricia Norris followed Beebe’s logic when dressing the characters of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, with more hard-traveled “city hats” than cowboy hats. Dick Liddil exemplifies Beebe’s hypothesis, exclusively wearing a low-crowned black felt derby hat with a matching black grosgrain band.
Dick’s ubiquitous tweed three-piece suit is woven in a dark-brown and beige wool that alternates between a barleycorn weave and a large-scaled herringbone, overlaid with a muted red windowpane check. The overall effect presents like a taupe-brown.
The single-breasted sack jacket has narrow notch lapels with wide notches, rolling over the top button of the distinctive 4/3-roll front, which cuts away around the front quarters. With its welted breast pocket and straight flapped hip pockets, Dick’s ventless suit jacket otherwise follows the example continued by modern business suits more than a century later. The sleeves are roped at the shoulders and finished with three-button cuffs.
The suit’s matching single-breasted waistcoat (vest) has a six-button front that also rises high on Dick’s chest, mimicking the cut of the jacket with the top button rolled over by the waistcoat’s notch lapels—thus, Dick typically leaves both the top and bottom buttons undone. Lined along the back and inside in a dark-brown cloth that matches the darker thread in his tweed suiting, the waistcoat has two low-positioned welted pockets and is cut straight across the bottom.
For the opening Blue Cut train robbery and his snowy travel with Jesse to call on an absent Jim Cummins, Dick swaps out the suit’s matching waistcoat for a plain black wool waistcoat. This single-breasted vest also has a six-button front but is more conventionally styled, with no lapels and a notched bottom.
Regardless of if he’s wearing a jacket or waistcoat, Dick always wears the tweed suit’s flat-front trousers. Despite his trousers’ belt loops around the waist, Dick wears black suspenders that have russet leather hooks connecting them to buttons along the inside of the trouser waistband. Between the cinematography and the regalia of Dick’s gun belt, not much other detail can be ascertained about his trousers, which have plain-hemmed bottoms that break over the tops of his plain black leather square-toed mid-calf boots.
He keeps his Colt 1851 Navy revolver holstered in a dark-brown leather gun belt that features cartridge loops and a large scalloped gilt-toned single-prong buckle. The holster is worn butt-forward on the left side of the belt, giving Dick a right-handed cross draw.
As the weather gets colder, Dick often pulls on his black wool knee-length overcoat. Styled with a belted back, this coat has wide peak lapels, a 4×2-button double-breasted front, flapped hip pockets, and set-in sleeves that are cuffed at the ends.
From his seduction of Sarah Hite to the resulting gunfight with her stepson, Dick is clad in his underwear for many of his most prominent scenes. Due to the decorum of the era and the wintry setting, this consists of an ecru cotton long-sleeved shirt and matching long pants. The top is a henley-style shirt with a three-button placket and set-in sleeves with elasticized ends. Both garments show considerable wear and tear, including some attempts at mending holes over the right shoulder.
The Gun
Aside from Bob Ford’s “granddaddy Colt Paterson” that Dick briefly uses to threaten young Bob, Dick Liddil is the only member of the Jesse James’ gang to still carry an older percussion-style revolver—specifically the venerable Colt Model 1851 Navy revolver.
Percussion revolvers were all but obsolete for more than a decade by the time The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is set in the early 1880s, as the expiration of the Rollin White patent in April 1869 resulted in nearly all major American handgun manufacturers switched from cap-and-ball revolvers to cartridge-fired models. While this included Colt’s iconic Single Action Army that would be immortalized as the “Peacemaker”, Colt also capitalized on the existing parts and ongoing popularity of its Navy revolver by converting them at the factory to fire .38 rimfire cartridges.
The most common Navy conversions included the “Richards Conversion” and the later “Richards-Mason Conversion”, developed by Charles Richards in 1871 and William Mason in 1872, respectively. While the Richards Conversion models maintained the percussion model’s profile with an integral ejector rod replacing the under-barrel loading lever, the Richards-Mason Conversion replaced the whole barrel with one mimicking the Single Action Army with a shrouded ejector rod running parallel along the lower right side.
The fact that Dick carries metallic cartridges in his gun belt suggests that his Colt is cartridge-converted, though the simplified silhouette of his Navy revolver aligns more with the earlier Richards Conversion than the Richards-Mason.
I love the gunfight between Dick Liddil and Wood Hite, as it realistically shows how two experienced gunmen could still miss at such close quarters, especially when emotionally charged and firing black powder revolvers that emit considerable smoke with each shot.
Samuel Colt designed this “Colt Revolving Belt Pistol” as a lighter alternative to the .44-caliber Walker Colt and “Army Dragoon” revolvers developed over the previous decade, firing a .36-caliber ball that had previously been used in the aged Colt Paterson. The original percussion models were manually loaded with black powder, followed a lead ball bullet—specifically a .36-caliber ball, ballistically comparable to a modern .380 ACP round—then a percussion cap on the rear of the chamber, which ignites when struck by the hammer. All mass-produced percussion revolvers were single-action, meaning that the hammer needed to be cocked to pull the trigger and fire a shot.
“Undoubtedly the most popular revolver Colt produced in the medium size and power range,” according to Gun Digest editor Dan Shideler, Navy revolvers were typically case-colored with brass grip frames and trigger guards and walnut stocks. Though primarily issued to land forces throughout its production timeline from 1851 through 1873, the revolver gained its “Navy” nickname for Waterman Ormsby’s detailed barrel engraving of the Second Texas Navy’s 1843 victory at the Battle of Campeche.
How to Get the Look
Paul Schneider as Dick Liddil in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Dick Liddil’s tweed three-piece suit demonstrates how surprisingly liddil little menswear has changed since the Old West, as a few adjustments to the cut and a conventional shirt collar and tie would make his outfit just as stylish today as it would have been when riding with Jesse James.
- Brown-and-beige barleycorn-and-herringbone woven tweed three-piece suit:
- Single-breasted 4/3-roll sack jacket with narrow notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
- Single-breasted 6-button waistcoat with narrow notch lapels, two welted pockets, and straight-cut bottom
- Flat-front trousers with belt loops and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Black wool single-breasted 6-button waistcoat
- White cotton shirt with neckband, front placket, and button cuffs
- White detachable club collar
- Black silk crossover tie
- Gold stickpin with amber stone
- Black suspenders with russet leather hooks
- Black leather mid-calf square-toed slip-on boots
- Black felt derby hat with black grosgrain band
- Dark-brown leather gun belt with cross-draw revolver holster, cartridge loops, and scalloped gold-toned single-prong buckle
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
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