This costume is very interesting because while it has been seen and used three different times, it was used on the same actress each time! The second time the blouse was seen, it was not on the character, but in a photo of her!

Elisabeth wrote in with some fascinating information about the old B westerns of the day! She speculated that the reason Jane wore the same costume three times is that Jane made four B-Westerns in a row for Republic Pictures. They were a low-budget studio that used the same cast, crew, and director for all four films, and many of the costumes were likely reused as well. It is even possible that the blouse may have been the property of Jane herself!

She found a book called The Way We Wore by Marsha Hunt, an actress from the 1930s and ’40s, which backs up her theory on Jane’s wardrobe and discusses various movies of the day and the costumes used for them.

If you’re wondering what happened to all those lovely outfits, once the picture was finished, don’t weep for their short lives. They knew reincarnation, over and over, slightly changed and refitted for other actresses in later films…Because of the reworkability of these custom costumes, studios rarely allowed their actresses to buy them. I did manage a couple of purchases from Universal, and treasured them.

All of this costly couture and effort was of course, beyond the means of some independent filmmakers and those on “Poverty Row,” those small studios turning out films with six-day shooting schedules. Those “quickie” producers often asked actors to provide their own clothes for modern stories. Or they sent a wardrobe man or woman to pick up lots of likely outfits at local department stores, then show them to all the execs and the actress at the studio, where a selection was made. The chosen clothes were then fitted to the player, and that was that.

The book has several mentions of recycled costumes as well as photographs. It also discusses the costume house The Western Costume Company, which was responsible for clothing many westerns of the day, and still does!

You can check out the Western Costume Company’s fascinating website here, or find more information on the book The Way We Wore here!