The Bespoke Overcoat

Nikolai Gogol’s classic short story The Overcoat was adapted for British consumption into The Bespoke Overcoat. Comic actor Alfie Bass plays a clothing-store clerk who’d like to own one of the sales items in his store. He is denied this pleasure by his hardhearted boss, so the clerk persuades a tailor friend (David Kossoff) to whip up a duplicate overcoat. When the clerk dies of pneumonia, his ghost materializes before the tailor, persuading him to steal the overcoat the clerk had wanted in the first place. Written by Wolf Mankowicz and directed by Jack Clayton, the 33-minute The Bespoke Overcoat won a 1953 Academy Award for “best short subject”. Another, equally enjoyable version of the Gogol story appeared on the TV anthology Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Presents in 1951, with Buster Keaton as the persistent clerk., Variation on “The Overcoat,” Gogol’s classic about a poor clerk’s quest for a coat. Fender: Alfie Bass. Morry: David Kosoff. Ranting: Alan Tilvern.