[greymule]

Why is everybody wearing a hat?

In those days, most men wore hats simply as part of being dressed, even in prison. If you look at some of the old prison movies, even one starring Laurel and Hardy, the prisoners wore caps issued as part of their uniform. Only a boor would leave his hat on indoors, and so hat racks were something stores actually sold. You also tipped your hat when addressing a woman.

Look at a picture of a ball game crowd from before WW II (and even a few years afterward). You'll see virtually every man in a hat—straw in the summer (until Labor Day).

In the early 1950s, my dad (and every other man in New York City) wore his fedora whenever he went out. Men's hats were still a big business. But by the end of the 1950s, hats—after centuries of being practically required—had pretty much disappeared.

Of course, in the early 1950s, every male spectator at a ball game would also have been wearing a suit, and on the NY subways you'd have seen women wearing hats, veils, and gloves.

Times have changed.

PS. Mickey Mantle recalled that when he joined the Yankees in 1951, for street clothes he wore what the well-dressed Oklahoma boy would wear on a Saturday night: clean jeans, shined penny loafers, and a sport shirt (and I suspect clean white socks). Hank Bauer told Mantle that New York was different, and offered to buy him the necessary suit. After they got him fitted, Mantle said that he couldn't believe that it was possible to spend so much money on a suit of clothes—$35. (I'm sure that included a hat.)

Incidentally, sportscasters used to talk about a "shirtsleeve crowd." That term might not make much sense today, but it meant that the weather was nice enough that the men could take their suit jackets off. Since most men wore white shirts, the players often had a hard time picking up the ball. The most famous example was Joe Pepitone, who "lost a throw in the background of white shirts" (according to a written account) and gave the Dodgers the deciding run of the final game of the 1963 World Series.