TAKE THE SHIRT OFF HIS RACK WHEN FILMMAKERS WANT AUTHENTIC UNIFORMS, THEY CALL AL RUEGSEGGER

When Al Ruegsegger began supplying sports costumes to film and
TV companies in the mid-1970s, people warned him there wasn't
enough work to support a specialty company. "At the time, all
wardrobing in the business was general in nature," says the
53-year-old Ruegsegger. "But it was frustrating to me. I'd watch
a sports movie or a film with a sports scene, and I wouldn't
enjoy it, because they weren't doing the costumes right."

So in 1978 Ruegsegger, who had studied to be an aeronautical
engineer, and his wife, Merry Ann, launched Sportsrobe,
Hollywood's lone sports-only costuming company, which now has 31
employees and $4 million in annual revenue. Sportsrobe boasts an
inventory of 200,000 pieces of clothing and 10,000 pairs of
athletic shoes. Ruegsegger can supply anything from cricket
whites and gymnastics leotards to referees' zebra stripes.

"One of the things that we've been able to do is change the way
directors shoot certain scenes," says Ruegsegger. "Before, it
wasn't always cost-effective, from a time or materials
standpoint, to shoot films or commercials where you could see
entire teams. When we were able to provide large numbers of
uniforms--like for Forrest Gump, where we provided a full
complement of early 1960s University of Alabama uniforms,
including authentic costumes for the cheerleaders--then
directors could come in and shoot full-scope."

He has been able to expand because of the increase in the number
of sports-related films, TV shows and commercials. Sportsrobe's
office, in Culver City, Calif., has a private screening room
with seats from the old Sicks Stadium in Seattle, where the
Pilots used to play. The office also houses the company's
20,000-piece uniform collection. "Each piece of clothing has its
own story," he says. "One uniform may go from a movie to a TV
show to a commercial photo shoot, with just slight alterations."

Ruegsegger meets with directors and producers in a cramped
conference room filled with reference and photo books that
document the changing styles of sports uniforms. The tops of the
cluttered bookshelves are lined with football helmets, ranging
from a turn-of-the-century leather model to the molded, masked
designs of today. "If they're making a movie about a specific
era, we can show them what the uniforms are supposed to look
like," says Ruegsegger. "The thing that's unique about period
movies is that all the research is in black and white. For
instance, the 1937 Brooklyn Dodgers wore green and white, but
you can't tell that they wore green in a black-and-white photo."

For A League of Their Own, the film about World War II-era
women's professional baseball, which starred Tom Hanks, Geena
Davis, Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell, Ruegsegger talked with
former players, watched some rare footage and had an original
uniform sent to him. He then sat down with the film's director,
Penny Marshall, to find a happy medium between historical
accuracy and cinematic magic. "The costumes were pretty
accurate," Ruegsegger says, "right down to the double-needle
stitching on the dresses."

In movies with historical story lines, realism is paramount. You
might notice that in Eight Men Out and Field of Dreams the
players wear the same baseball uniforms. "I convinced the people
making Eight Men Out to hold off shooting a week because I was
waiting to get back the wardrobe from Field of Dreams," says
Ruegsegger, whose seamstresses worked overtime to alter the
clothes quickly. "Because it was a low-budget movie, they agreed."

Not everyone Ruegsegger works with is interested in absolute
accuracy. In Soul of the Game, an HBO film about the integration
of major league baseball told through the eyes of Satchel Paige,
Josh Gibson and Jackie Robinson, actor Blair Underwood, as
Robinson, wears number 42 on his Kansas City Monarchs uniform.
In fact, Robinson never wore that number for the Monarchs; he
wore it only as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Ruegsegger
says the filmmakers insisted that Underwood wear the wrong
number: "They felt that they had to use the number the public
associates with Jackie Robinson."

That's Hollywood. And that's a wrap.

COLOR PHOTO: ROBERT BECK Ruegsegger's closets hold more than 200,000 sports items. David Davis, an editor at L.A. Weekly, confesses that he never notices costuming mistakes in films. [Al Ruegsegger with vintage baseball uniforms]