In the early 1930s, most American men wore sleeveless undershirts (with a deep neck and exposed armpits). In Frank Capra's Oscar-winning film It Happened One Night (1934), however, Clark Gable took off his shirt... and wasn't wearing anything underneath.
The upshot? By 1938 Sears, Roebuck & Co. had added a "gob-style" short-sleeved undershirt (worn by U.S. sailors) to its catalog (price: 24 cents). "Hardly a young man from coast to coast would be caught wearing one after that," Charles Murray reported in the L.A. Times. "It almost wrecked an industry..."
[In 1951, Hollywood struck again: Marlon Brando electrified audiences by wearing a skin-tight T-shirt in Tennessee Williams's A Street Car Named Desire.]
Sources
The Everything Tall Tales, Legends, & Outrageous Lies Book; Uncle John`s Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader, p. 129
