Another Serving of Bradbury’s ‘Wonderful Ice Cream Suit’

Although famous for science-fiction novels such as “The Martian Chronicles” and “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury cites among his favorite works a short story he wrote in 1957 about five men who pool their money to buy a white suit. Forty-two years later, the story has become a movie.

The film, called “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,” stars Joe Mantegna, Edward James Olmos, Esai Morales, Gregory Sierra and Clifton Gonzalez Gonzalez and is scheduled for release on video today.

The story, which Bradbury originally titled “The Magic Suit,” centers on five young Mexican American men who are down on their luck but see it change when they buy a shiny white suit that cements their friendships and seems to grant them special powers.

“It’s a change of pace from all the cynical movies out there,” Morales said.

The film became a reunion of sorts for Mantegna, Bradbury and director Scott Gordon--all of whom worked on a theatrical production of the story at the Organic Theater in Chicago 25 years ago.

“It really is like a circle completing itself,” said Mantegna, who starred in the theater production with then-unknown actors Dennis Franz and Meshach Taylor. “We wanted to make this a film from the beginning. To do it with Scott and Ray Bradbury--there was not much more I could ask for.”

Bradbury, who was on the set nearly every day of filming, wrote the story as a tribute to his old neighborhood between Temple and Figueroa streets in downtown Los Angeles.

Now 78, Bradbury sees the film as a valentine for Los Angeles’ Mexican American community, a community he grew up with and cherished as his own. Since the heart of the Mexican American community is now on the Eastside, Bradbury changed the setting of the story from downtown to Boyle Heights.

“We moved here from the Midwest at the height of the Depression,” he said. “My first friends were the Mexican American boys I met in junior high school, and they remained my best friends for the rest of my life.”

Growing up poor and continually wearing hand-me-downs, Bradbury said there was nothing like the feeling of looking swell in a new outfit. He vividly recalls spending the first money he earned selling newspapers to buy a $15 sport coat, a $5 pair of pants, a $5 pair of shoes and a tie for 50 cents

.

Sometimes, wearing a new outfit gives you a sense of magic, he said.

“A lot of us have been through this experience,” he said. “When you finally have enough money to buy a halfway decent sport coat or a tie, it makes you feel that maybe you’re worth looking at. You want people to look at your clothing and you inside it.”

“The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” took a circuitous route to film. It began as a short story published in the Saturday Evening Post, then it became a television drama starring a young Peter Falk in the late 1950s. In the early 1960s, Bradbury adapted the story for the stage. Gordon decided to revive it at his Organic Theater in 1974 after returning from an unsuccessful outing in New York. The production was a success, revived the theater and launched the careers of Mantegna, Franz and Taylor.

“We crawled back to Chicago from New York without a penny,” Gordon recalled. “Immediately, we could relate to these guys who were down and out. Instead of sharing a suit, we shared a play. Anyone who has been in a situation where they had nothing but dreams can relate to this story.”

The play also was performed at L.A.’s Plaza de la Raza in the mid-1970s. It was there that Roy E. Disney--nephew of Walt Disney and son of Roy O. Disney--saw the play. He never forgot it.

“I fell in love with it. It never went out of my memory, and every now and then it would bubble in my head that it ought to be made into film,” Disney said. “It’s such a universal story about friendship and the bond between people. There is a magic quality to it that is very Disney.”

When Disney met Gordon, the seed was planted. The film was finally made in 1997 on a tight budget--less than $15 million. Disney, who served as executive producer, says it was always intended for video. Releasing it for the wide screen would have been too expensive, he said.

Though Bradbury, Gordon and the cast were hoping for theatrical release, they are nonetheless satisfied that “Ice Cream Suit” has been immortalized in this way.

“It came out so well that I was kind of hoping they would change their mind and give it theatrical release,” Gordon said. “It was such a great time that all of us kept badgering Ray to come up with the sequel. He doesn’t have the story yet, but the title is ‘The Whole Enchilada.’ ”