The Space Race may be the backdrop for ABC’s new miniseries, but instead of the astronauts, it’s their wives who are front and center.
“The Astronaut Wives Club” (premiering Thursday at 8 p.m. on ABC) tells the true story of seven modest military wives who rocketed to fame when their husbands — Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton — were named as NASA’s original Mercury astronauts in 1959.
During the ’60s, the women lived in Houston — many as next-door neighbors — providing support while their husbands went on death-defying missions and chased skirts in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
As the men fought a symbolic Cold War in the skies — with each successful mission celebrated as a dent in Soviet Communism — the women rallied around each other back home. They also became celebrities in their own right, hounded by reporters with their every move chronicled in the pages of Life magazine.
“They were kind of like the first ‘Real Housewives,’ ” says series costume designer Eric Daman. “All eyes were on them, and they unwittingly became fashion icons and scions of their social set.”
The 10-episode miniseries spans 1959 to 1971, a decade-plus retold through the aid of NASA footage, Life magazine profiles and writer Lily Koppel’s 2013 oral history “The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story,” on which the series is based. (Koppel is a consultant on the show; the three surviving wives have no official involvement.)
“One of the great things about the space program is it’s super well-documented,” says executive producer Stephanie Savage.
Like that other ’60s-era show “Mad Men,” producers sought to meticulously re-create the decade: Ninety percent of the costumes are vintage, sourced by Daman on sites like Etsy and 1stdibs. Savage scoured Sears catalogs, women’s magazines like Good Housekeeping and cookbooks to get a sense of popular topics and colloquialisms for her scripts. Midcentury neighborhoods in their filming location of New Orleans were scouted to double as the space ’burbs of Houston and Florida.
Savage says, “Fashion, food, cars, interior design — it’s all very specific.”
Louise Shepard
Played by Dominique McElligott
After her husband, Alan Shepard, became the first of the Mercury Seven astronauts to blast off, Louise was christened the “First Lady of Space” — and the group’s first fashion icon. Clothing stores even marketed the cream-colored dress/jacket/hat combo outfit she wore to the White House celebration.
“Her taste and style is a little more elevated than the others, more Vogue than the other wives,” says Daman, who often dressed McElligott in a more neutral palette with sparkly details.
Despite her husband’s reputation for infidelity, the couple remained married and retired to California. They died five weeks apart in 1998.
Marge Slayton
Played by Erin Cummings
Slayton came from a poor background and had to hide the fact that she was a divorcee. Older than the other wives, she was nicknamed “Mother Marge,” which was incorporated into her fashion.
“Back then, people didn’t throw away clothing, and I feel like Marge might have peaked in the late ’40s,” Daman says.
He gave Cummings a film-noir style fitting for the decade with lots of shoulder pads, slinky sweaters and form-fitting dresses to hug her curves.
Slayton, who had one son, divorced for a second time in 1983 over husband Deke’s cheating. She died in 1989 at age 67.
Jo Schirra
Played by Zoe Boyle
If there’s a Charlotte in this group of gal pals, it’s “perfect Navy wife” Jo, who rocked twin sets and headbands like a preppy pro.
“In real life, there’s a whole thing about her wearing the pearls and white shoes — we used that as her signature thing,” Daman says. “We really wanted her to be prissy and pristine.”
That meant lots of cream-colored clothes, sleeveless sheath dresses and pencil skirts paired with a sweater over the shoulders. But as her celebrity rose, even the prim Schirra started experimenting with her style.
“She opens up as it goes on. Later, she gets a new hairdo,” he says. “She goes above the knee, starts wearing tan shoes.”
Jo and husband Wally had two children and remained married until his death in 2007. She died in April at age 91.
Rene Carpenter
Played by Yvonne Strahovski
Stunner Rene, wife of Scott Carpenter, wasn’t afraid to stand out — wearing a bright floral-print dress to the astro-wives’ first photo shoot, while the others donned pastels.
“What might have come off as attention-grabbing was really meant for her as a sense of individuality,” Daman says.
Carpenter flaunted her own sense of style rather than following trends, so Daman put Strahovski in sexier silhouettes.
“Yvonne was someone we thought would be a great Rene, because she can play the glamour side, but also has this intelligence and drive,” Savage says.
Rene and Scott divorced in 1972, and Rene and their four kids moved to Washington, DC, where she established a career as a local TV news host and became a vocal feminist.
Annie Glenn
Played by Azure Parsons
Annie was the envy of the other wives for her picture-perfect marriage to John Glenn, who was very protective of the timid Annie because of her stutter — which Daman reflected in Parsons’ fashions.
“We wanted her to feel quiet and a little bit of a church mouse, [so] we went with pastels and girly silhouettes,” he says. “Because of her speaking disability, it was important to give her this tenderness compared to the other women.”
After becoming the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962, John was heralded as a national hero, and Annie became a political partner to her husband as he campaigned for elected office.
“As she grows and comes out of her shell a little bit, by the end she’s really all-American in red, white and blue,” Daman says.
A mother of two, Annie went on to become an activist and support her husband during his political career as senator from Ohio, where they live today.
Trudy Cooper
Played by Odette Annable
Producers cast Annable, who has a tomboy quality, to play the headstrong Trudy, who came to base with a secret — that she left her husband Gordo when she discovered his affair and only returned for the sake of his NASA career.
“Trudy was a [licensed] pilot in her own right, and she was a forward-thinker when it came to how she thought marriage should work,” Savage says.
A bit of a daredevil, Trudy drove a sports car (while the other wives drove station wagons) and donned a wardrobe of pedal-pushers, jeans and shorts.
“She’s the only woman we see in pants for quite some time,” says Daman, who notes she still dolled up when she wanted to. “She and Gordo, in real life, met in Hawaii, so we wanted to add a bit of a tiki trend,” which he incorporated through a palette of Mediterranean blues and rust, surf prints and palm trees.
Trudy, who had two daughters with husband Gordo, eventually left him for good in the late 1960s and has since died.
Betty Grissom
Played by JoAnna Garcia Swisher
For Grissom, a Midwesterner who worked evenings at the telephone company to put her husband through engineering school, Savage wrote the part with Swisher in mind. “Not only because she has beautiful red hair, but also because she has a real matter-of-fact quality to her, and has a huge heart.
“And I know how important her marriage is to her, and that was something that was a huge component of Betty’s character.”
Grissom’s sense of style was a bit more provincial than the other wives, yet still unique. “We added a little bit of a Western look with great plaids,” Daman says. “Also big earrings, big flowers, kitschy, quirky accessories that were not in the best of taste, but really helped identify her character.”
After Gus died when Apollo I exploded during a launchpad test in 1967, Betty was critical of NASA and sued for financial support for her and her two sons. She lives in Houston.
A taste of the ’60s
Nearly every episode of “Astronaut Wives Club” features a launch party — potlucks the wives would host whenever one of their husbands went up into space as a way of turning what could be a terrifying experience into a supportive social environment.
Food hence plays its own starring role, as reporters staked out the parties and questioned the wives about the dishes they brought — from coffee cake to ham loaf and bacon banana hollandaise.
The task of recreating those period recipes fell to food stylist Emily Marshall, who cooked all the party food herself (including deviled eggs by the hundreds) with the help of vintage cookbooks and food ads.
“There was always a lot of Jell-O, casseroles on the table. Often desserts would have Technicolor aspect to them,” she says. “If you look at food of the time it was extremely composed, very geometric. It was highly arranged in these almost obsessive-compulsive decorative patterns.”
Many of the dishes sound bizarre to the modern palette: Barbeque Jell-O salad made with BBQ-flavored Jell-O cubes combined with grapefruit wedges, hardboiled egg and shrimp. Or the crown roast of frankfurters made of sliced hot dogs encircling a kraut-like cabbage salad.
Marshall followed recipes directly whenever possible but because some ‘60s-era ingredients are no longer available — like savory-flavored Jell-O and many canned foods — she found herself reinventing often.
“Prop food is not necessarily getting eaten so it didn’t have to be delicious,” she says.
