Dark hair = good guys in Hollywood?

Cafe Society
1

I was thinking the other day that most of the male heroes in Hollywood, especially after the 50’s, had dark hair. The prototypical hero is handsome and has dark eyes and hair, it seems, in the manner of James Bond. I’m trying to think of good guys with blond hair, and the only ones that come to mind are Hutch from Starsky and Hutch and Luke Skywalker. I’m sure there are others, but my point is it’s hard to think of them.

I have a theory about this: that after World War II, blonde came to mean “Germanic,” which of course meant NAZI. Furthermore, during and after the Cold War, blonde also meant “Russian.”

This train of thought was spurred by a discussion with friends about the much-maligned choice of Daniel Craig to play James Bond, a choice which I think is very poor. Not only is Craig not handsome, I said, he’s blonde! Bond can’t be blonde!

Can anyone think of some examples of blonde-haired heroes?

2

Matt Damon in the Bourne movies.

3

Funny you should mention James Bond. IIRC, there are people who are upset because they feel that having pale blond (or white haired) villians is furthering a social stigma on people who suffer from ablinoism and things of that nature. Pardon me if I did not use the correct terms, I mean no offense.

4

The biggest blond-haired hero I can think of is Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid, from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

5

It’s the tall-dark-and-handsome cliche, writ large. Virility and masculinity, rather than paleness (=weakness). Look at old movies: the sparkly blond hair of Leslie Howard just seem iconically more feminine than Clark Gable’s sable helmet, due largely I think to the feminity associated with the platinum blonde starlet. Blond is a chick’s color; darker is manlier.

6

There may be a handful of cases that reference the Nazis, such as the main henchman in Tomorrow Never Dies. In general I can’t put much truck in this theory, because Hollywood hasn’t exactly suffered a shortage of blonde females during the past sixty years.

There have been blonde heroes, such as the guy who rode the motorcycle in The Great Escape. (The name escapes me at the moment.) If they’re rare, maybe it’s because real blondes are rare. Only a tiny number of people remain blonde past the age of twenty-five.

7

That was Steve McQueen on the motorcycle.

8

Except that this iconography is as old as movies.

9

In addition to Redford and McQueen, there’s Charlton Heston, who sometimes looked blonde, sometimes light brown, but never really brunette.

And you don’t get a hero more prototypical than Charlton Heston!

10

I would say that Clint Eastwould is not dark haired. In the Good The Bad And the Ugly his character’s name is Blondie.

11

Depending on the light, his hair ranged from brunette to dark strawberry blond at the time.

12

Charlton Heston, James Franciscus, Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, Matt Damon, Lloyd Bridges, Buster Crabbe, Martin Milner, Guy Madison, Alan Ladd, Chuck Connors, Ron Ely, Doug McClure, Brad Pitt, Jon Voight, Nelson Eddy.

13

Arnold was a blonde Conan.

14

Roger Moore was blond–or pretty close to it–in his first Bond picture, Live and Let Die.