In this photo he’s 23, I think he looks about 35. She’s 16, I think she looks about 27.
ick.
Is it just a matter of style (grooming/wardrobe) in years past being so different from that of today, or is it something more?
In Cafe Society because it’s when I watch old movies or look at old photos that i find myself wondering this.
I vote for clothing and grooming style. They look older because we associate their styles with older people, who continue to wear them today. That’s the funny thing about style; many people reach an age in their mid thirties to forties when they freeze their style and never change again. As it should be to my mind; there is nothing more pathetic than a 50-60 year old affecting the clothing or hairstyles of a twenty something. I see way too many middle aged guys with gel in their hair trying to do that Ryan Seacroft messy hair look, and it is so lame.
I was thinking that back then younger kids wanted to look like they were older and so adopted hair and clothing of slightly older adults. Today, I guess, kids have their own distinctive look.
In my mom’s high school grad photo, she doesn’t look anything like the 18 year olds in my high school yearbook. If I were guessing, I’d have said mom was around 23-25, so I think maybe it’s also the old hair/clothing styles.
As my frame of reference changes (getting older, that is) it’s harder to judge how old kids are.
Also remember that they may actually BE older than they’re “supposed to be”. We are talking Hollywood here. Lying about your age is a very old tradition.
Remember, during the '50s, women started dressing and making themselves up like grandmothers as soon as they got married. At least, that’s what I see when I look at old family photos…
And actually, if you go back further, it gets worse. There are old dagguerotypes from the mid-19th Century with 20-year-old men who look about 50, with the huge beards and stern expressions.
Beat the hell out of today, when you see middle-aged people out in public, apparently having mistakenly put on their ten-year-old children’s clothing.
Beyond the style & grooming issue, I would propose certain other factors.
People used to smoke more and drink more cocktails than they do now, which is bound to put some wear & tear on.
A lot of these celebrities who attained fame around mid-century were just one generation removed from immigrant ancestors & may have had rough childhoods, being deprived of creature comforts (I don’t know if this includes Bobby Darin).
Diet. If you’ve ever opened a cookbook from the 1950s you know the horrors that went into people’s mouths in the old days. There seemed to be a blithe ignorance about making any connection between heavy foods & physical well-being.
The question in the OP has come up recently with regard to Leo DiCaprio’s portrayal of Howard Hughes in The Aviator. Some people are asking why DiCaprio appears so much younger than Howard Hughes did at the same age. In this case I think it’s because the two men are so different. Hughes was a guy who took on a lot of business responsibility at a young age & the resulting pressure probably wore on him (even though he was crazy & had money to burn). DiCaprio is a guy who was groomed to be a heartthrob movie star from adolescence with all the pampering that involves.
Au contraire,I always thought kids now look older.Look at pics of girls in the 60s or 70s and they look their age.Now most 10-11 yr olds look physically like 14 or 15 and pretty much dress the same as them…
Actually this is not conflicting at all… what you would have now is an affectation for the styles of adolescence that hyperextends in both directions, up and down. People spending the entire period from 10 to 30 affecting the style of 18.
I agree and I don’t. I don’t like it when people freeze their style too early. I think retro dressing is the best solution to that. One thing that bugs me is that I have always based my self image of myself as an old person on the old people I knew growing up, so I thought one day I would get to wear polyester dresses from Dalmy’s with cartigins and nurses’s shoes and kleenex up my sleeve. Now I’m scared that all the other old people my age will have frozen themselves in the 90s and will have on combat boots and bart simpson t-shirts. So my solution since my late 20s has been to dress in a modified 1940s style. I think it is a nice alternative to trying to look young.
About movie stars, I think it’s always really weird to try to figure out their ages. In old movies the light and makeup are sooooo fake that you can’t tell if they have any wrinkles and freckles or what. I was watching Queen Bee last night trying to find un-retouched photos of Joan Crawford on the internet. I have seen a couple of photos of her freckles and I can’t believe how much they hid! And I was thinking about how people’s teeth were in the past, dreaming of what these people would look like if they didn’t have caps or dentures and I wound up googling up a real hell of a story about Clark Gable that made me sorry for anyone who ever had to kiss him. I’m getting off the topic.
If you click a couple of pictures forward, I think Sandra Dee has a lot of crow’s feet at 20. Then at 21 she looks like a MILF in a wig.
There’s something about the crew cut look of the early 60’s. In my old University field house, they had a lot of pictures of the sports teams of past years. The teams from the 50’s and 60’s looked like they were largely composed of 30 year olds. (Actually, due to Korea, it’s possible that some of them were, but they all looked far more serious and mature than the current students.)
I don’t know who the guy is, But I bought Anarchy in the UK the week it came out. I was 15.
[Fee Waybill]
“I was a punk before you were a punk”
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My generation invented spiked hair. Using hair gel (or at the begiinning, shaving foam).
So this middle aged dude reserve the right to put goey stuff in his hair, you whippersnapper.
Good examples of the phenomenon are comedians Bob & Ray. During the late 40s they were both in their twenties and not only looked, but sounded like men in their late thirties or early forties. Especially Ray, a big guy with a face and voice like an Irish basset hound.
It can’t just be the wardrobe and hairstyle… look at the guy’s face in that picture. Independent of the clothes and hair, it still doesn’t look like that of a 23 year old.
Actually, he’s the spitting image of a guy I used to date, who was nineteen at the time. (This was about seven years ago, BTW.) My take on it is that some people just look remarkably old (or young) for their age.
Well, Bobby Darin in particular always looked older than he really was (to my eyes at least). Whether this is a result of his illness or the way he lived or whatever I don’t know. (Actually it’s because of this that I have no problem with Kevin Spacey playing him in the film. They look the same, regardless of their respective ages.)
Whippersnapper. Heh.
I don’t know how old you think I am, but if you were born in 1961, I know I’m older than you.
Whippersnapper. Heh-heh-heh.
I’m a 38-year-old guy, and I personally don’t like seeing women my age still wearing Farrah Fawcett hairstyles. I don’t like seeing men my age wearing mullets. I was pleasantly surpised this year when I saw neither style at my 20-year class reunion. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people over 30 attempting to keep their style current. It’s better than looking dated.
It’s certainly possible for older people to adopt a current style without looking silly. When I served on a jury a few months ago, I was pleasantly surprised by the judge’s style out of his robe. He was in his late fifties or early sixties; his silver hair was buzzed, but in a modern style rather than in a crew cut; he had a goatee and an earring (!) and modern eyeglasses. His slacks were cut in a modern, slightly baggy style, and his shirt and tie were modern. And he looked distinguished, not ridiculous.
Along the same lines, some people seem to have naturally “retro” faces. Bernadette Peters looks like a 1920s flapper, Sherilyn Fenn goes back to the 40s/50s glamour ideal, Kate Wiinslet looks like a turn of the century beauty and John Goodman goes back to the 50s Everyman look. Of course, anybody can be dressed and so forth to fit a particular era’s styles, but some folks just have the look to a greater degree than others.
I think the modern ideals of fitness for both sexes and for freakish thinness on the part of female movie stars bars a lot of older actresses from looking modern. The ones that do would be the ones like Rita Hayworth and Ann Miller, dancers who were fit by profession.
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