Every once in a blue moon I’ll catch this show flipping through the channels.
It seems like every time I see Betty’s male friends (The oldest daughter), they all have receding hairlines. LOL what the heck is up with that? They’re supposed to be teenagers!
This is a poor example but it was the best pic I could find. Look at the guy on the right, he’s sporting a pair of bat wings up there. Here
That’s pretty funny. I’m not sure it means the actors are significantly older than the characters - at least, not more so than in any era. For whatever reason, I think we tend to perceive men from prior eras as being older - dress, hair style, grooming etc. is what we regard as “mature” or “older men” and so we add years. I am often surprised at ages on photos of WWII soldiers, for example - from the cues, I’d say 35-40, but Sergeant Jones is 24.
Receding hairlines are not uncommon in fairly young men - I worked with one guy who was in his early 20s and had deeper batwings than your photo. We have a family branch that balds early (not mine, he says, shaking his hair out of the way again) and it’s noticeable even in high school photos.
So what we might be seeing here is a slightly too-old actor playing a high schooler, who was not rejected from the role because he didn’t have a kid’s hairline, groomed like his father of the time (or an earlier one) and thus looking much older to our eyes than his probable 19-21.
Here is an episode from when Elinor Donahue was 17 years old, where Betty went on a date with a character played by Robert Easton, who was then 25. Entertainingly on the topic of receding hairlines, Easton went on to play the Klingon judge in Star Trek VI.
(And judging from IMDB, he later turned into Edgar Winter).
Crewcuts and slicked down hair were unforgiving when it came to receding hairlines.
And I went to high school with a guy who had lost so much hair by the time he was 18 that his parents bought him a toupee for Christmas.
MAD magazine’s take on Teen Beat or some similar magazine, ca. 1970:
“Dear Editor: Is it true that Bobby Rockstar is bald and wears a toupee?”
“Dear Reader: Of course not. Bobby is bald and has 27-inch eyebrows.”
I think you’ve hit the nail on the (balding) head.
In my dad’s high school senior picture from the mid fifties, he is quite obviously balding. In little brother’s senior pic from the mid eighties, not so much, even though he was similarly losing his hair. The difference in hair style made it less obvious.
I knew two gentlemen that were pretty much bald by the time they hit 20, so I guess it does happen. But I know what you mean about the old shows. Age wasn’t really an issue.
I remember cringing when I saw an episode of “The Lucy Show” from the '60s and Danny Thomas calls Lucille Ball, “young lady.”