So did George. (Well…George wasn’t so much ‘goofy’, as ‘awkward’, but still…both of them benefited from facial hair.)
Tom Selleck looks strange without the porn-star stache.
I couldn’t disagree more. The second picture is my idea of a perfect human male face. Oh my. 
For a long time, I didn’t recognize James Brolin without his Hotel-era beard.
Alex Trebek still looks wrong.
As a child in the 1980s, I recognized the Beatles (as a vintage rock band) and I recognized Ringo Starr (goofy bearded fellow from Caveman and various ads). I didn’t realize they were the same guy for a long time.
There were also people that seemed to take on different personas with beards, like Robin Williams (serious dramatic actor with the beard, comic without) or John Ritter (more “adult” racy material with beard, sitcom/family man without).
Paul looked great with a little stubble, like in the Rishikesh/White Album era, but with the full “Let it Be” beard, like a leprechaun, and with the Sgt. Pepper or mid-70s mustache - like an English snooker champion.
Speaking of Hayes, I can’t find a picture of Isaac Hayes without a beard. I don’t think he’d look right.
Also, George Carlin. I think age is a factor; in the beardless pictures he’s very young.
With his beard, Ryan Hurst looks like a bad-ass biker gang member.
Without his beard, Ryan Hurst looks like a guy who’s confused about how the soft-serve ice cream machine works, but he’d be happy to go get the manager for you.
Huh. Looks a little like Oliver Reed.
Robert E. Lee. We’re used to thinking of him as grey-haired and bearded. But the Civil War aged him. Here’s a picture of him in 1861 - with moustache but without beard.
Agreed.
I always thought George was handsome when cleanshaven. With a beard he looked like (quoting a long-dead Irish friend of mine) “a bloody goat peering through a hedge.”
Kevin Kline. From NPR, July 24, 2010:
"…Indeed, Kline’s tendency to experiment with different kinds of beards and moustaches has led film critic Roger Ebert to concoct the Kevin Kline Moustache Principle, which states that you can guess what kind of film the actor’s working on by looking at his chin — he tends to have facial hair in comedies, but stays clean shaven in dramatic roles.
Kline says Ebert is right — to a certain extent. “I’ve heard about that theory, and I think he’s admitted that there are exceptions,” he says, pointing to a production of King Lear in which he had “quite a bit of facial hair.”
I think Jeffrey Tambor (already mentioned upthread by Chefguy) also falls into this category.
I’d never seen that picture. But even with darker hair and no beard, he projects dignity and competence to me. He LOOKS like a great general, whether he was one or not. He LOOKS like a man soldiers would gladly follow.
Normally I’m always pro-beard, but those pictures don’t look funny at all to me. Different, yes, but not weird or anything.
But he had to grow a beard. It was the rule during the Civil War. The good generals had beards and the bad generals did not.
Oh my word. Thread over.
I always thought Rowan Atkinson looked really sexy in Blackadder II, with his beard. OK otherwise, occasionally goofy looking, but oh, that beard!
With a moustache, Nick Offerman is Ron Swanson, a man’s man who does his shopping at Food-n-Stuff and makes fine wood chairs and harps.
With no moustache, he looks like this.
Not quite a celebrity, but Paul Allen appears in public from time to time, and yes, he looked a lot better with a big nerd-beard.
