# Period films and hair **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 14, 2010, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406 "2010-05-14T08:32:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/21 "2010-05-14T15:14:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Mostly Italian sword and sandal movies made in the 60’s and 70’s have slave girls with great big poufy blond or red hair and lots of makeup. …and those big, wonderful 60’s boobies that they apparently don’t make any more. ---
**Author:** ![hellpaso](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ecae2f/32.png) [@hellpaso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hellpaso)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/22 "2010-05-14T15:52:23Z")
This made me laugh. I too have always noticed the hair/makeup thing. I recall westerns in the 60s (“Daniel Boone”, “The Wild Wild West”, etc.) where the women would always have these big bouffant hairdos–the kind my mother would go sit at the “beauty shop” for hours to have done (then spend the rest of the week sleeping swathed in toilet paper to maintain the style). Even as a little kid I knew it was wrong! ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/23 "2010-05-14T17:12:51Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > Westerns are typically egregiously wrong with men’s hairstyles. Beards and mustaches were common in the 19thy century, though you don’t see too many of them in the movies. Also, based on period photographs, we aren’t seeing enough men using hair oil. Those old timey dudes wore their hair longish, greased it, and it looks like some of them even curled it. Women’s, too. Most films set in the 1800s, for that matter, get this wrong. In those days, grown women (who were not homeless, crazy, the town slattern, running into the street to escape a burning building in the middle of the night, etc.) did not wear their hair down in public. Even **Deadwood** got this wrong (re: Alma Garrett…characters like Trixie were okay styled like this). That bugs me almost as much as seeing 1940s red bee-stung lips in a Western. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/24 "2010-05-14T17:29:47Z")
I always get a kick out of old Glenn Ford westerns: [Shortest Hair in the West!](http://imagecache6.allposters.com/LRG/27/2769/WCJTD00Z.jpg) (Well, _[almost](http://img.allposters.com/6/LRG/27/2768/E4JTD00Z.jpg)_.) ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/25 "2010-05-14T19:19:25Z")
> [@gallows\_fodder](#): > > Women’s, too. Most films set in the 1800s, for that matter, get this wrong. In those days, grown women (who were not homeless, crazy, the town slattern, running into the street to escape a burning building in the middle of the night, etc.) did not wear their hair down in public. Even **Deadwood** got this wrong (re: Alma Garrett…characters like Trixie were okay styled like this). > > That bugs me almost as much as seeing 1940s red bee-stung lips in a Western. Yes! This bugs me no end. At a certain age, a girl put up her hair and would never go around with her long hair flapping (like Nicole Kidman in Cold Mountain!). And even cowgirls, off the range, didn’t go gallumphing around in an athletic manner - slow and stately (because of the ubiquitous corset and long skirts) was the demeanor of a lady. Wild Bill Hickock and General Custer had long curled hair, apparently kept in place with bear grease or something - you can always pick them out of a crowd in a movie no matter what year it was made. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/26 "2010-05-14T20:08:19Z")
I notice this far more frequently with women than with men, for whatever reason. It was always my impression (or my assumption) that it was mostly due to movie-star-prima-donna vanity. Some people are seriously serious about their hair, and I could see an actress pushing her hairdresser to please please please make her hair as flattering as possible, the definition of which of course is always subject to contemporary fashions. So in the 60s, for say a Roman epic, sure OK we’ll make little spit curls like on the statues, but let’s see how high a beehive we can get away with and still stay in the historical ballpark. Thus, looking at it later, when maybe beehives are way, way out of fashion, and women are wearing their hair very short and close, that beehivieness, no matter how subtle the hairdresser thought it was, will stick out like a sore thumb. Short story long, we see things in a contemporary context, and if women on the street are wearing beehives, half a beehive doesn’t seem like such a stretch. Until that context changes, and we look at an older movie with the current styles in mind. ---
**Author:** ![GilaB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@GilaB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GilaB)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/27 "2010-05-14T20:26:42Z")
I remember reading an article about painting forgeries, saying that if you look at old forgeries, what’s striking about them is how ‘of their time’ they look - eg, a Vermeer forgery from England in the late 19th century looks like a late 19th century English painting to us now, even though when it was new, it completely fooled people into thinking it was 17th century and Dutch. I think that to a large extent, hairstyles fall into the same category. Whatever we’re used to seeing now is, on some unconscious level, ‘normal hair,’ and so while we’d react poorly to a modern film that put women in beehives in the Old West, in the sixties, beehives might have been thought of as normal hair, not worth really noticing. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/28 "2010-05-14T20:37:06Z")
> [@NineToTheSky](#): > > But, if they’re going to overlook anything, it’ll be the hairstyles. Virtually any period drama (think Roman epics, for example) made in the 1950s will have the male actors with brylcreemed quiffs. I’m not sure what a “quiff” is, but I don’t think you saw any under the Hayes Code. 🙂 I agree with those who’ve said that modern hairstyles are “invisible” to a point where things like clothing are less so. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/29 "2010-05-14T21:16:04Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I’m not sure what a “quiff” is, but I don’t think you saw any under the Hayes Code. 🙂 I agree with those who’ve said that modern hairstyles are “invisible” to a point where things like clothing are less so. Yeah, I’d be afraid to google “quiff.” I think he meant “coif.” I just rewatched _The Lion in Winter_ and found it amazing how much Eleanor of Aquetain’s coif looked like a '50s movie star! ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/30 "2010-05-14T21:49:25Z")
I’ve always thought it was an actor’s thing. For the smaller parts it was “hey, I’ve just got a three-second walk-on on the Waltons; if I get a bowl haircut for that, I’ll blow the audition for the beach comedy I’m up for.” And on the other end of the scale, starlets had the power to promote their own brand, and would not have to wear a “what were they thinking?” old hairstyle. Notable exceptions that come to mind was [il-gattopardo](http://www.huqleberry.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/il-gattopardo-5-6-2009.jpg) and Holly Hunter in The Piano, displaying the fact that for most of the 19th Century, [women wore their hair up and parted in the middle](http://www.canvaz.com/ingres/ingres-001.jpg), tight to keep it as tangle-free and clean as possible in an era and climate when wet hair was dangerous to the wearer’s health; not as flips or shags or wedges. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/31 "2010-05-14T21:51:02Z")
No, he meant [quiff](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiff). ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/32 "2010-05-14T22:02:07Z")
Barbra Streisand’s costumes in Funny Girl were gorgeous, but her 60’s hair, makeup, and nails drove me to distraction. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/33 "2010-05-15T01:44:05Z")
I think it was **Ben Hur** that had Jean Simmons in a ponytail. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/34 "2010-05-15T02:47:47Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > I just rewatched _The Lion in Winter_ and found it amazing how much Eleanor of Aquetain’s coif looked like a '50s movie star! Me too, but I thought it **was** historically accurate. Her hair was almost totally covered in most of the scenes – under a wimple(?) – except for one scene where she was brushing her hair and she looked gorgeous. I interpreted that as adapting to a 20th century audience. We wouldn’t have believed she was beautiful unless we had at least one scene where she was beautiful by 20th century standards. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/35 "2010-05-15T03:08:53Z")
Hollywood still screws this up. The posters for the recent _Sherlock Holmes_ movie bugged the hell out of me because apparently none of the leads could be bothered to comb their damn hair. [This](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~san/patti10.jpg) is what a publicity photo of a Victorian concert singer looks like, for Og’s sake, not [this](http://www.dailystab.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/rachel-mcadams-sherlock-holmes-poster.jpg). Slatternly harlot. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/36 "2010-05-15T03:19:00Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > I think it was **Ben Hur** that had Jean Simmons in a ponytail. I don’t know exactly what kind of hair styles women had 2,000 years ago, but I’m pretty sure there have been ponytails since caveman days. ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/37 "2010-05-15T03:41:33Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > [This](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~san/patti10.jpg) is what a publicity photo of a Victorian concert singer looks like … but it’s from a painting of the star dressed as a character from an opera set in the mid-1800s (_La Traviata_). I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison to a 2010 promo image of McAdams dressed as Irene Adler circa 1890. Styles changed a lot in forty years. [This is Miss Patti](http://media.photobucket.com/image/adelina%20patti/TinaTheVA/Adelina_Patti_sopran.png) in a bit more contemporaneous dress/hairstyle – not sure of the date, but looks like 1870s. I don’t think she’s so very different from McAdams as Adler. [Here’s another one from 1895](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/128/370976685_3f1b37a49d.jpg). The thing is, Irene is supposed to be “real” in this promo shot; she’s not perfectly coiffed and posed, the way Miss Patti is in these photos. So of course her hair is going to be a bit more touseled, less rigidly styled. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/38 "2010-05-15T04:01:47Z")
Actually, **choie** , I was initially going to use the first Patti link that you found for the comparison in my previous post. I don’t agree with you **at all** that Patti’s hairstyle there is “not that different” from Rachel McAdams’s hair in the Irene Adler role. That Patti hairdo has got a bit more curl in it than the one in the pic I posted, but it’s still **much** more groomed than the rat’s nest McAdams is sporting. It’s clearly an actual combed coiffure, not an artfully tangled mess. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/39 "2010-05-15T04:16:58Z")
The audience does care and the Hollywood producers care about what the audience thinks. The audience want their movie stars to be attractive by today’s standards of attractiveness. So they ain’t putting ugly hair on the movie stars. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406/40 "2010-05-15T15:24:05Z")
And what about the dazzlingly white, straight, even, full set of teeth on everybody? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/period-films-and-hair/539406.md?page=3)