The Fall of the Moustache

[GoetzManor]

As I sit back, sipping my coffee before my shift starts, the image of the mustachio-d man comes to mind. Where has that man gone? It certainly has been a while since I've seen a younger gentleman sporting only the 'stache.

When did the moustache fall out of favor? Was it with the election of JFK and his baby smooth face? Perhaps the hippies killed it off? It seemed to have had a slight resurgence in the 70s, but faded again after that.

It seems now that anybody in their younger years sporting only a moustache is seen as creepy. How did the moustache go from facial domination in the early twentieth century to being regarded as a creepy characteristic of a person?

 

[jswindle2]

Myself, being a 40 + male with a handlebar moustache, I'm optimistic that the fall of the beard will be the rise of the 'stache. Judging by the way the moustache became popular in the 19th century, I'm hopeful that this is how it will become part of a man's style once again. Post Civil War, the beard was fairly common facial hair for men, however by the 1880's the lip broom was more prevalent. We can only hope that an influential celebrity or member of society grows a bushy handlebar or finely groomed pencil thin William Powell style 'stache.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Perhaps no one did more to kill the credibility of the moustache in America than Thomas E. Dewey, New York governor and unsuccessful Republican presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948. Dewey was a short, bristly man with a bristly little moustache that caused his critics to mock him as "The Little Man On The Wedding Cake." After his loss in the 1948 election, he, and his moustache became very unpopular, and he remains the last moustache-wearing man to run for office on a national ticket in the US.

Personally, I think he looks less like The Little Man On The Wedding Cake than Moe Pep, of the Pep Boys.

 

[Fading Fast]

It didn't help that the mustache became associated with disco and gay men in the '70s. I worked with a guy in the '90s who wore one and he constantly got comments about looking like one of the Village People - he eventually shaved it out of exhaustion.

All this stuff has long cycles, in part, because whatever negative or positive association something has needs a generation or two to go by before it's forgotten (although, I think we have a century or maybe two before Hitler's 'stache has a bat's chance in hell of coming back).

At 52, I'm still waiting for my facial hair to get thick enough for me to grow either an adult mustache or beard before trying (sigh), but heck, it's all still on top of my head, so I'm not going to complain too much. I think some of the film stars of the GE looked great with their neatly trimmed mustache (like, as you mentioned, Powell or Gable or Flynn), but I've never been a fan of the big, thick ones as I think it throws the proportions of the face's bone structure off.

Hang in there, beards seem to be having or have just had their moment, my guess, 'staches will have their day in the next decade or less.

 

[green papaya]

I see a lot of young guys with a shaved head and a goatee with mustache trying to get the tough guy look.

the business men's cut or Clark Gable look isnt too common these days

I see a lot more shaved heads

 

[Tiki Tom]

Hang in there! What goes around, comes around. The Magnum P.I. Mustache will come into fashion again one of these days.

Fading Fast: I have a full head of hair too. Originally blonde and whispy; now mostly grey and whispy. At work I have a colleague who can grow a full beard in a week,but he is fast going bald. I started growing a beard and it looked like hell. It took over a year and a half for my thin and whispy blondish-grey beard to grow in, but now it looks pretty decent, if I may say so myself. Have patience. The advantage of being over 50 is that I never panic and that I take my time with things. The best of luck to you!

 

[DesertDan]

I have worn a moustache ever since I have been able to grow one and always will.
Maybe it is where I live but facial hair is not uncommon around here.

 

[Bigger Don]

As I sit back, sipping my coffee before my shift starts, the image of the mustachio-d man comes to mind. Where has that man gone? It certainly has been a while since I've seen a younger gentleman sporting only the 'stache.

When did the moustache fall out of favor? Was it with the election of JFK and his baby smooth face? Perhaps the hippies killed it off? It seemed to have had a slight resurgence in the 70s, but faded again after that.

It seems now that anybody in their younger years sporting only a moustache is seen as creepy. How did the moustache go from facial domination in the early twentieth century to being regarded as a creepy characteristic of a person?

I first grew my moustache four decades ago. It's been shaved off twice since, once by the wife of an NCO while I was in USAF tech school. The second time we were camping and I tried trimming it with a disposable razor but botched the job badly enough I just took it all off. My wife didn't notice for 24 hours.

I've grew it back immediately in both cases.

 

[Bigger Don]

or finely groomed pencil thin William Powell style 'stache.

Ah, now that's a moustache, also sung about by a man with a bushier moustache.

 

[MisterCairo]

The Magnum P.I. Mustache will come into fashion again one of these days.

Yes, as part of the end days...

 

[Hurricane Jack]

Maybe it is where I live but facial hair is not uncommon around here.

Bingo! And why worry about what other people are doing or what they think about what you are doing? If I decided I wanted to grow my hair into a mullet I'd grow a mullet with no regard as to what is in style now.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Chester Conklin approves.

As does Billy Bevan.

And Snub Pollard.

 

[Fading Fast]

Hang in there! What goes around, comes around. The Magnum P.I. Mustache will come into fashion again one of these days.

Fading Fast: I have a full head of hair too. Originally blonde and whispy; now mostly grey and whispy. At work I have a colleague who can grow a full beard in a week,but he is fast going bald. I started growing a beard and it looked like hell. It took over a year and a half for my thin and whispy blondish-grey beard to grow in, but now it looks pretty decent, if I may say so myself. Have patience. The advantage of being over 50 is that I never panic and that I take my time with things. The best of luck to you!

I appreciate the encouragement, but Shakespeare was right: to thy own self be true.

I have looked boyish my entire life and I don't mean that in a complimentary or derogatory way, it's just a fact. Some men look very manly, some in the middle and some look like boys their entire life (that's me).

I think God or Darwin said this boy would look pathetically like he was trying to look like a man if we let him grow facial hair; hence, let's do him a favor and not give him that option. The good news is I can wear jeans, sneakers and a sweatshirt and not look like a middle-aged guy trying to hang onto his youth; the bad news is I can't intimidate butterflies or ladybugs with my presence.

I joke a lot, but I sincerely couldn't care less about not being able to grow much facial hair (but am glad it is still full on top, nobody wants to see a balding boy-man).

 

[Doctor Strange]

You know, I wish they'd gone with Doctor Strange's original look for the new film (which I'm seeing today!!!) He had your standard Gable/Colman/Fairbanks Jr. pencil moustache for many years, and was only switched to the freaky goatee fairly recently. More proof that moustaches are out!



Me, I've been continuously bearded since 1973. My first attempt a year earlier:



(My mom actually filled it in a bit with some retouching!)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Most famous moustache of the Era (other than Hitler, Chaplin, and Stalin of course) in all its glory.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Me, I've been continuously bearded since 1973. My first attempt a year earlier:

View attachment 59536

(My mom actually filled it in a bit with some retouching!)

A definite "Young Lionel Atwill" thing going on there.

 

[Fading Fast]

You know, I wish they'd gone with Doctor Strange's original look for the new film (which I'm seeing today!!!) He had your standard Gable/Colman/Fairbanks Jr. pencil moustache for many years, and was only switched to the freaky goatee fairly recently. More proof that moustaches are out!

View attachment 59463

Me, I've been continuously bearded since 1973. My first attempt a year earlier:

View attachment 59536

(My mom actually filled it in a bit with some retouching!)

If you had just posted the picture and said "guess who -" I would have been racking my brains to remember which '30s movie star you were / which role your were "done up" for. Even the background has a '30s Hollywood vibe.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I wasn't trying to "be" anybody, just fooling around in my parents' photo studio, experimenting with dramatic portrait lighting. And it was just a plain white seamless paper background: the sunburst comes from a "special effect screen" - a transparent piece of film with just the sunburst pattern that I overlaid on the negative in the enlarger when making the print. Another experiment.

My dad was the one who had studied at the NYC School of Modern Photography in the forties, and he could really do old-school dramatic lighting a la theatrical and movie portraits. Some of his awesome forties/fifties-era portraits:



By the time my memories kick in around 1960, we had stopped doing portrait work (apart from the occasional publicity photo for friends and favored customers) and become primarily a commercial studio, doing product shots, ID photos, making copies and retouched clean-ups of battered old family pictures, custom developing/printing for some local newspapers and officials, and lots of graphic arts work for printers and commercial artists (litho negatives and color separations for printing plates, resizing and manipulating type, dropping the cut marks out of mechanicals, etc.) Of course, modern digital image processing has made most of this kind of stuff obsolete - already arcane, ancient history. (Sob!)

 

[Trenchfriend]

I would really wonder, if the mustache would come back in old Germany. The "US-motorpatrol cop with mustache-cliché" or Goose from TopGun comes to our mind, here and that probably killed the mustache more or less.

 

[jswindle2]

I think it will have to be the handlebar or some other long style that will make the come back stick. I know I said it in my other post but that's how it took hold in the 1800's. The long beard is the cool thing now just as it was in the mid 19th century. Then gradually morphed into the long moustache (handlebar or walrus for some) until by the 1930's the pencil thin was the last vestiges of a popular style. It helped that the British army made the 'stache a required piece of kit from 1860 to 1916 until the gas mask introduction in the Great War forced any remaining facial hair to be a small tight moustache. As we all know history often repeats itself. If you're interested in see modern men with lip hair that does not look sleazy check out http://www.handlebarclubforum.org/index.php