What Happened....

[LizzieMaine]

That's a Dartmouth College tie. Our felons always go to the right schools.

 

[Stearmen]

I wonder if the first women who got their hair bobbed or wore trousers felt the same way about the masses who later followed the style. It depends on whether they adopted those styles for comfort and convenience or as a political manifesto.

I can't speak to the bobbed hair, but I know what happened to the Van Buren sisters when they became the first women to cross the U.S. on motorcycles. They were arrested on numerous occasions for wearing trousers! Incidentally, this is the 100th anniversary of their historic ride. There are a few events planned here, to commemorate their ride up Pikes Peak.

 

[Paisley]

There's a Van Buren Street in Colorado Springs. I wonder if it was named in their honor.

 

[BlueTrain]

Sometimes in movies made in the 1940s, you will see a lady, typically older and matronly, wearing her hair in a style that was popular 20 years earlier, bobbed with permanent waves. We do the same thing ourselves sometimes. There are more customs, styles and conventions about hair, both male and female, than anything else, I believe. There are rules, sometimes codified into law about hair. It must be covered; it must be uncovered; it must be long; it must be short and so on. The fads are the most difficult part. If your hair is curly or wavy, the current style is sure to be straight. If your hair is straight, you wish it were wavy or curly.

 

[2jakes]

^^^^
One place I recall about rules was Luby’s Cafeteria.
The policy for it’s employees with long hair (men or women) required
a hairnet.


With regards to women’s hairdo in movies.
The film “Dr. Zhivago” (1965) .
As much as I enjoy this movie, Lara’s hair (Julie Christie)
will always remind me of the sixties.

Another favorite movie.
Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
Movie Bonnie:

Revealing neckline & shorter dress.

Real Bonnie (1930s)

Neckline was high & dress length, long.
Even for an outlaw babe, she conformed
to the rules of the times.

 

[Paisley]

Both the hair and the makeup in Dr. Zhivago were straight out of the sixties. Same on the TV show The Untouchables.

 

[2jakes]

On a movie set at Universal during the 70s.
Sylvester Stallone was sitting having his make-up done .
It was a period 40s film.
I noticed that the length of his hair was not typical 40s.

I mentioned this to the hair dresser.
She replied, “ Sweetie, you go right ahead & tell him if you like!”.

I didn’t.

The writers included a line in the movie that they felt would justify the long doo.
“Hey ya bum,...get a haircut!”

 

[Fading Fast]

Both the hair and the makeup in Dr. Zhivago were straight out of the sixties. Same on the TV show The Untouchables.

And the western "The Big Valley -" the West was apparently won with 1960s clothes and hairstyle.

Julie Christie might not have been coiffed like a pre-and-just-post revolutionary Russian, but she shined in the movie both in pulchritude and acting chops.

In a quirky way, I think that is her movie - she holds it all together. Zhivago, Pasha and Komarovsky are the three sides of the Lara love triangle with quite-lovely Tonya suffering for attention. The entire revolution is just a backdrop for an old-fashion love triangle story - not really, but it can be seen that way.

 

[LizzieMaine]

To say nothing of "Star Trek," where velour miniskirts and go-go boots will be all the rage in the 23rd Century.

 

[Fading Fast]

To say nothing of "Star Trek," where velour miniskirts and go-go boots will be all the rage in the 23rd Century.

And bee-hive hairdos which I believe Kirk's first female yeoman had.

 

[2jakes]

If there was a “like” button for ladies hair on this forum, I would give it to LizzieMaine.


And to Fading Fast and that slice of pizza!

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Almost from the first movies, women's and men's hairstyles and makeup are from the time they were made, not when they were depicted. When men had to have long hair, it was usually arranged so that they looked short-haired from in front, long-haired only in profile. In the 19th century respectable women weren't supposed to wear makeup, but they sure do in movies and tv shows. Even when clothes are authentically styled they're tailored to fit much better than they did at the time. Look at full-length photos of Lincoln. He's the president of the U.S. and he looks like he gets his clothes from a bin at Goodwill. Nothing fits right, everything is baggy and wrinkled. Can't have a movie star looking like that, though.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Imagine what the stitch-counters would do to poor Abe at a reenactment. "Hmph, FARBraham Lincoln!"

 

[2jakes]

This man wearing his A-2 leather jacket would most certainly get my vote.
Honest.

 

[BlueTrain]

The suit Lincoln was wearing when he was assassinated came from Brooks Brothers.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing with visualizations of historical characters is that for people who pre-date motion pictures, all we have are either paintings or frozen, serious photographs. And since that's the image we have of them, that's the image that gets presented to us in dramatic visualizations -- Washington is always grave and serious and dignified, Lincoln always has that mournful "posing for a five dollar bill" expression. "The Founding Fathers," with the exception maybe of Benjamin Franklin, all come across as a bunch of joyless bewigged mummies who exist only in posed tableaux. The real Benjamin Franklin, as anyone who ever read his autobiography can well attest, was not a man for taking himself too seriously, unlike the moldy old pursed-lipped fathead who gazes out disapprovingly from the hundred dollar bill.

And yet Washington, real history tells us, loved to dance and loved to swear, sometimes at the same time. And Lincoln was renowned as a knee-slapping country joke-teller who'd probably fit right in on "Hee Haw." Those are the historical characters I'd like to see, not the "respectful" animated waxworks we usually get.

 

[ChiTownScion]

"Hmph, FARBraham Lincoln!"

Saw him at an Indiana event about 20 years ago: he stood about 5'4", trouser legs rising high enough to see his white socks, and wearing a wrist watch.

I do have a friend who does an outstanding Lincoln presentation, however. His wife does an excellent Mary Todd Lincoln as well, at both reenactments and in a one woman dramatic production which she wrote: together they're known as "Abe & the Babe." His mini- van has a vanity plate that reads, "IM ABE," and one of his better known pre-event capers is to pull up at a McDonald's drive thru for breakfast fully dressed in frock coat, cravat, and dress shirt... and then hand the still half asleep cashier a $5 bill and remark, "I think that they got my likeness down quite well, don't you?"

 

[Stearmen]

There's a Van Buren Street in Colorado Springs. I wonder if it was named in their honor.

No, it's named for old Martin! That's why there's a Jackson and Harrison street on either side of him. Oddly, it appears that the street naming ended with Buchanan, no Lincoln, not sure why?

 

[Fading Fast]

The thing with visualizations of historical characters is that for people who pre-date motion pictures, all we have are either paintings or frozen, serious photographs. And since that's the image we have of them, that's the image that gets presented to us in dramatic visualizations -- Washington is always grave and serious and dignified, Lincoln always has that mournful "posing for a five dollar bill" expression. "The Founding Fathers," with the exception maybe of Benjamin Franklin, all come across as a bunch of joyless bewigged mummies who exist only in posed tableaux. The real Benjamin Franklin, as anyone who ever read his autobiography can well attest, was not a man for taking himself too seriously, unlike the moldy old pursed-lipped fathead who gazes out disapprovingly from the hundred dollar bill.

And yet Washington, real history tells us, loved to dance and loved to swear, sometimes at the same time. And Lincoln was renowned as a knee-slapping country joke-teller who'd probably fit right in on "Hee Haw." Those are the historical characters I'd like to see, not the "respectful" animated waxworks we usually get.

It was about 15 or so years ago when The History Channel ran its first WWII in color shows - they had acquired / found / whatever - a large amount of color film from WWII - both war and home-front - and showed them in a series of "specials."

Had I seen some color film and pictures from WWII before - a few, yes. Had my father, grandmother and their contemporaries told me enough that I knew - in theory - that the era wasn't all gritty, serious and grey - of course. But I didn't really, truly feel it until I saw all those color films. The clothes popped along with the faces, the cars, the sky, the sun and the era felt more real, more alive, more relatable on an emotional level.

So to your and others' point, our entire feel for 19th Century and earlier history would be impacted if we really saw what went on / how it looked / could feel the "lighter" side / the day-to-day side (and not just formal pictures or portraits where - as was the custom - everyone wore their best clothes and put on solemn faces - in part to hide their horrible teeth).

Even when I read biographies of Lincoln or others and learn that they had a regular-guy side to their personalities and responded to many things similar to the way we would - the shorthand in my head doesn't change as much as it should and I still see Lincoln and others as being more serious owing to the few images we have of them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It makes you wonder. Did John Adams ever, when nobody was looking, slip a tack into Thomas Jefferson's chair? Did James Madison ever dunk Alexander Hamilton's pigtail in the inkwell? Did Sam Adams get roaring drunk after hours and lead the boys in a rousing rendition of "To Anacreon In Heaven?"

(Which reminds me -- when Sam Adams Beer first came out in the '80s, the effigy on the label showed Sam with a stern, glowering expression. A few years later, the portrait changed to Sam with a goofy frat-boy smile on his face, holding up a stein like somebody's just paid for the next round. It was only then that sales took off. The Boys understand the problem.)

FDR, on the other hand, had a documented fondness for practical jokes, and especially enjoyed making prank phone calls to members of his staff or to reporters. On one occasion he heard a group of Washington reporters singing on a radio program, and, disguising his voice, he called the station and offered the quartet a job as featured stars on a program to be sponsored by a laxative manufacturer.