11 thoughts on “How Contemporary Hairstyles Affect Historical Costume Movies: The 1930s – Part 2

    1. Hair and eyebrows (which, I guess, are also hair). One could write a scholarly thesis about the history of fashionable eyebrows.

      1. The eyebrows always bother me, too– especially ’20s- and ’30s-set movies with contemporary eyebrows. Totally ruins it for me.

  1. Green Dolphin Street cones to mind. And of course Norma Shearer’s Marie Antoinette and Leslie Howard’s Scarlet Pimpernel. And would Maureen OHara’s Hunchback of Notre Dame count too?

    But why do they try to get a somewhat correct clothing look and foul up the hair?
    There are references for the 1860s on up in Godeys, portraits and photos.

  2. I love this post and the previous entry, and I’m looking forward to future installments!

    You definitely know more about this subject than I do, but one part of this kind of surprised me:

    “Oh, Little Women (1933). […] Jo’s short, curly bangs just did not exist in the 19th century, which was all about loooong hair (see the real Louisa May Alcott, center bottom). […] Amy — yes, young girls did go for hanging ringlets in the period. But that forehead fringe is totally modern.”

    I may be misinterpreting what Alcott was trying to describe, but there’s a scene in chapter 3 where Meg and Jo are getting done up for a New Year’s Eve dance, and Jo curls Meg’s hair with a heated curling iron to give her a “cloud of little ringlets” over her forehead.

    Unfortunately, Jo did it wrong, and the little paper-wrapped curls come off, and leave Meg with an “uneven frizzle on her forehead”, which Amy (who has naturally curly hair) tells her can be fixed: “Just frizzle it, and tie your ribbon so the ends come on your forehead a bit, and it will look like the last fashion. I’ve seen many girls do it so.”

    I always envisioned the “cloud of little ringlets” Jo was trying to achieve as pretty much the same as what Hepburn has over the forehead. I’m not sure what Amy was proposing as a remedy, but it seems to imply that the “last” (latest?) fashion involved short frizzled bangs. (Of course, Amy was an “affected, niminy-piminy chit”.)

  3. I was about to say something about how GWTW moved partings to the middle and that was because of the fashion going into the 40s but do we think it fair to suggest that the movie had a big influence on hair styles as much as the time influenced the movie?

  4. I love this article. TV shows make me crazy using contemporary hairstyles in westerns! I really enjoy the comparison illustrations. Thank you for your work.

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