It looks awful now but this movie shows 1955. People overlook when this film was made, short severe flat hair was in style. Mamie Eisenhower was a trend-setter. Eat your heart out Jackie.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZEpQaF-8Gco/T2ygJxygoZI/AAAAAAAAE28/U95_pXKc izQ/s400/mamie5.jpg
Mamie Eisenhower? Yipes! I guess it's better than the Ike look, but Thank God for the Kennedys...
I think both hairdresser and costumier were having a good laugh in this film trying to outdo each other -- or wreck everyone's careers. Bad enough to see Brian Keith with his usual way-overdone Shirley Temple curly-mop sprouting on top of his head. I found a clip on Youtube with Eddie Robinson -- whose scalp had been funnily fluffed-up too to have Big Hair at age 63... In this scene with Ginger looked ridiculous even up against her deliberately dowdied-down plain sister -- and the hair was the least of it: Fannie-Mae gingham dress with a Little Lord Fauntleroy tie...
In her autobiography, Ginger said that with the exception of studio bleaching her hair when she first went to Hollywood in the 30s, she made all the decisions about her hair styles and color. She states she cut her hair short, against the ardent advice of her hairdresser, and then almost immediately regretted it.
shareI'm watching it now after several years. Ginger is great, but the hair is not. The 50s had something called The Italian Boy haircut, but this style did not suit everyone. Anyway, the movie is good and I am finally getting a chance to see the end which I never had the good fortune to see !
shareI do know that 50s short hair was thought to be more modern at the time than those floozy long curls and pushed forward bangs of the 40s. They hadn´t come up with teasing yet, that was in the 60s. And everyone made fun of Mamie since she had never given up her 1916 look -- that was the year she had married Ike, who always had neglected her. Like many officers´wives she took to drinking.
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