MovieChat Forums > Shenandoah (1965) Discussion > No Beards?

No Beards?

posted 16 years ago by nickryder9
8 replies | jump to latest

My biggest knock on the movie is that there were no beards. Back then, almost everyone had a beard. I've seen enough Civil War photos that I never really felt transported in time. But I did like it.

[–] gcassidy2 15 years ago

True, they were common in the 19th century, but not in the 1950's or early 60's.
Hollywood in the post war era was very strong on using current fashion trends in its period pieces.

[–] bastasch8647 14 years ago

Needed more beards, but at least by the end James Stewart had grown some stubble; McClure had a beard; George Kennedy had a beard; the Union soldier who abducts Boy had a beard.

[–] MystMoonstruck 14 years ago

All I can say is that in nearly every image I've seen in our family albums and elsewhere, beards and especially mustaches were not as common as you claim. All of the men in our family on both sides were clean-shaven~not a single beard, mustache or even long sideburns in any of the pictures. My father did grow a beard in the Fifties for, I believe, our city's sesquicentennial. Otherwise...

Now, I know there had to be many other families who also preferred the clean-shaven look. It's never been a must to have "foliage". In many images of the time period, there generally is at least one person sporting no facial hair. I know, I just looked at dozens of them again, just to check my memory.

Thus, it never bothers me when watching Civil War films when I see smooth faces.

~~MystMoonstruck~~

[–] ridgerunner72160-609-362419 11 years ago

My great great grandfather was a Confederate officer in Gen. Forrest's cavalry. I've seen a picture of him. He had a mustache, but no beard.

[–] agspiess 9 years ago

Sam grew a beard while he was a POW. He shaved in the next scene.

[–] magolding-94772 8 years ago

Famed union general Francis Barlow looked sort of out of uniform because he never had a beard.

Confederate Major John Pelham lived to be 24 but it is said that he never needed to shave. My father apparently couldn't grow any facial hair until my childhood, about a decade after he was a soldier.

Many soldiers that were clean shaven at the start of the war gave up shaving and had beards and moustaches when they returned home - some would say that was yet another bad effect of the war.

Of course a notable percentage of Civil War soldiers are beardless in photographs - about 5 to 20 percent of soldiers in a typical unit lied about their ages and enlisted aged fifteen to seventeen, and many of them were beardless. And of course a large percentage of the drummers were boys.

[–] lc3007 7 years ago

On that subject, why did Tarzan never have a beard?

[–] ncdwbmk6 (77) 3 years ago

I found this on a reddit board. I can't vouch for its accuracy.

Was not hair commencing to grow upon his face? All the apes had hair upon theirs but the black men were entirely hairless, with very few exceptions.

True, he had seen pictures in his books of men with great masses of hair upon lip and cheek and chin, but, nevertheless, Tarzan was afraid. Almost daily he whetted his keen knife and scraped and whittled at his young beard to eradicate this degrading emblem of apehood.

And so he learned to shave–rudely and painfully, it is true–but, nevertheless, effectively.

Edgar Rice Burrows "Tarzan of the Apes"