"Side part *meant* Veronica Lake" — I write over at Facebook, where my son John — a propos of his "101 Years of Movies" blog — posts a lovely photograph of Veronica Lake (from "Sullivan's Travels," his second favorite movies of 1941).
John responds:
A scene in Billy Wilder’s breakthrough movie, “The Major and the Minor” (1942), starring Ginger Rogers, pokes fun at Lake’s famous hairdo: “There’s an epidemic in [this] school…. They all think they’re Veronica Lake.”
Amazing! Look:
To quote myself again (with an added link, to Glamour):
That was way back in 1942. That was still going on in the 1960s and beyond.
These days, there's a big fad for parting the hair straight down the middle. We had that in the 1960s too. But hysteria over a side part is really very funny. Lake didn't pull the hair back, though. That was a big thing about it. She let it fall over her eyes.
It was the hair in your eye/eyes that drove people crazy. I got the impression they thought it was one thing for one actress — Veronica Lake — to perform that insanity in movies, but no one else can try that — certainly not in real life, where you've got to watch where you're going — and if you do, we're going to discipline you by calling you out for copying Lake. Like this was a hairstyle for one person and one person alone.
I think it was just over-the-top policing of young women. And I'm saying that as someone who, in junior high, was sent to the vice principal's office for having excessively long bangs. I mean, what are eyebrows for if not to tell you here is the line that must not be crossed?
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8 comments:
A reader writes:
"What i remember about Veronica Lake is her Peek-a-Boo bangs were a problem in WW II. Supposedly she was asked to desist in wearing them as copycat war-workers were getting their scalps ripped off when they got caught in machinery. I know I read that in a book, perhaps Hollywood Goes to War?"
John's Facebook page shows a photo of her that he captions: "This is Veronica Lake in a government PSA during World War II, to warn women not to let their long hair get caught in machinery."
I add: "I'm trying to find a poem I read long ago by a poet/lawyer who took stories from real legal cases. There was one about a young girl who got her hair caught in machinery. It's horrifying."
Joe writes:
I was watching dome film noir on TCM a few months ago and she was playing a bad girl (as usual). There are/were a lot of beautiful women in Hollywood, but she stood out. Call it the 'it' factor, but she could really hold a scene...
I did some minor research and found that she had a very interesting, sad, and short life:
https://www.jacksonville.com/news/20190221/veronica-lake-in-rare-photos-how-tragic-career-of-hollywood-icon-ended-in-florida
She died at 50 but looked decades older. But in her prime? Hot as hell...
Ken B writes:
"Your son has good taste. Sullivan’s Travels has what I think is the single best scene in movies. I won’t spoil it by describing it. Anyone who has watched the movie knows which one I mean."
Tom Tildrum writes:
"You mention "over-the-top policing of young women," but I suspect that the acceptable range of hairstyle for young men in this era was even narrower. To the extent it may have seemed that women were more often the subject of enforcement, I would venture that the social stigma against non-standard hair on men was so strong that the issue would rarely rise to involve school discipline."
Yes, I remember the rule for the boys was that the hair couldn't touch the collar. I had a big crush on a boy who, when confronted with this rule, cut the collar off his shirt.
A reader named John supplies the names for the story of the woman who got her hair caught in machinery and the poet I was talking about:
"The first commenter was referring to Amelia Kirwan. Your link to Charles Reznikoff's "Amelia": A case study by Richard Hyland offers up the gory details."
So I was able to google and find the story: here.
The poem:
Amelia was just fourteen and out of the orphan asylum; at her first job—
in the bindery, and yes sir, yes ma’am, oh, so anxious to please.
She stood at the table, her blonde hair hanging about her shoulders,
“knocking up” for Mary and Sadie, the stitchers
(“knocking up” is counting books and stacking them in piles to be taken away).
There were twenty wire-stitching machines on the floor, worked by a
shaft that ran under the table;
as each stitcher put her work through the machine,
she threw it on the table. The books were piling up fast
and some slid to the floor
(the forelady had said, Keep the work off the floor!);
and Amelia stooped to pick up the books—
three or four had fallen under the table
between the boards nailed against the legs.
She felt her hair caught gently;
put her hand up and felt the shaft going round and round
and her hair caught on it, wound and winding around it,
until the scalp was jerked from her head,
and the blood was coming down all over her face and waist.
Ted writes:
I'm a huge Preston Sturges fan, and I would argue that "Sullivan's Travels" is actually the best film of 1941 (at least in some ways, it beats "Citizen Kane"). It's a brilliantly entertaining mix of comedy and melodrama, with an overriding philosophy that I fully agree with. As I'm sure you know, Joel McCrea plays a Hollywood comedy director who decides to make a serious drama about the plight of the downtrodden (with the plummy title "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" -- which the Coen brothers later filched for their movie with similar elements). He leaves his Hollywood bubble and goes on a journey to see the lives of "real" people -- hilariously trailed by worried members of his wacky film company -- and winds up getting in genuine trouble. He's imprisoned in a labor camp, where he sees that the only moment of pleasure the inmates get all day is when they're laughing at an old Disney cartoon. And at that point, he realizes that he can do a lot more to make the world a better place by making good comedies than "important" dramas. Key quote: "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh.... It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan."
Oh, and Veronica Lake really is spectacular.
Harsh Pencil writes:
I haven’t much missed the commenting and like your new system (and think you were very wise for implementing it), but this particular post makes me miss the give and take of open comments. In particular, Ken B wrote "Your son has good taste. Sullivan’s Travels has what I think is the single best scene in movies. I won’t spoil it by describing it. Anyone who has watched the movie knows which one I mean”.
I’ve seen the movie probably five or six times and have many “favorite” scenes. Does he mean the butler’s speech?
William writes:
On the topic of parts caught in machinery - my Dad worked for IBM in the
'60s and '70s. In those days the company had a white-shirt-and-tie dress
code; engineers (like my Dad) who worked directly with the mainframes
were required to wear clip-on ties only. For the same reason.
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