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Hirsute Handlebars: Bare-knuckle heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan wore a huge handlebar mustache during his reign (1882-89), but it's almost impossible to find facial hair on athletes today.
Remember When
Beard or no beard, that's the question
By Cookie Curci-Wright
Throughout history many of our great philosophers, leaders and writers have sported well-groomed beards. The Greek philosopher Plato (427-347) had one, so did William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
Even Shakespeare's Hamlet has been portrayed with and without whiskers. However, when Sir Alec Guinness played Hamlet with a mustache and beard, his whiskered face was rejected by traditionalists who preferred their Hamlet clean-shaven.
The wearing of a beard, in earlier times, was an aristocratic fashion statement. The sight of a man with a well-groomed beard evoked respect and indicated a lofty family lineage.
In 1861, Abraham Lincoln was the first of our presidents to bring the beard to the White House. Up until that time, all the presidents were beardless.
When Abraham Lincoln was preparing to run for office he received a letter from a young girl who suggested he would look better if he grew some whiskers. Lincoln took the young lady's advice and grew a full beard. He won the election and surrounded himself with cabinet members and generals who also had faces full of whiskers.
Beards remained a fixture in the White House until 1893, when the smooth shaven Woodrow Wilson defeated the mustachioed Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in 1912. The beard was gone from the White House, perhaps forever.
In 1948, a mustachioed Thomas Dewey tried to bring it back, but lost his bid for the presidency to the beardless Harry Truman. The public rejected facial hair on their politicians. Soon after, the mustache faded completely from the political scene.
The mustache and beard disappeared from politics, but it was alive and well in Hollywood. Female fans adored a man with hair on his face and it soon became a Hollywood trademark among leading men. The debonair beard gave the young actor a look of distinction and continental charm. Who could forget the panache exuded by the mustachioed William Powell in his role for the Thin Man, or the dashing goatee worn by swashbuckler Errol Flynn.
Other mustachioed leading men from Hollywood's golden era include Douglas Fairbanks, Don Ameche, David Niven and Clark Gable. Character actors frequently wore beards to enhance their roles, among them Monte Woolly, Burl Ives, Walter Slezack and Edmond Gwynn. In the world of modern music Mitch Miller, Skitch Henderson and Al Hirt wore stylish goatees to look musically "hip."
The great bare-knuckled boxing champion John L. Sullivan (1858-1918) wore a huge handlebar mustache during his reign as heavyweight champion (1882-89). However, finding hair on the faces of today's athletes is harder to find then teeth on a hen.
Remember the man from TV's prevalent Schweppes tonic commercials? His beard was a regular fixture on America's black-and-white TV sets during the '60s. Also popular was the beard of Mitch Miller, the popular maestro of Sing-along with Mitch. The year was 1969, the "age of Aquarius," when John Lennon married Yoko Ono, and the Fifth Dimension recorded the smash hit" Let the Sunshine In" and "Aquarius."
It was one of several tunes to climb the charts from the successful musical Hair. The musical's eponymous tribute to long, beautiful locks and hairy faces in "Good Morning Starshine" was among the other popular hits of the day.
The following year Broadway hosted the influential musicals Jesus Christ Super Star and Godspell, which encouraged America's teens to wear long hair, beards and flowers in their hair.
Unkempt, unclean and unruly, the flower children had brought hair back into fashion with a vengeance--much to the chagrin of America's bewildered parents.
But as the '70s progressed, long hair and the anti-establishment philosophy it evoked began to wane.
King Camp Gillette invented the safety razor in 1895. The traveling salesman was on a routine sales trip when he wanted to get a smoother, safer shave then he'd been getting from his "cutthroat" straight razor that had to be honed everyday for sharpness.
He conceived the safety razor and from 1903 to 1936, his invention did its best to promote clean-shaven faces in the country. During that time, 6 million blades were sold. Aerosol shaving cream was invented in the '50s and the electric razor in the '30s--all of which did their best to contribute to the demise of the beard.
Today, the sight of a beard or mustache, even in the movies, is getting rarer.
Once worn by kings, philosophers and educators, the beard has lost favor among the world's trendsetters.
No politician worth his salt sports a beard these days, and I can't remember the last time I saw a sports figure wearing whiskers. In fact, the last celebrities I saw wearing beards were Charles Manson and the Unabomber.
The mustache and beard have become associated with shiftlessness, nonconformity and the demonic.
Recently, my husband, Dan, announced he was going to stop shaving and grow a beard. I couldn't help but bristle. I resented the hairy stubble that began showing on his face and told him so at every opportunity.
About four months into growing his fledgling beard my husband announced he was giving in to my pleas--he was going to shave off his beard. I breathed a sigh of relief.
As he shaved, my husband woefully listed his reasons for removing his beard: he didn't like making waves, standing out in a crowd, or the sense of separation it gave him from his clean-shaven friends and, most of all, he didn't like the fact that I didn't like it.
I began to feel a pang of remorse sweep over me. Perhaps I could have been more supportive of his desire to grow a beard; after all it's a man thing, his right of passage. Had I, and all of his friends and family, put the damper on that rare, wonderful thing called self expression?
I felt guilty--until a moment later when my husband looked into the mirror, stroked his smoothly shaven chin with smug contentment, grinned and said, "Tell you the truth, honey, I couldn't stand the darn thing!"
Contact Cookie Curci-Wright at cookie-wright@mymailstation.com.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
