Women from the classic era of Hollywood who NEVER had short hair?

Katharine Hepburn?

Veronica Lake

Rita!!

Not too many

Short hair seems high maintenance and not very versatile for women. I don't understand why it was so popular in the Golden age of Hollywood.

Even Veronica had a short waved bob in SLATTERY"S HURRICANE (49). By the late 40s, long hair was unfash.

Rita had a "Fifties Butch" cut in PAL JOEY (57).

Why was short hair so in style for women during the golden age of Hollywood? Anyone know?

What do you consider "short," OP?

IIRC, this is about as short as Bacall ever had.

R3, Rita in Lady From Shanghai.

You have to go niche…Maria Montez, Lupe Velez…maybe Dorothy Lamour, maybe Yvonne DeCarlo.

R8, golden age actresses usually were stunningly beautiful. Shorter hair showcased their faces, and made them look more modern and dynamic.

When did long hair on women first go out of style and when did short hair on women first become in style?

More women back then had short hair, whether they were movie stars or not. Today, women want to look youthful so they stick with long Barbie doll hair

R13, short hair was in vogue in the 20s and through most of the 30s. By the late 30s, long hair was in. By the 50s, short hair had come back in fashion

I don't think Lauren Bacall ever even once in her entire life had short hair before.

R16, she had Bob length hair for awhile

Ginger...

R17, when did she wear her hair like that? I want to see pics

I feel like a lot of the classic Golden Age cuts looked shorter than they were because the fashion for curling so much and so massively drew up the length. If they'd all had pin-straight hair, many would have had it past the collarbone and shoulders.

Tallulah.

I can't imagine Hedy Lamarr with short hair.

Hedy in the courtroom...

Patricia Morison

Did Ann Miller ever have short hair?

[quote]Katharine Hepburn?

Kate in "Sylvia Scarlett"; if anyone would go for this look, it would be her.

I think they had medium-length hair. Shorter than what is popular now, but not pixie cut or Dorothy Hamill short.

They didn’t have blowdryers and I’m not sure all women had the shower cap with flexible hot hair tube-style home dryers prior to the 1960’s. They would wash and set their hair once a week. Long hair would have been unworkable. Hollywood stars might have been able to manage it, but it would have been an oddity.

Also, short hair after 40 was a thing. Women were sort of expected to go short after a certain age.

Jane Russell

Grace Kelly

Bump

Pier Angeli

Debbie Reynolds

Ann Miller's hair would've been down to her behind without all the hairspray.

If any of you are familiar with I Love Lucy, the short Italian haircut became very popular in the 1950s after the poodle cut. This unfortunate style continued for a while... too long IMO.

Extremely soft and beautiful women like Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey could get away with it, but harsher / more severe features, like Joan Crawford post 50s plastic surgery, couldn't. (I am a huge JC fan but still, this one was not good for her, nor was the poodle)

I wish Elizabeth Taylor was in a movie in 1957. The way she looked in early 1957 was stunning. Probably her best look ever. What a waste of a great look.

Anyone know why she didn't make a movie that year?

R34 too busy looking at her reflection in the mirror, Rose.

Jane Russell first got a "Fifties Butch" cut for FOXFIRE (55). When she left Howard Hughes's control, the hair came off.

They put it up in a bun

Hepburn and Hayworth both had brief periods where they sported short hair - Hepburn in the thirties when she made SYLVIA SCARLETT and Hayworth when she made THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI with her then husband Orson Welles.

Madonna

Julie Newmar

Yvonne Decarlo always had long hair

Did Shirley Maclaine ever have long hair?

If you look closely at Ginger Rogers' hair in Tight Spot you'll see it's actually not short but very carefully tied up. She refused to cut it and caused a huge headache for the hair mistress on that film. It's been discussed on Datalounge before.

Short hair was 'in' in the '30s and '50s so the best guess would probably be someone who only worked in the interim. Lake would seem like the obvious choice, then you remember that her long hair was SO famous that she was made to cut it.

R43, by interim, do you mean the ones who only worked in the 1940's never had short hair?

Yes, short hair was very dominant in the '30s and '50s. The best chance of finding an actress who fit would be one who didn't have much career beyond that one decade.

I wonder why short hair on women was so popular in the 1930's and 1950's.

I am genuinely curious to know.

Anyone know?!

In the '30s it was a hangover from the '20s when the style seemed genuinely fresh.

I have no idea what brought it on in the '50s. It was harsh and suited very few women. For every elvin Hepburn there were ten butch looking Ja_ne Russells.

R46, I assume that the female audience liked it. Long hair=old-fashioned, submissive, virgin-until-marriage. Short hair=modern, independent, fun. Short hair also might have looked more “expensive” since the styles of those decades looked like they required serious maintenance.

In the opening scene of Thoroughly Modern Millie you get a sense of how fun! short hair must've seemed at first. Then it probably hung around due to ease.

By the mid-50s Miss Yvonne DeCarlo (nee Peggy Middleton) was mostly appearing in Westerns, so she sported short, but fluffy, bobs in flicks like PASSION (54), and then even shorter hair in FLAME OF THE INDIES (56).

She wore her long again in THE MUNSTERS, of course, later in the 60s.

Miss Crystal Gayle

"I wonder why short hair on women was so popular in the 1930's and 1950's."

The 1930s short styles were a carryover from the fashion revolution of the 1920s, when women cut off their hair, threw away their long skirts, and ripped up their corsets, and danced the Charleston. Very short styles were still obligatory in the early 1930s, but women's styles crept down to towards shoulders towards the late 1930s, like Hedy Lamarr in "Algiers" or Joan Fontaine in "Rebecca". By the 1940s, shoulder-length hair was the height of fashion.

As for the 1950s, well, most women's fashion of that decade was ludicrously prim and proper, as women were told to forget about being Rosie the Riveter and get back to the kitchen. I guess the prim-and-proper look just wasn't complete without a matronly hairstyle, although there was a bit of long hair in the 1950s. Lots of girls had pony tails, and some nonconformists like Beatnik girls or Betty Page grew their hair out.

Were the 1920's the first time that short hair was popular on women?

Think short hair was last popular in the 1820s, 1830s. I'm no expert though. Before the 1920s it seemed to be the exception not the rule.

Ingrid Bergman in FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS.

Lauren Bacall, ca.1950.

This style is somewhat shorter than she usually wore.

Ava was a beauty, but I think short hair made her look older, harder, and more mannish.

Last one: I love Liz.

But not in this look.

R1 Katharine Hepburn had short hair in Adam's Rib (1949) ...and looked good with it, too.

Bacall had short hair in Young Man With A Horn (1950). Veronica Lake wore her hair relatively short in Slattery's Hurricane (1949) - see next post.

Veronica with Richard Widmark:

La Lake looked great with short hair actually. One of the few women, alongside Hepburn, who could really pull it off.

Does anyone know why Elizabeth Taylor liked wearing her hair short at certain points in her life?

Vivien Leigh

↑↑ Never mind

Young Viv, 1940s.

Leigh had short hair (wig, probably) in Ship Of Fools.

I think Ann Harding was one of the few who really never had short hair. She wore her long hair in a chignon, usually. Maybe when she was older she may have had short hair but I don't think so.

Greta Garbo

Marlene Dietrich

Vivien tried a short short bob . It wasn't very flattering

Elizabeth Taylor

Garbo had short hair, at times. Especially after her movie career, but even during it once in a while.

R72, Garbo's hair looks like she cut it herself!

She would have, too.

Another shot of Leigh and Gable in 1950.

Practically every female star tried or had short hair around that time, it went with the New Look.

What about Linda Darnell?

Garbo looks super dykey in that pic

Gosh, you'd have to go back as far as Rapunzel or Lady Godiva!

Elizabeth had short hair for a long stretch in the 50s. Easier to wash the cum out.

You guys need to do some Googling...

Bernice bobs her hair.

Marilyn Monroe

Veronica Lake's career evaporated when she cut her hair short at the behest of the war department. Female factory workers who'd copied her trademark long 'do were having accidents with power tools, and the war department asked Lake to do the patriotic thing and get her hair cut. Well, with short hair Lake was nothing special, and her career swiftly declined.

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth were married for a little while, and as the marriage was falling apart they made "Lady from Shanghai" Welles had his wife cut off her trademark auburn mane and go blonde, in what has been widely regarded as an act of spite and foolishness.

Marilyn only had long hair at the beginning of her career. On the advice of Dick Powell , iirc, she cut it much shorter and she had a similar hairstyle to June Allyson, actually.

R83, what all did Dick Powell say to convince her?

When exactly did Marilyn first get short hair?

In what years in the 1950's was long hair popular?

Anyone know?

Bump

I don't understand the hair obsession. Is it part of the frau invasion of this board? Most of these women looked great with short hair!

Marilyn had long hair in Ladies Of The Chorus (1948)

In Right Cross (1950) with Dick Powell

Did Grace Kelly ever have short hair?

Nineteen-year-old Grace in 1949. I think this is as short as she ever wore it, at least as an adult.

I'm one of the few women that actually like to do pin curls and wet sets (I'm a fan of 40s hair in particular). First, these kinds of styles will immediately shorten the hair about 2" on account of the curls, so their hair was likely collarbone length at a minimum. Second, it's very difficult to roll long hair into these "sets", and back then not having curled hair in public simply wasn't an option. That said, I'll still never cut mine shorter than my shoulders. Rita's hair is the ultimate goal. There was a period of ultra short curls in the 50s which were abominable. The 20s/30s did shorter styles better.

I'm impressed, R93, sincerely.

Younger women in my life tell me that no one does permanent waves anymore. But wouldn't a permanent give you at least some of the look you're trying to achieve?

OMG, R92, you've proved that it WAS possible to take a bad picture of Grace Kelly!

I had assumed she was 100% photogenic.

Grace had a weak jaw

R94 I’ve never heard of it, is that different from a perm? The waves have to be positioned a very specific way for the vintage aesthetic (I wear vintage clothes for the full look , so it must be accurate).

What does everyone think of Elizabeth Taylor's hair?

R98 I liked her hair short. I thought she looked awful with her hair all sprayed up or whatever. Or long . Because she was a small woman with a big head. And big hair just made her head look enormous - and it didn't suit her, anyway. Any knid of obvious hair "do" just distracted from her face.

*kind

Tallulah Bankhead

This might be more of a PR myth, but didn't Bergman end up with her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls, because the first choice, who I think was a really a dancer, could not pull of the shorter haircut. I think Hemingway really wanted Bergman all along, who was then given a pretty flattering short haircut.

R102 She was ballet dancer/movie actress Vera Zorina (who was married to George Balanchine). I didn't know it was her hair, I thought she was replaced for other reasons.

In those days there were few hair products. Bergman said her Maria haircut had to be curled and re-set every day. Women who got the cut thinking it would look like Bergman's hairstyle found that it didn't, after a short time.

Here are two shots of Zorina in a publicity photo and on set with Gary Cooper.

My short hair looks great!

Did Barbra Streisand and Cher ever have short hair?

Barbra had short hair several different times. In the 60s, 70s, and even when she was older. (And, I guess, in Yentl). Just Google "Barbra Streisand short hair".

Joni Mitchell

Do people know what "the classic era of Hollywood" means?

Bette Davis

Bette did have short hair in June Bride and Payment On Demand.

Did Pier Angeli ever have short hair even once?

R111 That's a good one. I don't think so!

Anita Ekberg

Sharon Tate

R114 wrong

Technically, you're correct. But I believe that's a wig. ^

[quote]Well, with short hair Lake was nothing special, and her career swiftly declined.

I have to agree. Veronica Lake had an otherworldly, doll-like prettiness with her trademark long hair. She was just not as pretty or special without it.

R116 Yeah I really don't know, it does look like a wig, though. I thought maybe Jay Sebring gave her a short haircut. What about this?

Years before Mia Farrow and her famous "Rosemary" look (by Vidal Sassoon), there was Jean Seberg and her pixie.

Seberg was stunning. But her short hair became her trademark. I don't think she was ever as memorable without it.

[quote]r98 What does everyone think of Elizabeth Taylor's hair?

Well, it was all over her body.

One guy saw her in a bathing suit and said, “”For God’s sake, get her a razor and shave her arms!”

[quote]Years before Mia Farrow and her famous "Rosemary" look (by Vidal Sassoon), there was Jean Seberg and her pixie.

R120 Sorry for being picky, but MIa Farrow's famous look happened on the TV series, Peyton Place, before she ever did Rosemary's Baby. She cut her hair in the middle of an episode, wreaking havoc with the writers and production people. It was a hugely popular TV show and she was the breakout star of it. So that's how everyone first saw her with that haircut.

Did "Peyton Place" not have the budget for a wig?

It happened in the middle of a shooting day.

I doubt Mia would have consented to wearing a wig. If she was that thoughtful or accommodating, she wouldn't have cut off her hair in the middle of a shooting day and thrown an entire staff of a TV show she was the satr of, into a panic.

[quote]Ed Nelson (actor, “Dr. Michael Rossi”): One time she had been on a cruise with Sinatra and Claudette Colbert, on Claudette’s yacht down in the Caribbean. When she came back, she was in a scene where she had been in bed and I had to help her walk. And she wouldn’t look at me in any of the dialogue. In between rehearsals, I said, “What’s the deal? You’re not looking at me.” She says, “Well, Claudette told me, ‘Never look at the man that much. Let him look at you.’” I said, “Oh.” So when she got up to walk and I was supposed to grab her when she almost fell, I let her go and she fell. She got up and started pounding on my chest: “You let me fall!” I said, “If I’d let you fall as far as you should, you’d have gone to China!” She was very, very upset ….

*star of

Jeffrey Hayden (director of episode 182; from his Archive of American Television interview): Mia was lovely – very young, very malleable, very eager to make it. She, at a certain point, was going out with Frank Sinatra. I knew Frank Sinatra; I’d met him a few times. She came to me one day and said, “Oh, Jeff, I’m so excited. I’m going to go out with Frank tonight, and we’re going to go here and there….” This was early in the relationship.

(Jeffrey Hayden was Eva Marie Saint's husband, btw.)

[quote]I said, “Mia. You’re in the first shot tomorrow morning, and I know Sinatra. He’s going to keep you out, if he can, till three o’clock in the morning, with his date at the club, and he’s going to be singing, and he’s going to want to go out with his buddies. And you’re going to go with him, and it’ll be four in the morning, and Mia – you’re in the first shot tomorrow morning. Please. You’ve got to be here on time, we gotta go. It’s a big day’s work ahead of us, and I want to see you not bleary-eyed first thing in the morning, first shot.” “Okay, Jeff, okay. Don’t worry, don’t worry.”

[quote]Next morning, seven o’clock, seven-thirty, no Mia. Eight o’clock, no Mia. I start shooting inserts, keeping the crew busy. Nine o’clock, she’s not there. She walks in [at] ten o’clock. I said, “Mia, do you realize – you know, I’m shooting inserts so they don’t bother me from the front office. But we have,” whatever it was, “ten pages to do today. It’s ten o’clock. Get to that makeup table. Stop this little girl stuff! You’re an actress. You’re a mature person. You’ve got a crew of seventy-five people waiting to shoot your scenes.”

[quote]She left. She walked over to the makeup table. I’m now setting up the camera for her first shot. She came a minute, a minute and a half later, she walked over to me, held up her hand, full of the hair from the back of her head, and she said, “Jeff, no more little girl stuff.” And handed me all her hair. I said, “Mia. We’ve gotta match your last scene from yesterday’s shooting. What’ll we do?” “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I just wanted you to know: I’m growing up. No more little girl.

The Mia anecdotes are fascinating... but they're making me like her even less, if possible.

Seberg actually looked better with long hair, huh.

Did Shirley Maclaine ever have long hair?

Susan Hayward? She may have already been mentioned.

Looked like Paulette Goddard only had short hair in her childhood.

Also enjoyed (R127), great stories of Miss Farrows antics.

I'd say some of these actresses - Hepburn, Bacall - had short hair only because of their film roles. Hepburn tries to pass as a man in Sylvia Sydney, Bacall is playing an upper class lesbian in Young Man with a Horn. Etc.

I know why short hair was popular. For years in the century prior women had long hair. It was seen as fuddy duddy and old fogey. Laura ingalls Wilder had hair past her knees.

Cutting hair was en vogue. New, modern and a departure from the restricted old ways of women having long hair and filling it up on top of their head.

R131 Susan had short hair when he won the Oscar.

R133 As I already posted above, Hepburn had a stylishly short haircut in Adam's Rib (1949).

I don't think Bacall had short hair in Young Man With A Horn (1950) because she was playing a lesbian. Doris Day's hair was the same length, in the film, and she wasn't playing a lesbian. Doris had long hair in ther first two films. Short hair was in, starting in @ 1949, and for most of the 50s. The very long hair that Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth had in '40s was no longer in style. Women's hairstyles and skirt legths and so forth were much more uniform in those days. Of course there were exceptions but not all that many.

Bacall with another short-ish hairstyle in the later 1950s.

What all years in the decade of the 1950's was longer hair in style and popular on women?

[quote]I know why short hair was popular. For years in the century prior women had long hair. It was seen as fuddy duddy and old fogey. Laura ingalls Wilder had hair past her knees.

That's true but before the era we're talking about, don't forget the very short hairstyles of the 1920s and early 1930s. Short hair continued into the mid 1930s then gradually started to get longer. The popularity of Gone With The Wind might have helped with that, along with bringing natural eyebrows back.

Mae West... did she ever have short hair?

I think this is the shortest Pier Angeli ever wore her hair

When did Elizabeth Taylor first have short hair?

R142 Her hair was short from 1949 (Conspiritor) until 1954 (The Last Time I Saw Paris. She wore a longer wig in half the film). Her hair kept getting shorter. It was even short in the historical epic, Ivanhoe (1952).

(She was given a fall for her short hair in Ivanhoe.)

R143, Do you know why she didn't wear the long wig throughout the entire movie of The Last Time I Saw Paris? I wish she would have.

Also, I wish she would have filmed a movie in early 1957, like in the way she looked in the Person To Person interview. She probably looked her best then.....Anyone know why she didn't film a movie with that look?

Shirley MacLaine had long hair for a bit around 1970, R130.

I don't think it was the right look. It didn't flatter her face. She's always been much cuter and more distinctive with face-framing shorter hair (much like Liza Minnelli, another short-hair gal).

Liza with long hair.

Girl, that ain't your look....

With the exception of All About Eve, Bette had short hair for most of the 50s. She looked the worst in The Star with that poodle hair. By the 50s she already had a dumpy figure so the short hair made her look more like her husband's mother-in-law as seen in the video below.

Liza had long hair for the flashback scene in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon

Goldie Hawn with her manic pixie chop (and her old nose).

No one's mentioned our Judy. She had short hair in her last MGM film, Summer Stock. I have no idea why this unflattering style was in fashion during the late 40s/early 50s but it made all the great actresses of the time look especially mannish. Whether it was Judy, Bette, Joan, Ava, Gene Tierney, or Barbara Stanwyck.

Over 150 replies--and not a single one of you little homosexual boys has yet mentioned screen legend, Miss Faye Dunaway.

Miss Dunaway understands the importance of glamour, mystery, and maintaining an aura of alluring femininity at all times. She finds short hair mannish and rude, quite frankly. Consequently, her stylish bob in "Bonnie and Clyde" was as short as she's been willing to go.

Her legions of fans would have it no other way.

Some people clearly don't understand the meaning of "classic era" of Hollywood like R153 who is clearly Miss Dunaway trying to retroactively insert herself into the Golden Age.

Marlene would have been just 50 at around the time of this photo.

It's not her best look.

A better question is why did Jane Wyman stick with that godawful short hair almost all her life.

Agreed. But Jane Wyman was a singularly unconvincing blonde siren.

Not awful. But not great, either.

Re: not changing one's hairdo--Gena Rowlands kept a variation of this look pretty much her entire adult life. It suited her.

Next let’s do “Republican congressmen of the 40s who never wore a brown tie!”

Julie Andrews never had long hair

Only as a girl, R160.

R145 IN the first half of the film it was 1945, it begins right after WWII, so hair was longer on women, and she wore a longer wig (it looked great, you're right). She had a widow's peak with that wig she didn't really have in real life. Later, the movie takes place in the 1950s and she used her actual short hair.

1957 - She made Raintree County in that year. The Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. She originally had a wig for that, too, but they eventually used her own shorter hair.

Incidentally, it was glossed over at the time but Gregory Peck and Elizabeth Taylor were the original stars of MGM's Quo Vadis, that began shooting in Rome under director John Huston. That version was abandoned and about a year later it was recast (Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr) and resumed under Mervyn LeRoy - with a different script. You can Google Liz's hair and costume tests, as well as Greg's.

(Gregory Peck)

R164, I wish Elizabeth and Gregory would have made the final cut of Quo Vadis

They were younger than Taylor and Kerr - might have been interesting.