Terms Which Have Disappeared

[St. Louis]

That's true, Blue Train. I often notice that the older women in 40s movies often wear dresses nearly at ankle length, and their hair is always up and tightly controlled. Even when they're plain working women (not society dames) their dresses are quite a bit longer and their hair never loose. My favorite example of this contrast occurs in Remember The Night, a wonderful Christmas movie starring Barbara Stanwyck. Here's my favorite scene from this film:

The generational differences in hair & clothing are quite evident. Also, Stanwyck portrays a toughened city girl, while the two older ladies are hard-working farm women.

I can't see this scene without getting a tear in my eye.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sears used to segregate clothing for "older women" in its own section of the catalog, under the brand name "Gracious Lady." Lots of dark, long sleeved dresses with lace collars.

On the other hand, my grandmother was still wearing rolled stockings in the 1970s, just like she'd learned to do as a high school teenager in the twenties.

The hair thing is still with us, though, except that the style has changed. A woman over fifty is expected to cut her hair into a short, close-fitting "menopausal helmet" haircut. If she's dealing with female-pattern baldness, she's expected to get it tightly permed to make it look puffier.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I remember older ladies from the 80s still wearing the same hairstyle their wore in the 60s and thought it very odd. But when I think about it, my wife has worn basically the same hairstyle since the mid 90s...20 years or so and counting. Of course, it's not really a "wash and go" style, but it's not what I'd call a defined "do" either. And I'm sure she'd argue that it's changed dramatically.

She also has what seems like an inordinate number of hair products. One day I counted something like 18 different hair/skin products in the shower alone. And totaled they probably cost an arm and a leg. I have exactly two...Old Spice shower gel and Head and Shoulders. They cost about six bucks. And she complains that they take up space. She also has a basket full of hair clips and scrunchies and headbands and whatever those things that look like half comb/half hairband things are called.

On the flip side, she has gorgeous hair.

 

[2jakes]

My next door neighbor in the 1950s (who died around 1970, I think) was one of those who regularly visited a hairdresser. I say hairdresser because I'm not sure where she went. But she was also the sort who wore a dress all the time and when she went "uptown" (which was two blocks away and she didn't own a car), she wore white gloves and a hat. She wore her hair relatively short. My grandmother, on the other hand, who was probably ten or fifteen years older, never cut her hair and only wore it up in a bun. I imagine that people, men and women both, become fixed with a certain style and stick with it. You even saw it in movies, intentionally or otherwise. Movies made in, say, 1940, would sometimes have an older woman (meaning in her 50s, probably) wearing her hair in a style that was more fashionable twenty years earlier. Or that's that it looked like.

I remember my grandmother combing her hair into a bundle on the back.
Holding it in place with some kind of a small comb.
Her hair when I knew her was long and white.

My mother's hairstyle when I was a kid was very similar to LizzieMaine.
I remember she would wrap a scarf when doing chores.

These are the only images I have of my grandmother’s house.
Which I made a painting for my mother.

A young (mother-to-be) in front of my grandma’s house.

Age 3 walking on the dirt road in front of my grandma’s house.

Meet “2jakes”... part pit-bull and best pal . (grandma’s painting)

But please don’t ask me when I last changed the oil on the car or
something from last week because I won’t remember unless I
check on my list of reminders!

 

[BlueTrain]

I've always maintained that getting hairstyles period correct in the movies for both men and women seemed to be next to impossible and for several reasons. For one thing, getting the actors to grow their hair longer or to cut it shorter is probably not an easy thing to have done. And then, I expect that some of the little details about how something was done to produce the desired style have long been forgotten and even barbers may no longer know how to do a certain style properly. In fact, I'd even go out on a limb and say that it's hard to get any barber to cut your hair the way you really want it. Maybe it's just a communication problem, though. But some hairstyles have clearly disappeared. When did you last see a flattop? Perhaps part of the difficulty is that actors and actresses haven't been wearing their hair the same way for the last twenty or thirty years and their hair doesn't want to go along with the change in style.

On the other hand, to be honest about it, I'm not really comparing the hairstyles in period movies now, set in, say, 1940 with the actual hairstyles of 1940. I'm comparing them with the hairstyles in movies actually made in 1940 and they just might possibly be a little different in reality.

 

[2jakes]

Paradise Alley ~ Sylvester Stallone. Universal Studios.

Stallone was sitting having make-up applied and getting ready for a scene.
The movie was set in the 40s.
Afterwards, I asked the hairdresser why she left his hair long. It was not typical
for the time period. Mine was cut short.
She told me she was following orders.

Later I found out that the writers had written in the script to explain why he
wore his hair long. But it seemed out of place.
Remember “Dr. Zhivago” and Julie’s 60s hairdo?
Some actors are very picky in an image they want to show off.

 

[Upgrade]

Shows like Downton Abbey did a lot of wigs and I was surprised that David Suchet was wearing a false mustache for Poirot.

However, Jeremy Piven actually grew out his mustache for Mr. Selfridge.

 

[2jakes]

Back to the Future (1955 scenes)

Nope!
(Crispin Glover on the right)

Yes.

Typical electric clippers used. You could smell the oil on these things.
And in the wrong hands it was painful, especially the manual clippers!

Yes, but was not allowed in my high school in the 50s.
The vice-principal would measure your side burns.
And he would say...”unless you can produce Col. Parker,
you’re going to pay a visit to the “boiler room”.
Where spanking with a thick wooden paddle was
administered!


And this helped to keep the flat-top.... up!

 

[BlueTrain]

Supposedly in the movie "Saving Private Ryan," some reenactors got to play German soldiers and the first thing the film crew did was to give them short haircuts, which was historically incorrect. You can't win.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I've always maintained that getting hairstyles period correct in the movies for both men and women seemed to be next to impossible and for several reasons. For one thing, getting the actors to grow their hair longer or to cut it shorter is probably not an easy thing to have done. And then, I expect that some of the little details about how something was done to produce the desired style have long been forgotten and even barbers may no longer know how to do a certain style properly. In fact, I'd even go out on a limb and say that it's hard to get any barber to cut your hair the way you really want it. Maybe it's just a communication problem, though. But some hairstyles have clearly disappeared. When did you last see a flattop?

Around here there are barbers that can't do much beyond a flat top or crew cut. If I want a haircut the way I really like it I have to go to the next county over.

 

[Zombie_61]

Wonderful painting. The screen door effect is a nice touch, too. I think screen doors are a thing of the past, just like back porches and porch swings...

It seems "screen" doors have been replaced with "storm" and/or "security" doors. I can understand why, but the newer doors don't have that charm the older types had.

...I'm interested in the old Western movie ranches, like Corriganville. It's a park now and you can visit it. There are some remains of things from when movies were still being made there, including the so-called stunt rock that was visible in the Jungle Jim movies. But as one visitor said, it's about as cheerful as visiting a cemetery...

I had never made that "cemetery" association before, but you're absolutely right. When my wife and I go on vacation we enjoy visiting historical landmarks, especially if the history they exhibit are directly related to their respective regions and not simply a general collection. We're both interested in and fascinated by the trappings of lives lived more than 100 years ago, but many of these places do have an atmosphere/energy that's not dissimilar to a cemetery or mortuary. I'll have to remember to use that phrase if/when the conversation calls for it.

...A woman over fifty is expected to cut her hair into a short, close-fitting "menopausal helmet" haircut...

My wife and sister-in-law both have very curly hair. When I met them in 1979 sis-in-law, being a redhead, had a big Reba-McEntire-style afro. I think sis-in-law had barely finished blowing out the candles on her 40th birthday cake before she "butched up" and cut her hair into the "menopausal helmet" you describe. Naturally, as soon as my wife turned 40 sis-in-law started in on her. "You're older now; when are you going to cut your hair?" My wife, whose hair has been at least shoulder length the entire time I've known her, deflected such inquiries for a couple of years with semi-polite sarcastic responses, but eventually grew tired of it and told her sister what she could do with her Midwestern Hausfrau mentality. Sis-in-law still makes half-joking comments on occasion and they can laugh about it now, but for a while there it was a "hot button" issue that really got under my wife's skin.

 

[MisterCairo]

Around here there are barbers that can't do much beyond a flat top or crew cut.

There are other kinds of haircuts???

 

[BlueTrain]

There was a time, of course, when women did not cut their hair, which I guess changed sometime not long after WWI. But they didn't wear it "down." It was always worn "up" after reaching adulthood, at the same time the skirt hem went down from the knee to the ankle. The expression was "hair piled high upon her head." Personally, I think older women look better with their hair worn "up," though it doesn't need to be cut short. That's just my opinion, though. My wife had relative short hair when we got married, styled in a "Dorothy Hamill wedge." Remember those? Remember her? Anyway, she let it grow after that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had a good friend who'd been an actress on Broadway and on radio in the 1930s and 1940s, and until the day she died she wore her hair long -- and hennaed red, to boot. She didn't have much use for bourgeois attitudes about hair.

 

[Stearmen]

It's only a "peace" sign if the palm of the hand is facing the intended recipient(s). If you're seeing the back of the hand, regardless of the number of fingers it's the same as "flipping the bird".

That is true if you know what the difference is, most Americans don't. I can remember in 1981 being shown a photo from an intercept of a TU-95 Bear off the coast of Alaska. The Captain said, "interesting the tail gunner is flashing a peace sign," I had to tell him, that isn't a peace sign!

 

[Trenchfriend]

When I look around, here in Germany, I really believe, that He must be a style-icon to our working-class, here:

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=theo+hutchcraft&FORM=HDRSC2

Many younger german craftsmen and building-workers look like Him, including the earring and the officers-haircut, of course.

 

[Zombie_61]

That is true if you know what the difference is, most Americans don't. I can remember in 1981 being shown a photo from an intercept of a TU-95 Bear off the coast of Alaska. The Captain said, "interesting the tail gunner is flashing a peace sign," I had to tell him, that isn't a peace sign!

Then-President George H.W. Bush had a similar problem during a visit to Australia in 1992. He unintentionally insulted a group of locals in Canberra when he flashed a "peace sign" with his palm turned inward as his armored limousine drove past. He later apologized, explaining that the gesture was intended to mean "V for Victory" and didn't know at the time that it meant something very different down under.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

People of my parents' generation (born late teens, early 20's) frequently described something I'd now call "flashy" as "jazzy". I haven't heard anyone younger use that in as long as I can remember.

 

[tonyb]

People of my parents' generation (born late teens, early 20's) frequently described something I'd now call "flashy" as "jazzy". I haven't heard anyone younger use that in as long as I can remember.

I occasionally use "flashy" but, come to think of it, not as often as I once did. I took it to mean something akin to "showy" or "ostentatious," as in, "The guy up the street just bought himself a flashy set of wheels."

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Snazzy" is the 1937 equivalent of "wow, that's cool." "Snarky" -- which at the time had nothing to do with waspish sarcasm -- was also used occasionally as a synonym for "Snazzy."