Last week, American Hustle garnered ten Academy Award Nominations, including three acting nods. The high-profile stars that make up the talented cast drive this comedy-drama about con artists who scam politicians for the FBI. The cast looked like they had the time of their lives playing larger-than-life characters who sport outrageous hairstyles. Balding con man Christian Bale wears an elaborate toupee comb-over; Jeremy Renner’s politician sports a mile-high pompadour; and, Bradley Cooper as the FBI agent is wound tighter than the curls in his permanent. Jennifer Lawrence wears her big, swept-up Jersey hair like she was born to it. While watching the film, I was reminded of Jack Nicholson’s comment to costar Michael Keaton when he arrived on set to play the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman: “Just sit back, kid, and let the makeup do the acting.” In American Hustle, the less-than-flattering hairstyles seem to do the bulk of the acting.
The use of obvious and elaborate hairstyles to define character prompted me to recall other films in which hair worked as hard to establish personality as the actor did, especially if the style was unbecoming. Because bizarre and comical hair-dos are par for the course in genres like farce, science fiction, and horror, I limited my selections to films rendered in a more or less realist style. “Hair-ific” characters tend to stand out more in dramas and realistic romantic comedies.
PENN AS THE MOB LAWYER IN ‘CARLITO’S WAY’
JONES IN ‘JFK’
Bradley Cooper’s curly perm in American Hustle reminded me of similar ‘dos in other movies. Sean Penn is almost unrecognizable in Carlito’s Way as an oily, unscrupulous lawyer, because of his tight, frizzy curls. The white curly locks and poised demeanor of Tommy Lee Jones’s homosexual character, Clay Shaw, in JFK might suggest that he is pushover when he was actually a shrewd and calculating businessman. Super-curly hair-dos for male characters are not exclusive to contemporary movies. Spencer Tracy’s wig in Captains Courageous was supposed to suggest his Portuguese ethnicity, and perhaps it does, because his hair reminds me of a Portuguese Water dog.
A CURLY-HEADED TRACY IN ‘CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS’
McCONAUGHY IN ‘DAZED AND CONFUSED’
American Hustle takes place during the 1970s, when men sported longer hairstyles and sideburns. Reviewers and Internet pundits had a field day with Javier Bardem’s late-1970s style in No Country for Old Men, though I thought the jokes and pot shots were unwarranted. Matthew McConaughy’s hair in Dallas Buyers Club looks similar, because the time frame is roughly the same (mid-1980), but no one has ridiculed the hairstyle in that film. What I find funny is that both styles look like the one McConaughy sports in Dazed and Confused, which is also set in the late 1970s.
BARDEM’S MUCH-BALLYHOOED ‘DO
With the exception of the 1960s, long hair for male characters can be distracting for viewers and, apparently, reviewers. Tom Hanks grew his hair a bit longer to play the scholar Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code, but his hair got more attention by reviewers than his performance. In the sequel Angels and Demons, it was noticeably shorter. As the mountain man Linus Rawlings in How the West Was Won, Jimmy Stewart did not have much luck with this style either.
HANKS IN ‘THE DA VINCI CODE’ and STEWART IN ‘HOW THE WEST WAS WON’
VIVA LA PERM IN ‘WORKING GIRL’
In the late 1980s, I dutifully permed my hair as did many other young women, though my ‘do could never rival the height and breadth of Melanie Griffith’s and Joan Cusack’s hair in Working Girl. Griffith’s hair was a plot point in the film, because it was a signifier of class and status. When she wanted to move beyond her working-class life, she shed her poofed-up locks for a streamlined style.
THE INFAMOUS BLONDE WIG IN ‘DOUBLE INDEMNITY’
Similarly, Barbara Stanwyck’s blonde hair in Double Indemnity connoted her social status as trashy, as did her ankle bracelet. Decades later, Stanwyck was still joking about the blonde wig she wore for the film.
MONROE IN ‘SOMETHING’S GOT TO GIVE’
ANNETTE IN ‘BEACH BLANKET BINGO’
Big hair held in place by sprays also defined styles for women in the early 1960s. Contorted into strange configurations and shapes, bouffant styles were not only unnatural but difficult to maintain. I have always loved Annette and her teen movies, but her shellac-coated hair stood out as inappropriate for the beach and gave her character an unintentional matronly appearance. The silver-coiffed Marilyn Monroe had lost weight for the never-completed Something’s Got to Give, and many have commented on how good she looked in that role. However, I have never been able to recognize “Marilyn Monroe” in the stills from the film, because of the harsh, over-sprayed hair-do that dominated her tender features.
Finally, while researching my blog article on Joan Crawford a couple of weeks ago, I ran across contemporary reviews and blog posts with jibes and jeers about her hair and makeup. I wonder if the film Mommy Dearest, in which the makeup and hairstyle for Faye Dunaway as Crawford was so extreme that it bordered on caricature, has colored perceptions of the real-life Crawford.