Of Beards and Men: The Revealing History of Facial Hair (38 page)

1
Quoted in Robert Low,
W. G. Grace: An Intimate Biography
(London: Metro, 2004), 254–55.

2
Bruce Haley,
The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 126.

3
F. Napier Broome, quoted in Haley,
Healthy Body
, 136.

4
Quoted in Elliott J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein,
A Brief History of American Sports
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 81.

5
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Saints, and Their Bodies,”
Atlantic Monthly
1 (March 1858): 585–86.

6
William Penny Brookes, quoted in David C. Young,
The Modern Olympics: A Struggle for Revival
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 71.

7
Ibid.

8
Ibid., 31.

9
Christopher S. Thompson,
The Tour de France: A Cultural History
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 27.

10
Roland Naul, “History of Sport and Physical Education in Germany, 1800–1945,” in
Sport and Physical Education in Germany
, ed. Roland Naul and Ken Hardman (London: Routledge, 2002), 17–20.

11
David L. Chapman,
Sandow the Magnificent
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 60.

12
Ibid., 73.

13
John F. Kasson,
Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 53.

14
Ibid., 28.

15
Chapman,
Sandow
, 64.

16
Kasson,
Houdini
, 57.

17
Chapman,
Sandow
, 75.

18
George L. Mosse, in
The Image of Man
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), explored the role that revived interest in classical Greek aesthetics played in shaping modern European ideals of physical and moral manliness.

19
Lamar Cecil,
Wilhelm II: Prince and Emperor, 1859–1900
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 163–64. See also Giles MacDonogh,
The Last Kaiser: The Life of Wilhelm II
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 162.

20
Isabel V. Hull,
The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888–1918
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 17–21; see also Thomas A. Kohut,
Wilhelm II and the Germans: A Study in Leadership
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 162–67.

21
Quoted in John C. G. Röhl,
Wilhelm II: The Kaiser’s Personal Monarchy, 1888–1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 386.

22
Heinrich Mann,
The Loyal Subject
(Der Unterdan), ed. Helmut Peitsch (New York: Continuum International Publishing, 1998 [1919]), 42.

23
Ibid., 70.

1
T. E. Lawrence,
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1935), 304.

2
Ibid., 547. Graham Dawson observed that Lawrence’s shaving was a carefully contrived sign of Englishness that counteracted his Arab dress and helped him “establish the combination of ‘mystery,’ purity and authority that distinguished him from the Arabs.” See Dawson, “The Blond Beduin,” in
Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800
, ed. Michael Roper and John Tosh (London: Routledge, 1991), 135. Lawrence himself wrote, “We English, who lived years abroad among strangers, went always dressed in the pride of our remembered country.” See Lawrence,
Seven Pillars
, 544.

3
New York Times
, 20 July 1913, 4. “An Old Shaver: Thoughts on Razors and Beards,”
Times
(London), 18 April 1959, 8. The Kaiser was fighting a similar battle among his own officers. See “Kaiser Decrees Mustaches: Displeased with Army Officers Who ‘Americanize’ Themselves,”
New York Times
, 3 December 1913, 1. See also “Small Mustache Barred,”
New York Times
, 13 February 1914, 4. The Canadian military likewise enforced the wearing of mustaches before the war. See “Must Wear Mustaches,”
New York Times
, 21 November 1905, 1.

4
Nevil Macready,
Annals of an Active Life
(London: Hutchinson & Co., 1924), 1:257–59.

5
Edgar Rice Burroughs,
Tarzan of the Apes
(New York, Modern Library, 2003 [1912]), 104–5.

6
“Types of Chicago Beards,”
Chicago Tribune
, 3 April 1904, 42.

7
“The Passing of Beards,”
Harper’s Weekly
47 (1903): 102.

8
George Harvey, “Reflections Concerning Women,”
Harper’s Bazaar
41 (December 1907): 1252–53.

9
“Shaving Guards Heath,”
New York Times
, 5 December 1909, C3.

10
“Most British Physicians Stick to the Mustache,”
New York Times
, 2 August 1926, 19. For a defense of beards, see “Shall We Stop Shaving?”
Literary Digest
66 (11 September 1920): 125–28.

11
For discussions of how the corporate economy affected masculinity, see Peter Stearns,
Be a Man! Males in Modern Society
(New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979), 112–15. See also Michael Kimmel,
Manhood in America: A Cultural History
, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 61–86; also Christopher Forth,
Masculinity in the Modern West: Gender, Civilization and the Body
(Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 154–55.

12
New York Times
, 26 April 1907, 1.

13
“Orders Police to Shave,”
Chicago Daily Tribune
, 10 July 1905, 5.

14
“Mustaches Irregular,”
Los Angeles Times
, 12 December 1915, II, 1.

15
Alma Whitaker, “Hairy Wiles,”
Los Angeles Times
, 10 April 1920, II, 4.

16
“Inquiring Reporter,”
Chicago Tribune
, 9 May 1925, 25.

17
Already by the first decade of the twentieth century, European traditionalists had gained the habit of identifying undesirable cultural trends such as shaving as “Americanization.” See “Parisians Fear Their City Is Americanized,”
New York Times
, 12 February 1911, SM14. See also “‘Toothbrush’ Mustache: German Women Resent Its Usurpation of the ‘Kaiserbart,’”
New York Times
, 20 October 1907, C7. See also “Kaiser Decrees Mustaches.”

18
Associated Press, “Sport Face of American the Rage in Berlin,”
Davenport Democrat and Leader
, 8 March 1923, 15.

19
“Inquiring Reporter,”
Chicago Tribune
, 9 May 1925, 25.

20
Allan Harding, “Do You Know a Man under Forty Who Wears Whiskers?”
American Magazine
96 (September 1923): 60.

21
Andre Fermigier, “Les mystères de la barbe,”
Le Monde
, 13 July 1978. See also “Beaver,”
Living Age
314 (9 September 1922): 674–75. See also Harding, “Do You Know?” 178.

22
New Statesman
19 (12 August 1922): 509–11.

23
Lord Altrincham [John Grigg], “Beards,”
Guardian
, 2 August 1962, 16.

24
“Gable Grows Spiked Mustache as Rhett,”
Oakland Tribune
, 29 January 1939, 4B.

25
Biery is quoted in Timothy Connelly, “‘He is as he is—and always will be’: Clark Gable and the Reassertion of Hegemonic Masculinity,” in
The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema
, ed. Phil Powrie, Ann Davies, and Bruce Babington (London: Wallflower Press, 2004), 39. Gable’s masculine allure is analyzed in Joe Fisher, “Clark Gable’s Balls: Real Men Never Lose Their Teeth,” in
You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies and Men
, ed. Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumim (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 36–37.

26
“Items of Hollywood Moment,”
New York Times
, 17 May 1936, X3.

27
“Mustache Can Either Make or Break the He-Man’s Face,”
Los Angeles Times
, 2 September 1934, A3.

28
“Romantic! Mustache Said to Add to Male ‘Oomph,’”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, 3 December 1939, 9.

29
Paul Harrison, “Bob Loses That Choir-Boy Look with Whiskers,” Newspaper Enterprise Association,
Ogden Standard-Examiner
, 3 March 1940, 8B.

30
“Mustache . . . or Clean Shave for Errol?”
Ames Daily Tribune
, 31 July 1937, 8.

31
Henry Sutherland, “Film Romeo May Put On a Mustache,”
Pittsburgh Press
, 2 July 1937, 20.

32
Associated Press, “Top Lip Fringe in Style, but Girl Stars Don’t Approve,”
Spokane Daily Chronicle
, 31 March 1937, 1.

33
Alexander Kahn, “Hollywood Film Shop,” United Press,
Dunkirk
(NY)
Evening Observer
, 4 March 1940, 14.

34
Joyce Milton,
The Tramp: The Life of Charles Chaplin
(New York, 1996), 60.

35
Ibid., 61.

36
Anthony Read and David Fisher,
The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939–1941
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 225.

37
Quoted in Read and Fisher,
Deadly Embrace
, 228.

38
Winston Churchill,
The Gathering Storm
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 394.

39
Hendrick de Man,
The Psychology of Marxian Socialism
, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1985 [1928]), 152.

40
Clare Sheridan, quoted in Robert Service,
Trotsky: A Biography
(London: Macmillan, 2009), 265.

41
Robert Service,
Lenin: A Biography
(London: Macmillan, 2000), 313, 393. Lenin’s early balding and adoption of a beard helped him to look wiser and older than his years, contributing to his enduring nickname, “Old Man.” Service,
Lenin
, 105. See also Christopher Read,
Lenin: A Revolutionary Life
(Milton Park: Routledge, 2005), 27.

42
Leon Trotsky,
On Lenin: Notes towards a Biography
, trans. Tamara Deutscher (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1971), 187.

43
Robert Service,
Stalin: A Biography
(London: Macmillan, 2004), 167. The contrast between Lenin’s civilian look and Stalin’s military posturing is dramatically apparent in propaganda posters. See Victoria E. Bonnell,
Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

44
“‘Toothbrush’ Mustache: German Women Resent Its Usurpation of the ‘Kaiserbart,’”
New York Times
, 20 October 1907, C7. The newspaper was reporting on letters written by women to the
Berliner Tageblatt
.

45
“Small Mustache Barred,”
New York Times
, 13 February 1914, 4.

46
Rich Cohen has raised the intriguing possibility that Hitler was inspired by German infantry lieutenant Hans Koeppen’s heroic performance in the first round-the-world automobile race from New York to Paris. Yet Koeppen’s adornment is rather wider and more traditional than the look Hitler finally adopted. See Cohen, “Becoming Adolf,”
Best American Essays 2008
, ed. Adam Gopnik (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), 16. Another explanation, proposed by Robert Waite and adopted by George Victor, was that Hitler was imitating the look of the warrior god Wotan in Franz von Stuck’s painting
The Wild Chase
. See Waite,
The Psychopathic God
(New York: Basic Books, 1977), 77–78; Victor,
Hitler: The Pathology of Evil
(Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1998), 88–89.

47
James Abbe, “Trying to Make Hitler Smile,”
Daily Boston Globe
, 31 July 1932, B3/6.

48
Ron Rosenbaum,
The Secret Parts of Fortune
(New York: Random House, 2000), 494–98.

49
“Editorial Points,”
Daily Boston Globe
, 16 July 1931, 18

50
R. S. Forman, “The Dangers of Humour,”
Times
, 25 October 1939, 6.

51
J. P. H., “This and That,”
Hutchinson News
, 27 April 1939, 4.

52
Dorothy Kilgallen, “Dorothy Kilgallen,”
Lowell Sun
, 25 October 1944, 17.

53
Helen Essary, “Inside Washington,”
Vedette-Messenger
(Valparaiso, IN), 17 July 1944, 4.

54
Edith Efron, “Saga of the Mustache,”
New York Times Sunday Magazine
, 20 August 1944, 21–22.

55
“Cornelia B. Von Hessert, “Shorn Samsons,”
New York Times Sunday Magazine
, 24 September 1944, 23.

56
ELM, “After All,”
Hutchinson News-Herald
, 7 October 1944, 4.

57
ELM, “After All,”
Hutchinson News-Herald
, 29 July 1948, 4.

58
Associated Press, “Dewey Weighs Mustache against Southern Votes”
New York Times
, 29 July 1948, 13.

59
Frederick C. Othman, “Some Advice to a Candidate on Retaining His Mustache,”
Chester Times
, 2 August 1948.

60
Donald Deer, letter to Christopher Oldstone-Moore, 22 April 2010.

61
Calculated from figures published in Dave Leip’s
Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections
,
uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1948&fips=6&f=0&off=0&elect=0
.

62
“Dewey on Television,”
New York Times
, 1 October 1950, 1.

63
Richard Norton Smith,
Thomas E. Dewey and His Times
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 559.