Committing Hairy Scary!

I wanted to post something Halloween related as the big day nears, but I simply didn’t have the time to devote to it because of the usual gripe of work interfering with my blogging (!) and also the fact that my evenings (prime TV & movie viewing time, as a rule) have been taken up with preparations for my annual Halloween party. Cleaning, cooking, decorating and other planning have overtaken The Underworld!

I decided to pop out a little blurb dedicated to a theme I had been considering anyway, that being hair that is scary in the world of television and films. Now these are not cases of a performer deliberately donning frightening hair on purpose. Most of these are incidents in which the participant was either trying to look good or at least the stylists were attempting to make the performer look good, but the end result fell short. These aren’t even the worst examples out there, perhaps, just ones that sprang to my mind right now. I’d love to hear some of your own favorite hair horrors from the cinema and TV.

What first led me on this path was the remark Stella Stevens made about how Gene Hackman hated to acknowledge The Poseidon Adventure because he was upset about the way they teased and fluffed up his hair for the movie. Hackman, like many a male before and since, was folically-challenged and, like many a male before and since, was sensitive about it. (He even refused to play Lex Luthor shown as bald for most of his appearances in the Superman films, even though the character had been conceived and portrayed that way in the comics for decades!)

What they did to him for the interior scenes was not very attractive, but it was hardly enough to throw a hissy fit over. Where the wheels came off were the outdoor scenes, filmed aboard the Queen Mary (docked, but facing the Pacific Ocean where breezes swept in heavily.) His homemade toupee of frizzled hair kept blowing up and off his scalp and this was kept in the film, to his apparent embarrassment.

Thing was, how could he complain to the producer when the hairstyle he’d been given was merely a reinvention/representation of Irwin Allen’s own dastardly S.O.S. pad comb over?! Allen was not likely to be all ears to hear how horrible the hairdo was to Hackman when it was a near doppelganger for his own crown-topper!

One of my least favorite hair don’ts from a classic movie standpoint is the decision to give Joanne Woodward the look she possessed in The Long Hot Summer. True, her character is meant to be an uptight, sexually repressed Southern belle, but they took things just a tad far. She dons the tightest bun in celluloid history with some “wook Mommy, I did ‘em myself!” bangs in the front that set off her eternally sour expressions in the worst way. It would have been one thing to have her hair that severe in the beginning of the movie, relaxing it a little as her character continued to soften, but, no… she sports this unappealing look throughout, easily allowing costar Lee Remick the ability to gather most of the attention (that is, on the rare occasion our eyes aren’t trained on Paul Newman!)

Speaking of Paul Newman and Irwin Allen… Miss Jacqueline Bisset starred opposite Paul and was hired by Irwin in the disaster debacle When Time Ran Out. While it can be argued (and I will certainly do the arguing!) that it is almost impossible for Jackie to not look good, she tries her darndest here to prove people wrong. Yes, I might be spoiled by the clean, auburn bob (wig) she sported in Airport or the thick brown shoulder length hair she had in Bullit, but by this time in her career, she was spending a lot of time with a frizzy, fluffy, unruly mess on her head that looked like an ungroomed French poodle. It was this way in Rich and Famous, too, among other projects. Like I said, she is still beautiful, but this unkempt, frazzled ‘do is not my favorite. (And I have a cardinal rule with regards to actors and actresses: Do not obscure the face, the chief instrument in emoting!)

At the other side of the spectrum was the time, in 1968, when she hastily replaced Mia Farrow in Frank Sinatra’s The Detective. Mia was busy filming Rosemary’s Baby and was delayed in reporting to her then-hubby Frank’s film, in which she had a role as a sort of quasi-love interest. Frank got so mad at Mia for not walking out on Baby that he fired her from The Detective and filed for divorce! Thus, Jacqueline was swiftly shuttled in, but all the clothes for the character had been deliberately asexually designed for the waifish Farrow with her close-cropped pixie ‘do. The solution was to slap a short brown wig on Bissett and be done with it, even though the look was not as flattering on her as it was on the boyish Farrow.

Again, Bissett is always lovely, but this was not one of the more stellar looks in her repertoire, especially when styled askew instead of neatly combed to one side! For whatever reason, she and Ol’ Blue Eyes shared virtually no chemistry together, though by then he was clearly fed up with his soon to be ex-wife and probably, however unintentionally, transferred some of his resentment to Farrow’s replacement.

I’m always going on about how Goldie Hawn seems to have kept the same hairdo for decades, long after its shelf life has expired. Then I come across something like Wildcats, where she shows off a badly sculpted, impossibly dated and unappealing mullet and I realize I should be grateful that she has clung to her long, layered locks as long as she has.

I admire some of Michael Caine’s acting, but, in my book, his hair has always been awful. Naturally curly, he used to part it and press it into an almost marcelled sort of thing. Then, as the 70s dawned, he let it get longer and more fluffy. In films like Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, The Swarm and The Hand, among a lot of others, he stuck to the same basic “style” of strawberry blonde, unruly curls, partially brushed to the side.

This was bad enough, but in The Hand his character becomes unhinged and he’s hooked up to some electrode monitors and here the horror really kicks in. He starts looking like he’s gearing up to play Art Garfunkel in a bio-pic. Fortunately, in more recent years, he has kept his mane tamed and clipped down to a reasonable length.

Then there’s the day that Henry Fonda won the Oscar for On Golden Pond. (No, I’m not nasty enough to pick on poor ol’ Hank when he was about to pass away!) He was too ill to attend the ceremony, so daughter Jane, who’d been nominated herself, was on hand to collect the statuette should he be named the winner. He was, of course, which meant that Jane came up to accept the award (I believe this practice is no longer allowed except in rare, pre-approved circumstances.) She revealed to the world, the most overly bouffant, massive mess of a hairstyle imaginable! This was in 1982, before even the most garish excesses of the 80s had come to pass, making it doubly shocking at the time.

Speaking of the 80s, one Miss Lisa Hartman (a costar of Knots Landing), who once had displayed simple, dishwater blonde locks with very little fixative, took to bleaching and frying her hair in every conceivable way. Her foray into music recording featured cover art of her permed, damaged tresses (and the back cover had her posing in lacy lingerie with a denim jacket over it!)

Before long, she was appearing everywhere in gravity defying dresses with strategic areas revealed such as her belly button or ribcage. Her hair got bigger and bigger and more and more obnoxious. (Hey, at least in this shot she was snuggled up to a then-slim, but ever hairy, Alec Baldwin.)

Finally, she went the distance and shot her hair out like possum fur, with the tips tinted dark! It was always a question: “What in the hell is Lisa Hartman going to wear and how outrageous will the hair be?” After marrying Clint Black, she started sporting far more demure looks and reverted to a darker shade for a lot of the time. In fact, for the past decade or two, she has demonstrated extreme GOOD taste in hair and her mane is surprisingly, impossibly, healthy considering what it went through before.

The opposite is true for our next star, Dyan Cannon. In the 1960s, Dyan had the most wonderfully thick, frosted head of long hair. It was off her face and looked like it would take two people to brush properly. As the late 70s came to pass, she went in for the feathery Farrah Fawcett type of hair and seemed hell bent on getting it as big and as full as was possible.

On the rare occasions that she wore it up, there was so much of it and it was so voluminous that she looked like her neck could snap from the weight of it. It began to overwhelm her! Between that and the fuzzy, fussy sweaters she enjoyed wearing, we were having trouble finding Dyan in all the mess.

It’s only gotten worse, though. For years now, she has clung to the long, curly, untamed, Cousin Itt style that obscures most of her (now heavily cosmetic surgery enhanced) features. Somewhere under all the crunchy, sticky curls is the Dyan Cannon we once knew, but good luck finding her. Someone needs to do an intervention.

Over the years, Mr. Burt Reynolds has shown off a wide, wide display of hairpieces. Some of them, and no I am not kidding, have actually looked really good on him (primarily the ones of a shorter variety with some grey flecks in them.) My least favorite of them all is this horror, a bouffant, curly, greasy-looking beast that looks like something a prematurely bald teen would wear if he were cast as Danny Zukko in his school’s production of Grease! Burt was not doing very well at this stage, what with his jaw injury and the soul-draining marriage to Loni, but fortunately he ditched this before too long. (PS-Why do Loni's tits look like the tan lady from There's Something About Mary??)

On the subject of Burt, I can’t resist this last one, even though the look was surely meant to reflect the character rather than the actress. When he made The Longest Yard (the original, natch!), prison inmate Burt had a love scene with the warden’s secretary, a woman with the most off the charts insane tower of hair since The Bride of Frankenstein!

And who was this blonde lovely who found herself unable to resist Mr. R’s charms? None other than the legendary Broadway diva Miss Bernadette Peters!! Now we know what it looks like when she opts to blow-dry and brush out those famously tight curls and it ain’t too pretty.

As you enter the holiday weekend, be careful, but have lots of fun! When in doubt, wig it! I’ll be back soon with yet another post about something related to the endlessly fascinating world of screen stars and their works.

"Poseidon" Droplets

Elsewhere on this blog I have mentioned the importance of The Poseidon Adventure to me, my childhood brain having been suitably warped by it during a TV viewing circa 1975. Today I will share a few more tidbits, pieces of trivia, photos and the like.

Based on a book of the same name by Paul Gallico, The Poseidon Adventure concerned the attempt at survival of 10 passengers whose cruise ship has been overturned by a tidal wave. The ship now being upside down, the people had to climb upwards to the “bottom” of the ship in order to meet any rescuers who might be there.

Inspiration for the novel came from a boat trip the author was on once in which the sea was so rough, it nearly capsized the ship! He envisioned what it would be like had that actually happened and worked from there.

The protagonist of the story, Reverend Scott, was portrayed in the book as a blonde, handsome, very athletic type of man (who went by the nickname “Buzz!”) With no harm intended to Gene Hackman, who did a wonderful job in the film, this is not exactly the way the character translated to the screen. Other character differences from the source novel include the following: Susan and Robin Shelby’s parents, Dick and Jane, were on board with them, not awaiting their arrival at the end destination. Nonnie was a chorus dancer, not a singer. The Rosens were delicatessen owners, not hardware store proprietors. Mr. Martin, far from being a lonely man, was having an affair with widow Wilma Lewis. Additional followers of the Reverend included ever-boozing Tony “The Beamer” Bates and his girlfriend Pamela, mild-mannered bookkeeper Mary Kinsdale and playboy Hubie Muller.

Linda Rogo, one of my favorite characters in the movie (played by Stella Stevens) was far more nasty and antagonistic in the book. She was basically irredeemable and when Irwin Allen asked Stevens to take the role, he emphatically asked her not to read the book, as he wanted the character to be less horrible. Stevens still had many snarky and mouthy lines, but was able to temper her characterization with unscripted bits of consideration and remorse.

Shelley Winters got miles of publicity out of the fact that she gained weight to play Belle Rosen. She claimed to have put on 30 pounds, though Carol Lynley was quoted shortly after as remarking that she “always weighed that much.” Truth is, though Winters did gain a bit of weight for the part, she nonetheless was padded further! This somewhat explains the bizarre goings on under her skirt during the underwater rescue sequence. See the attached picture of Winters showing off her true shape sans the padding that was usually under her dress.

Winters was taught to swim (and one can only imagine what else) by Johnny Weissmuller and so had no qualms about that aspect of her role. She did, however, burst an eardrum during filming. Most of the cast did his or her own stunt work whenever they could and that resulted in several injuries along the way. Carol Lynley was afraid of heights and so virtually all of her long shot scaffold scenes were performed by a double.

Though director Ronald Neame basically dismissed any notion of it as poppycock, the film unquestionably has Biblical overtones to it. He claims that they were merely setting out to make an entertaining adventure film and never gave any thought to symbolism. However, one look at Hackman carrying the overturned Christmas tree on his shoulder while disbelieving passengers look on is all anyone should need to see the obvious Christ/cross carrying imagery. The only way anyone in the movie can survive is to believe in the Reverend. Each survivor must endure a trial by fire and a baptism. Of course, the Reverend also makes the ultimate sacrifice in order to deliver his people to the promised land and still, only faith in what he was saying, will get them out.

Stevens’ character, an ex-prostitute in the film, has a sort of Mary Magdeline presence and is often shown with Hackman more than she is her own husband. Her husband, as portrayed by Ernest Borgnine, is an unyielding “Doubting Thomas” until finally being won over. Isaiah 11:6 contains the oft-used phrase “and a little child will lead them” and Reverend Scott continuously takes the advice of 10 year-old Robin Shelby regarding the escape route. People have occasionally complained that most of the people who survive the film are boring and colorless. “The meek shall inherit the Earth” anyone? (Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of a stretch!)

For all the success of the film and the rabid, cult-like following it has engendered, Hackman almost completely refuses to discuss it. Stevens says that he was and is miffed at the way his hair is styled (ratted up and teased into a comb-over) and has never gotten past it. Whatever the reason, he has never taken part in any of the many fan events or participated in interviews or extras prepared for cable or DVD. It should be noted, also, that he refused to play Lex Luthor as bald all of the time (or for even much of the time!) in the Superman movies, so perhaps Stevens is on to something with Gene and his hair…

Burt Lancaster had been offered the role initially, perhaps due to his Elmer Gantry-esque background, but turned it down. Other considerations include Sally Kellerman as Linda Rogo, Petula Clark as Nonnie and Esther Williams as Belle Rosen. The latter seems like a no-brainer, though there’s no way she could possibly have had the same impact that Winters ultimately did. Williams claimed in her autobiography that then-husband Fernando Lamas wouldn’t allow her to accept the part. Ms. Clark, by nixing the role, also passed up the chance to record what would have been another hit song for her, the Oscar-winning "The Morning After." (Clark also turned down Jacqueline Bisset's role in Airport, demonstrating either a supreme lack of or surplus of sense, depending on one's point of view!)

The whole message of the novel seems to have been shifted in preparation for the screen. For example, in the book, the surviving passengers, who followed the Reverend through every torturous obstacle, emerge half-naked, oil-soaked and almost dead from lack of oxygen only to find that other people have escaped from another location with barely a scratch or scuff! The film, however, firmly asserts that the only people to make it are the ones who steadfastly followed the Reverend’s commands. This does make for a far more heroic figure and reinforces that what the people went through was ultimately worth it.

Though I heartily recommend reading the book, it is a far darker tale involving vivid depictions of grime, gore, flatulence (yes!) and even rape and unexpected death. The two renditions, while inexorably bound, are not precisely the same tale in the end. They make interesting parallel treatments of the same basic story and compliment each other in some ways. Needless to say, I do NOT endorse the 2005 TV miniseries, nor the 2006 big screen remake, and, while the 1979 sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure is pathetically ridiculous, I can’t help but accept it as a hopeless orphan since it was the product of Irwin Allen and came to life in that glorious, but short lived, age of the all-star disaster film.