The Beavers of Broadway

The Two Men in the restaurant booth studied the dark-bearded one who had just entered. He was Robert St. John, the commentator and newspaper correspondent. Then one of the men left the booth, approached St. John and said, "Beg your pardon, sir; but my friend insisted that I ask you why you wear a beard."

Mr. St. John stared at the stranger, and replied, "Tell your friend that it's none of his business."

"Ah, but it is his business," the stranger said. "My friend is the president of the Gillette Safety Razor Company, and if this is a trend he'd like to know about it."

There are others, of course, in addition to barbers, cultists and manufacturers of razors, blades and shaving cream, to whom such a trend would be of vital concern. Advertising agencies, whose staffs usually include a Vice-President-in-Charge-of-Studying-Trends, would deem it a matter of serious professional importance.

Burl Ives' agreement to endorse a popular brand of cigarettes was canceled when the photograph which he submitted for use in the testimonial display showed the minstrel wearing a beard. "A beaver!" was the lament of the account executive. "Sorry, but we can't use a bearded man in a testimonial for a cigarette. A man with a beard always looks as if he'd really prefer a pipe."

When Sir Ralph Richardson co-starred in the movie version ofThe Heiress, he played the role wearing a full-grown beard. The advertisements, however, showed him clean-shaven. Paramount Pictures' advertising executives decided that whenever moviegoers see a bearded actor in a film advertisement, they assume it's a period picture and avoid the box office like the plague.

Hollywood's advertising experts recognize only two exceptions to this dictum. The first applies to Biblical films. Movie audiencesexpect to see Biblical figures sporting facial brush. Hence, the ads forSamson and Delilah showed Victor Mature wearing a beard, although in the movie he performed clean-shaven.

The other exception is Monty Woolley, whose white beard became an established trademark both on Broadway and in the movie capital. Woolley grew the beard long before he was catapulted into fame playing the title role in Kaufman and Hart'sThe Man Who Came to Dinner. From the day he determined to forego shaving, he urged his friends to enlist with him on a crusade: "It's our way of defying women, by raising something which they cannot do, outside of a circus."

Lloyd's of London insured Mr. Wool-

ley's beard against destruction by "fire, theft, hail or tornado," for $5000. Both the appraised value and the unique character of Woolley's whiskers were diminished, in a measure, at a party he gave at the Ritz-Carlton in honor of his friend, college classmate and sponsor, Cole Porter. The songwriter came to the party escorting a lady who wore a long, gray and real beard – an exact duplicate of Monty's.

Woolley's name continuously showed up on the guest list for the annual Christmas party given by Hermann Oelrichs for the leading citizens of New York and Newport. Some of the guests insisted that Mr. Oelrichs was so preoccupied with party details that he never really noticed the people who came to his soirees. The actor decided to test this assertion: shortly before hewas due at Mr. Oelrichs' home, Wool-ley gilded his beard. Then he went to the party, greeted his host and received a perfunctory reply.

Monty engaged Oelrichs in conversation, and almost stabbed the party-giver with his beard, but Oelrichs seemed unaware of it and merely asked, "Drink?" Woolley demanded, snappily, a Scotch highball, then shouted, "Hermann, don't you notice anything different about me?"

"Yes. You've gilded your beard," said Oelrichs, calmly pouring the Scotch. "Do you take soda or plain water?"

It was in the Champagne Room of EI Morocco that a patron who was intrigued by the actor's whiskers asked him, "Mr. Woolley, what are you doing wearing that beard?" Monty, who had leading roles in three movies to his credit, replied: "What am I doing wearing this beard, you ask? Making considerably more money than you are, my good man – that's what I'm doing wearing this beard."

The trend, if any, toward beards also was of professional concern to Judge Ferdinand Pecora. In a lecture to law students on practical hints in practicing law students on practical hints in practicing Judge Pecora advised them: "Never, but never, accept a bearded man as a juror." The budding Black-stones paid careful heed to the former Assistant District Attorney and Justice of the Supremen Court of the State of New York, who won national fame as counsel to a Senate subcommittee which exposed and effected reforms in the banking practices of Wall Street. "A man with a beard," Pecora told them, "is an individualist – and that's an undesirable trait when you're trying to get unanimity from 12 men."

One rapt listener asked if this admonition would include mustache-wearers. No, said the veteran court practitioner, a mustache is not necessarily an expression of individuality (continued on page 62) Beavers of broadway(continued from page 26) although sometimes it may be over-curled and overlong like the Terrible Turk's, or overwaxed and oververtical like Salvador Dali's. Those are exceptional cases, where hair is employed in lieu of a neon sign, to attract attention to the wares.

Unlike a beard, a mustache usually expresses a desire to conform, to correct or distract from fancied imperfections in facial symmetry, or to balance a deficiency in the semblance of dignity and maturity. In fact, the mustache is so commonplace that often its presence is hardly noticed.

Reginald Gardiner's soup strainer was evident in every scene of The Show Is On, except the Hamlet sketch – where heavy make-up was applied over his mustache to make it invisible. Yet no one ever commented on this on-again, off-again, on-again mystery. Eddie DeLange, the songwriter-bandleader, once won a $50 bet that he could shave off the left side of his mustache and nobody, in the dozen nightclubs he visited before dawn, would mention that half his cookie duster was missing.

The fact that a mustache is a sometime thing, a temporary habit born of whim, a doodle of little consequence, was recognized by Groucho Marx when he was invited to endorse a brand-name toothpaste. He was assured that, in return, his photo would appear in every railroad and subway station in the land.

"No, thank you," Groucho said. "I already have a mustache."

When Russel Grouse embarked on a long cruise to Europe, he decided that a mustache would make him look like a Pulitzer Prize playwright, which he is. After six weeks of careful cultivation of his upper lip, he abandoned the project in Naples, because he discovered that most of the local belles had mustaches thicker than his.

After Judge Pecora, in his lecture, had successfully dismissed the matter of mustaches, a law student asked if the jurist's warning against selecting bearded men as jurors would apply to monocle-wearers as well. "That question is academic," Pecora said. "Any man who'd wear a monocle into a courtroom obviously is trying to avoid jury duty. Besides, he couldn't qualify anyway, because he's probably not an American."

But some American men do wear monocles. George Jessel has been sporting one for the past 10 years. He insists that it saves him a good deal of time, when his photo is about to be taken: "I use a monocle because only my left eye is weak. If I wore eyeglasses, I'd have to tell the cameraman to wait until I took them off. This way, I either drop the monocle or turn my profile, and the monocle isn't in the picture." Mr. Jessel takes pride in his monocle because he feels it enhances his program to be accepted slowly but surely as another George Arliss.

Jessel was taught the proper way of wearing a monocle by the world's foremost practitioner, Charles Coburn. "All you have to do, George," said Mr. Coburn, "is imagine that the sun is always shining in one eye." Neither the monocle nor his distinguished bearing was sufficient, however, to get Mr. Coburn past the headwaiter's rope at Chicago's elegant Pump Room. The film star wasn't wearing a tie. He'd gone to the Pump Room during a train stopover, en route from New York to Hollywood. The headwaiter offered him a tie. "Thank you," Mr. Coburn said, pointing to his monocle, "but isn't this formal enough?"

No, neither a monocle nor a mustache expresses the same assertion of individuality as a beard. At best they are timid, half-hearted efforts – a dipping of the toe into the pool before daring to make the full plunge.

John Steinbeck took this plunge a few weeks before he was introduced to Ernest Hemingway at the 21 Club. A mutual friend saw the two bearded novelists at the same table and asked Hemingway: "Why the beard?" Mr. Hemingway, who'd grown it as protection for his sensitive skin against the sunburn acquired on his fishing trips, replied: "Obviously, to cover a rash."

Mr. Steinbeck then was asked: "Why the beard?" He answered: "Obviously, an affectation." The truth, however, was that Steinbeck started to grow a beard the day an obstetrician informed him that he was about to become a father. He suspected that his wife might become self-conscious if people began noticing her approaching motherhood. "I grew the beard," he confided, "so that people would stare at me instead of at her."

When Steinbeck's son was born, the author distributed cigars, then went to a barbershop and had his beard shaved off. He grew a second beard while awaiting the birth of his second son. Steinbeck raised no other children, but he did raise a third beard, last year. He shaved it, after a month. "I found out," he said, "that when you're at a nightclub or restaurant table where everyone asks for the check, the waiter always gives it to the one with the beard."

Gerald Kersh, the British novelist, has always steeled himself against comments about his dark beard. In Lindy's one night a man who walked by Kersh's table asked, "Say, what's with that beard?" Kersh eyed him coldly, and replied, "Sir, would you have said that to Abraham Lincoln?"

One night, at a supper party in New York, Kersh was seated at the same table with Al Hirschfeld, the bearded artist. They glanced at each other with curiosity at first, the way two duckbill platypuses would in a hutch of rabbits – outnumbered, but instinctively recognizing the feature which set them apart from the others. Kersh spoke first, stating that he had just been invited by the New York Post to review a book about beards. Hirschfeld said that the Christian Science Monitor had asked him to review the very same tome.

Kersh then added that he was busy writing his own book. "So am I," said Hirschfeld. The Englishman suddenly called to a waiter to bring him a glass of water, so that he could swallow some pills. "I've had malaria," he explained. Hirschfeld nodded, sympathetically, and said, "I've had malaria too. Got it in the South Seas."

Kersh glared at him, then took a dime from his pocket, placed it between his teeth and, with thumb and molars, bent the coin in two. This feat is Kerch's specialty and has produced more loosened teeth – among envious competitors in bars all over the world – than Jack Dempsey ever did in his prime. Hirschfeld studied the bent coin, and said, "Mr. Kersh, if there's been a contest going on between us, you win."

Kersh writes his stories by dictating them to his wife, who records his words in shorthand and then types them. Sometimes, while waiting for his wife's typing to catch up with his prolific thoughts, the novelist trims his beard or shaves it off completely. This temporarily satisfies his whims but presents a problem when he travels and has to submit identity papers to the immigration and customs officials. Kersh therefore carries an old and a new passport: one shows him with a beard, the other shows him clean-shaven.

Hirschfeld's passport shows him bearded, of course. A few years ago he accompanied S. J. Perelman on a trip around the world, gathering material for two books on which they later collaborated. During the long cruise across the Pacific, on a slow boat, Perelman started to grow a beard while, simultaneously, Hirschfeld trimmed his own beard daily. By the time they reached the first foreign port and submitted their passports as identification, the immigration officials were somewhat bewildered at seeing Hirschfeld cleanshaven and his beard apparently transferred to Perelman.

Hirschfeld lives in a private house on E. 95th Street, where his bearded influence is so dominant that the block has become the only Amish-looking community in Manhattan. June Havoc and her husband, Bill Spier, bought a (concluded overleaf)

Beavers of Broadway

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house on that street, and soon Mr. Spier grew a beard. Maria and Bill Riva, the Alfred Drakes and Viveca Lindfors and her playwright-husband, George Tabori, bought homes on that block and all the men promptly grew beards too.

Alfred Drake grew his to simplify his make-up problem when he starred in Kismet. It is traditional in the theatre that actors who ordinarily shave twice a day to present a well-groomed appearance never hesitate about sprouting the scraggliest of beards, once they're told that it will enhance their performance on-stage.

Charles Boyer first became a star in Paris, in roles written for him by Henry Bernstein, the late playwright. Even when Bernstein was in his seventies he fancied himself the romantic equal of any of the matinee idols he employed. Once, however, his confidence was shaken by a lady he was wooing: she expressed admiration for Monsieur Boyer, who was busy rehearsing in a Bernstein play. The playwright took protective measures. He told Boyer: "Charles, I want you to grow a beard for this role."

In the ensuing weeks the young star never shaved, and his handsome face soon was masked by an itchy, unattractive bush. On the day the play was scheduled to open, Bernstein's romance with the lady had run its natural course and he was concentrating his attentions upon another beauty. Two hours before the premiere, when he no longer was concerned with possible competition from his star, he told Boyer, "Shave the beard, my dear Charles. It's really not necessary for the plot or the characterization."

Peter Ustinov grew a beard for his starring role in the play he wrote, Romanoff and Juliet, and cultivated it – not only for its realistic effect but also because it served a useful family purpose. "Whenever I lean over my son's crib or carriage, he grabs my beard and lifts himself up," said Ustinov. "My beard helps strengthen my baby's back."

When the color photograph accompanying this treatise was being taken, Ustinov was carrying on a running conversation with his table partner, Commander Whitehead, president of Schweppes. Ustinov said, "You know, just as there are different shapes and varieties of beards – Van Dykes, Dundrearies, etc. – so there are historically contoured beards. Take mine; it is so late-Victorian that a great uncle of mine whom I had never seen, upon coming on me unexpectedly in a Paris street, was so stricken by my resemblance to his great uncle, only because of the shape of my beard, that he almost had a seizure right then and there. He thought he was seeing a ghost, a Victorian ghost. Now, Commander, take your beard. It's absolutely Elizabethan, and I don't doubt that it influences your behavior in that direction. In fact, I think it would look the cat's whiskers above a ruff."

On the day Orson Welles started rehearsing his ill-fated production of Five Kings, he and his co-stars, Burgess Meredith and John Emery, began to cultivate beards for this period production. Tallulah Bankhead knew that the venture had been canceled when, one evening, her husband at that time, John Emery, came home clean-shaven. Tallulah felt the temporary loss of her husband's employment was compensated for, in a way, by the disappearance of the beaver to which she was constitutionally allergic.

Tallulah's aversion to beards was further expressed in a Broadway supper club where she was introduced to James Mason, who was wearing a beard. When the waiter asked for her order, Tallulah glanced at Mr. Mason's facial decoration, then said, "One ham sandwich, one coffee – and one razor, please."

Kenny Bowers, a young singer, signed a contract with Columbia Records last year. Bowers, whose hair is red, grew a red goatee before his first recording session, which met with the full approval of Mitch Miller, the bearded head of the popular music division of Columbia Records. "Kenny's beard is an added advantage," Mr. Miller said. "If he fails with his first record, we can change his name, cut off his beard – and try again with a new face."

John Vandercook, the bearded commentator, wisely decided to do away with his facial shrubbery as soon as his broadcasts were sponsored by the electric razor division of Remington Rand. "Frankly," he shrugged, "my pointed beard was not at all becoming. When I wore a straw hat, it made me look like a thumbtack."

Franchot Tone's family wealth, plus his own Hollywood savings, gave him security enough to be able to keep his beard in the face of commercial pressures. Tone grew the beaver last season for his off-Broadway performance in Uncle Vanya, and fell in love with it. Then he was offered a coveted role as leading man on TV's Playhouse 90, but a role which would require him to shave his beard. He rejected the offer and said he'd wait until the producers of the program had a bearded part for him. A few weeks later the TV producers found a bearded role, and Tone played it with whiskers intact.

But it was Ernest Hemingway who uttered the definite statement expressing man's measure of devotion to a beard. It was in Havana, during his visit aboard the yacht owned by Billy Leeds, heir to a tin-plate fortune. Leeds commented on Hemingway's beard, and said, "If I got four members of my crew to hold you down, while my barber cut your beard off, what would you do?" Leeds had his finger on the buzzer which would summon the crew.

Ernest Hemingway drew his knife, and calmly replied, "I would kill them."

A pride of bristling beavers hoists the bubbly at Sardi's. Left to right: publicity poobah Jim Moran, Schweppesman Commander Edward Whitehead, musical director Lennie Hayton, record exec–band leader Mitch Miller, humorist Arthur Kober, actor-playwright Peter Ustinov, editor-critic Leo Lerman, author Gerald Kersh, caricaturist Al Hirschfeld and conductor of West Side Story Max Goberman.