Jump to content

The long and short on Lucy’s hair


Luvsbway

Recommended Posts

I’ll start a new thread for this separate from the photo thread.

 

So what is the longest and shortest we have seen Lucy’s hair? This Easy Living/Sorrowful Jones time might be one of the shortest (other than in her youth). It gets long again and goes through the ILL pilot pretty long and then by the time ILL premiers it’s back to short, but not super short. We then go through most of the 50’s with the poodle cut but with some length and get the artichoke cut again in the late 50’s returning it short. We get a brief bit of longer (real) hair in Facts of Life (mostly in the Mexico scenes) which I love because there is wave, but not too much curl. From then on it’s sort of hard to tell since there are so many wigs used. From what I have seen in candid shots and home movies (mostly from the HL disks) when you see Lucy’s natural hair it still is on the short side but I liked how she didn’t have too much curl and wore the layers longer. I wish she would have had the 60’s/70’s wigs styled more towards her own hair style. That LS Dean Martin wig was fab and made her look 10 years younger, and I liked the YMO hair too, but it boarded a little too much towards the ILL poodle cut with less curl. The updo worked pretty well too for making her look younger. Look at the final Emmy Award acceptance. Great hair for a formal event.

 

The long hair days. I think the longest I can track down is the dressing room scene in Duberry, but I wonder how much of that is Lucy’s? I compare it to Easy to Wed’s dressing room scene. In that one you can see her taking out extensions/falls, but it still looks long down the back. Were those all the extensions she took out? The publicity shots around the Duberry time show Lucy’s hair with more curl in (which effects length) and it doesn’t look like it can achieve the length she had in the dressing room scene. Granted in Duberry she had more of the hair straight, but then it flipped under at the bottom. The thing that makes me think it is all her’s is why would they go to such lengths to give her that color and then try to make it longer by only 2 inches with fake hair. Of course why did it look like everyone in the 40’s styled their hair with soup cans?

 

My favorite film to show off the 2 sides of her hair (at least in the 40’s) is Meet The People. Being MGM they were still putting her in the movie star, glamour girl parts. For the parts where she is the beautiful Broadway star we get the typical, styled to an inch 40’s hair. My favorite is the picnic scene in the park for how loose and flowing it was.

 

Much of Lucy’s hair in the 40’s was more loose and flowing with the exception of about all the MGM films. Where I really like it is when the curl is not too tight on it. You run the loose curl, tight curl thing pretty well in Dance, Girl, Dance. The hula number and the burlesque numbers is the more loose curl which works so well for those “sell the sex” scenes. The tight curl comes in the scene where she comes back to see Judy as Tiger Lilly. But then in Too Many Girls she is back to the tighter curl again. It meets a happy medium in A Girl, A Guy and A Gob and Look Who’s Laughing.

As for the 30’s hair I love anytime Lucy does not have bangs, the side part is so stylish. I like this style more anytime she has darker hair, like in Panama Lady. In Facts of Life where Lucy comes out to meet Bob to go fishing, she has a hat on and long hair. The hat pushes her bangs back and she looks so much like she did in the 30’s.

 

So Irma wanted Lucy to have shorter hair in the 50’s and Lucy wanted it longer. Who came up with having it permed so much. This seems like the longest time in her life that she keeps a perm on the tighter side. Was it that her look was becoming so identified with the character that you could not change it? Look at “No Children Allowed”. That style was similar to how she would wear it off-screen as can be seen on the Life cover. Who’s decision was it to take it back to that poodle cut? Seems like they were trying something different. Was this another network decision like in the 60’s when the LS Dean Martin wig gets axed? I think Lucy starts to experiment with length starting in the LDCH Celebrity Next Door episode, as even though she has that poodle cut going, it seems a lot shorter then when we saw it in the previous episode. The bun in back is a lot shorter. I wonder if this was a trial run to go full short for the next time?

 

So when was your favorite non wig style of Lucy’s hair?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 56
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Just like Jennifer Anniston started a LOOK with her hair on Friends . . . Lucy had started years before, decades before with her special hairstyle for ILL, which she then continued with her famous cut for The Lucy show which i have on my avatar. Everybody knows that after THAT cut, Lucy could never top it, well, i'm inclined to think that she did, temporarily with her longer hairstyle for the Dean Martin episode of The Lucy Show. Apparently it was the CBS brass that did not like it, probably as they feared they'd have to change all those posters, letterheads and everything else that featured her iconic LOOK. Well, she should have ignored them and kept it going as it made her look years younger.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, i too loved the Yours mine and ours hair and when she'd put it up, all elegant for the Emmys. Never have i seen a woman with more hairstyles and clothes in all those pictures, i love what somebody else said on another thread that she was after all, a former model and knew how to walk, and she looked so different from one photo shoot to the other and hair was a big part of that. I remember in one Lucy book, maybe Loving Lucy, that they show the one time i hated her hairstyle, it was a forties LOOK that did not suit her. Sometimes, i wasn't even sure it was her if she differentiated from her usual LOOK.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

So it's bugged me for a while that I knew that Lucy had to have a fall in this scene from Dubarry, her hair was never that long. I've finally got proof. This was up for auction in 2010 and sold for almost $3000. Here is the description:

 

The beautiful fiery red wig, made from human hair and hand-tied, was worn by the iconic comedienne in the 1944 musical slapstick Du Barry Was A Lady. The wig includes the studio storage box as well as the wig stock record card. The black cardboard wig box is studio-labeled: "493, ¾ Fall, Tech. Red 7", L. Ball" on the front. The wig stock index card reads "Stock No. 493, Original Player: Lucille Ball, Description: Tech. Red. ¾ Fall, Prod. #1266" in typed text, along with pencil and pen note markings. The box's entire left cover side edge missing, the right corner side edge is broken. The cover is also a bit warped. The box is in Fair condition and the wig and the record card are in Fine condition. From The MGM Wig Archive.wig5.jpg

 

wig.jpg

 

wig2.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They must've really brushed those curls out to look the way Lucy's hair did and age just brought the curls back together. The back/long part was very Lauren Bacall. The brushed out free curl that Lauren rocked for a long time. Those curls are rolled over night and brushed with a fine tooth brush or a comb afterwards to get that unified look. The top curls and the victory rolls on the side had to be Lucy's hair.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, I watched it the other night and what I can figure out is the the top curls were her's and what they did on the sides was the victory roll thing because it looks like a lot of hair to make those. The they must have tucked Lucy's shorter back portion under the fall. You can see the fall come down over the back of her head. It's amazing the work because it all looks like her hair. In Best Foot Forward the hair is up the whole time but the additional fake piece they gave her doesn't quite match. This fall is perfect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They must've really brushed those curls out to look the way Lucy's hair did and age just brought the curls back together. The back/long part was very Lauren Bacall. The brushed out free curl that Lauren rocked for a long time. Those curls are rolled over night and brushed with a fine tooth brush or a comb afterwards to get that unified look. The top curls and the victory rolls on the side had to be Lucy's hair.

Oh, wow, look at that, YOUR avatar pic is of Lucy in Yours mine and whozitz, ain't it? Just noticed that!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, I watched it the other night and what I can figure out is the the top curls were her's and what they did on the sides was the victory roll thing because it looks like a lot of hair to make those. The they must have tucked Lucy's shorter back portion under the fall. You can see the fall come down over the back of her head. It's amazing the work because it all looks like her hair. In Best Foot Forward the hair is up the whole time but the additional fake piece they gave her doesn't quite match. This fall is perfect.

Do you have the great book by Tom Watson and Bart Andrews, FOREVER LUCY? Check out pages 20 and 21 for her best hair look and her worst. She looks absolutely gorgeous in the one similar to the one posted here, all curls in the back and so well placed, BUT, the one before it is that ugly 50's style housewifey horror that I hope to God she did not use again after this pic disaster.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

There is another name for her hair?

 

Original caption: A preview of 1960 hairstyling is given by Lucille Ball (right), who will debut her French import coif, the "Renoir," on Westinghouse Desilu Christmas TV special December 25th (CBS-TV, 9-10 P.M. EST). Frances Martin, also in the show, wears 1959 hairdo model, the "Amalfi" bob, an Italian boycut.

 

 

hair5.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...