Heads Up, Redheads–You’re It; Heads Down, Blonds–For Dyeing!

September 1, 1940

HOLLYWOOD—Calling all blonds—golden, peroxide or platinum! Better hurry up and dye those golden tresses red, sister—or else you shortly may find your coiffeur as out of date as pigtails and schoolgirl curls.

And don’t forget, when painting your lips, to give them fuller and more generous lines to create the effect of a larger mouth.

These are the latest of hints from Screenland’s beauty experts, whose make-up creations not only set hair and facial styles for the glamor gals of the screen but also the working gals who go to the movies to see them.

The days of the blonds are numbered, they say, not only on the screen but also on the street. It’s the redheads who are setting the fashions.

“We are getting away from various blond types for the Screen and swinging over to red hair,” said Walter Pearce, who has just assumed direction of the 20th Century-Fox makeup department after five years of beauty study abroad.

“There is so much more life in red hair than in any other color—so many more highlights and shadows for beautiful photography that are not present in blonds or brunets.”

For screen work, Pearce has recommended use of red wigs when they are more practical or when an actress without naturally auburn tresses prefers not to resort to dye.

Trends in lip beauty definitely have swung to the creation of a fuller and more generous mouth effect, said Pearce, in revealing that there virtually are no actresses today whose natural mouth curvature is not completely painted over to give it an entirely different and photogenic effect.

“Mouths of all actresses, as seen on the screen, are decidedly much bigger than they were ten years ago and have much more character,” said Pearce, “than when the trend ran toward those awful cupid-bows. Large mouths always photograph better than small ones.”

As for eyebrows, Pearce says to select a curvature style best suited to your own particular type of beauty—but don’t overdo it.

Full Glamour

The makeup style of that era was matching–wearing the same color lipstick as nail polish. This was the result of a marketing scheme introducted by Revlon to double sales.

But 1940s glamour went beyond lipstick and nail polish to hair. It was complete glamour. 1940s hairstyles are indeed still considered some of the most glamorous evening hair designs today.

Short bob hairstyles of the 1930s were gone; women typically had long side-parted styles in the 1940s with beautiful hairlines.