Beards, Boards & Brushes

When Hemingway Biographer A. E. Hotchner showed up for a party in Manhattan last New Year's Eve, his hostess did a double take at his bushy new mustache, then decided on drastic measures. Recalls Hotchner with a wince: "She ripped it off the moment I walked in. " That could have been a moment of pain for "Hotch,"except that the mustache was a phony, held in place by a coating of spirit gum. Undaunted, he has sported his brush on several occasions since. "It's a great comfort when you're feeling low," he says. "It's as restorative as a Bloody Mary when you have a great hangover."

Hotchner, 48, is typical of a host of depilated dandies who are discovering that it can be fun to switch images by pasting on mustaches, sideboards* and beards. Sometimes, for the complete transformation, they slip on long-haired, hippie-style wigs as well. Manhattan's Hollywood Joe's Hair Piece Co., one of the nation's leading suppliers of fake facial foliage made from human hair, is now shipping out 2,800 beards, boards and brushes weekly, and orders from the Midwest run second only to those from New York.

Paste-On & Bristle. Artificial hair is answering a variety of needs. Ernest Ferguson, a barber in Fort Wayne, Ind., reports that he gets orders for sideboards from college boys who can't grow their own. Students who play in rock groups but who either don't want to grow long hair or are prevented by school regulations from doing so find that pop-on wigs are essential. "We wouldn't be hired if we looked cleancut and normal," says Don Gabler, a Brooklyn College senior who plays in a trio known as The Brooklyn Dodgers. "The minute we stop playing," adds fellow Dodger Elliott Dombroff, "the wigs come off."

Come sundown, businessmen who wouldn't be caught dead in the office with anything but a clean-shaven face add paste-ons for a bristling night on the town. "It's strictly for evening wear, for theater and discotheques," says Dr. Allan Lazar, 30-year-old Manhattan periodontist, describing his new mustache and goatee. Sybil Burton Christopher reckons that at least half of the popular Pancho Villa or Zapata mustaches seen in her Manhattan discotheque, Arthur, are phonies. Narcotics agents regard hoked-up hairiness as an invaluable aid in infiltrating hippie drug circles, and servicemen feel an added hank of hair increases chances that the weekend pass will be completed. According to one mother, her son and all his friends at Fort Sill, Okla., have ordered mustaches and beards by mail.

Falsies have even been responsible for saving marriages. One young Los Angeles husband tried three times to grow a beard, and three times he had to shave it off because his wife hated it when she kissed him. Now that the husband has finally compromised with a part-time mustache, all is bliss.

*As a mod variant for cheek whiskers, the term sideboards is not that new. As early as 1890, it was used as a more graphic synonym for sideburns, named after the Civil War's Union General Ambrose Everett Burnside.

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