Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1921)

The way the hairdresser fixed it. Mary Got Her Hair Wet By ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS She did this herself. WE were sitting about a corner table at Sunset Inn. It was Photoplayers' night, and it was getting late. Suddenly there was a commotion near the door. People were craning their necks to see. We decided the place was pinched and began to think up phoney names. But we discovered that Mary Thurman had just come in. They were looking at her hair. One afternoon we were in the dressing room at the Alexandria. A crowd had gathered in one corner. Everybody was talking at once to some girl. We wondered if she had been drinking wood alcohol. She hadn't. It was .Mary Thurman. All the nice tea-drinking ladies were looking at — and talking about — her hair. On a Saturday afternoon a few days later we walked into the Ambassador for tea — Mary Thurman and I. Everybody turned around to stare. I wondered frantically if I had forgotten my petticoat. "It's only my hair," said Mary Thurman patiently. While the waiter disappeared on the quest of the orange pekoe, I examined this interesting hair. Some people are famous for one thing and some are famous for another. Mary Thurman is famous for a number of things including the way she used to look in a bathing suit. But it is chiefly her hair that makes you feel like you were riding in a circus parade, the way people act. It is very wonderful — that .hair. Xo wonder even Cecil deMille turned around to stare at it. (He did once. Mary told me so.) It is Paris. It is Egypt. It is Hollywood. It is the Italian Lakes. Whether or not it is beautiful, I do not know. To me it suggests Cleopatra barbered on Hollywood Boulevard. It is the last word in chic, in fashion. It is so startling it annoys, so gorgeous it allures. I don't like it a bit and I adore it. It is an Irishism. Maxfield Parrish designed the set and Lawrence Hope wrote the scenario for it. I looked at the other women near us — a debutante with fluffy golden curls, a Xew Yorker witli elaborate black coiffure under a drooping hat — marcels, bobs, puffs, rolls, curls, slicks, there were all types. Then I looked back at Mary Thurman's. (She had taken off her big white hat and flung it on a chair. It was very warm in the tea room.) It looked as simple, as natural, as restful as a wheat field. It is a rich deep red, with a sheen of pansy purple velvet. It has an alive-ness that makes you wonder if you would get an electric shock by touching it. Cut straight across at the nape of the neck, just below the ears, straight across in a long heavy bang on the forehead, it looked as smooth as whipped cream. Straight as an Indian boy's, it was as exhilarating as a rare perfume. And, oh, what a comfort. To run a comb and brush through your hair and have it done! It was a great idea, Mary Thurman's hair. And like most great ideas, it was born of a trifle and an accident: i. e. — Mary got her hair wet! She told me about it, touching each syllable in her funny, careful way, precisely and delicately. Her speech has a pedagogic flavor. " I went to the beach to swim one clay and I got my hair wet. It was just bobbed then and I kept it curled all over. I was terribly worried when I found I couldn't get it curled and had to go out that way, with it hanging straight. "When I came out, everybody piped up and said, 'Why, Mary Thurman, why don't you always wear your hair that way? It's so becoming and perfectly stunning.' "I decided to try it. When I got home, I just took the scissors and cut these bangs, trimmed it straight all around and — here I am. "Some people say it's great and some say it's terrible. But it's a great comfort. And it is unusual, isn't it?" I agreed. Whether it is too unusual to become a fashion, I don't know. I looked about and saw only one other woman in the crowd to whom I thought it would be becoming — a tall, dark girl in sport clothes, with very fine eyes. She is a strangely passive little person, Mary Thurman. But as you look at her you think of the old adage "Still water runs deep. " Fate has played some strange tricks on Miss Thurman, of Salt Lake City, — little Mary, the school teacher. Yes, she was a school teacher. I beg your pardon? Oh, but she was, a regular, honest to goodness school teacher. She is a graduate of the University of Utah. She married a college professor, too, when she was sixteen. But — they had, as Mary shyly confided, about as much in common as a rabbit and a boa constrictor. So they parted. {Continued on page 93) 35