This practice was especially egregious in the 70′s. Shag haircuts for every century! Bellbottoms in decades past. Period TV shows were even worse. M*A*S*H and Happy Days were terrible at period hair and style.

Happy Days gave up after only about two seasons. Everyone simply looked and dress like they did in the seventies after that. On MASH, a favorite of mine, Mike Farrell’s moustache and Loretta Swit’s hair were ridiculously out of the period. I mean, Swit had it feathered out and blown dry every episode, sporting a Farrah Fawcett do… in 1952!

What I see too often are movies, especially those taking place in World War II, where the actors don’t bother to get military haircuts, or at least more appropriate for the period trimmings.

I would cut Game of Thrones and others who show nice white teeth a little slack. I’ve been in some of the wildest places in the world like South Sudan – a place with no dentists or doctors – and you come across tall, handsome people with beautiful white teeth (especially when they are young). They are the strong and healthy survivors from a brutal situation with very high infant mortality. It comes from having diets consisting solely of beef and milk. They don’t have access to civilized things like refined sugar. So it is entirely possible that a Wilding would be tall and straight with good teeth. Now an inhabitant of the slums of King’s Landing would probably be pretty awful looking.

Peter, I love how in Stripes everyone gets a crew cut except Ramos and Murray, who simply get shorter hair but still pretty bushy for new recruits.

Manfred, good points and an interesting bit of info. Definitely easier to accept with younger characters. As for older, I know from my own experience (and I’ve got plenty of access to dentists) at a certain age, the teeth get troublesome. Most of the older characters, especially the very old ones, should be effectively toothless, since there is no bridgework or dentures.

Mainly though, I think, like the other examples, the present day is infused into it (the styles, the look, even the dress). Probably tougher to see right now since we’re in the day it’s being made but I bet in twenty or thirty years it’ll be obvious that Game of Thrones was made in the teens.

Great article; one of the most recent examples of not-the-right-era stylings was done on purpose, for effect: Bruce Dern’s
character in “Django Unchanged” wearing 21st century yellow sunglasses.
My mind jumps around-in Tony Richardson’s 1965 classic “The Loved One” there’s a scene where a hairstyle is pointed out to show how ‘modern’ the character is: Robert Morse is questioned by James Coburn as to whether his haircut is a “Beatles” cut. Morse responds that it is simply a British cut.
That defines the era in which it was made pretty clearly.
I think I might watch it again today-Rod Steiger’s Mr. Joyboy always makes me grin.
It might be just me, but Doris Day always seemed to wear the same hair style no matter the decade in which her films were set.
Or maybe she just made it all look good.

Oh Boy, is this a great topic. I have had chuckles over this for years! My, what straight, white teeth you have, poor oprhan child on the streets of London in the early 1800′s. And the hair never getting tangled or oily looking. I want that hair! I don’t think the latest incarnation of the Robin Hood movie was too far off, but still, I was amazed at the wonderful hair. I can understand the teeth though, to a degree. Stars are not going to let you pull their teeth out for any role! There is a tv series called Cadfael, that is set in the 1100′s, and aside from the somewhat decent teeth, hands and finger nails and feet (in rope sandals on dirt streets!)are dirty when they need to be, Leprosy looks quite convincing, and clothes look sufficiently tatty. Or how about original Star Trek. Those hair styles and costumes came right out of the 60′s…nothing futuristic about them!

Doug – That song that Rod Steiger sings to his mom in The Loved One, when he brings in the food, is my favorite scene in the whole movie.

Heidi – I love the go-go skirts, boots and beehives in the original Star Trek. Yeoman Rand in particular looked so far removed from the future it’s laughable. And Chekhov had the perfect Beatle’s/British haircut. The 23rd century sure looks like the sixties.

One of the most egregious examples of this phenomenon is Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco, where the fashion an hairstyles are so ’90s it hurts. I mean, Kate Beckinsale basically has the “Rachel,” and Chris Eigeman looks like this: http://www.thecobrasnose.com/images8/LDODalicedes.jpg

In “Prince Valiant”, Janet Leigh wears a bullet bra under her medieval gowns. That whole movie is packed with howlers, and yet remains enjoyable on a non-ironic level. Aside from the villainous James Mason, the whole cast is so outrageously American Robert Wagner comes off pretty well.

Chekov, in Star Trek, looked especially like the fifth Beatle in his earlier episodes. They overcut Walter Koenig’s hair and had to throw a wig on him.

“That song that Rod Steiger sings to his mom in The Loved One, when he brings in the food, is my favorite scene in the whole movie.”
Greg,it is the highlight for me,also, including the little story that he tells about the dream he had. I’m definitely watching it tonight.
Bye the bye, one of the other highlights for me was the beautiful
Anjanette Comer. And John Gielgud’s performance. And I’d better stop now.

DBenson- Well of course! They’re not going to waste Technicolor on dirt and grime! Oh…and Janet Leigh and Debra Paget are quite stunning in that movie too. I’m glad they didn’t grime them up.

>The 23rd century sure looks like the sixties.

But hair in the 1960s looked rather like the 1860s, showing that styles do return. So who knows, maybe the future WILL look like the past.

My biggest problem with Game of Thrones is all those characters north of the Wall without a hat. (I understand-we want to see the actors-but given they are actually filming in Iceland, you’d think SAG would demand hardship pay.)

how about movies where they get it right?…TCM’s upcoming showing of Hard Times,Bronson,Coburn,Martin,and Ireland all had the depression era look down pat…even the fringe characters and extras added to the atmosphere…not a shag cut in sight

And let’s not forget, my favorite, Funny Girl!!! YE GODS. Barbra in exquisite 60′s STRAIGHTENED hair. Where’s the fingerwave??? And 20,000 BC with Raquel W. in her fave Brigette Bardot tousled bedhead do. The list goes ON AND ON. Natalie Wood in, well, virtually every period movie, from Gypsy to Splendor in the Grass. WHY WHY WHY??? It drives me NUTS! Thanks for letting me vent. I have to go set my hair on soup cans now. Kay

OH, and Robert Redford in…you name it! Sundance Kid, The Way We Were(n’t), etc. …Okay, I’m done now. But may I just add Barbra S.’s fingernails in Way We Were. ARGH!

I think maybe Yul Brynner had it all figured out.

My complaint, other than Happy Days not looking very 1950s, was Little House on the Prairie. I read and re-read those books in my youth and Pa Ingalls was described as having bushy hair, cut short on the sides, longer on the top, and he always, always, always had a beard and mustache. When Michael Landon appeared as Pa, I was so disappointed! No beard, just that Mod-hair Ken doll style of hair guys wore in the 70s.

Military movies also get it wrong a lot; the background soldiers with no lines get the proper haircuts, but usually not the stars.

“The Group” (1966), about eight women who graduate Vassar in 1933, is interesting since the leading actresses look very 1966 while the lesser characters often are 100% accurate to the period.
Speaking of the 60s-Audrey Hepburn’s ultra 60s hair & makeup at the ball in “My Fair Lady” always irritates.

I love the 60s westerns, where just about every woman is sporting frosted lipstick and eyeshadow. And of course they don’t wear bonnets so they can show off that fresh from the beauty parlor hair.

Who knew that beauticians and stylists were the first pioneers on the Oregon Trail?

But hair in the 1960s looked rather like the 1860s, showing that styles do return. So who knows, maybe the future WILL look like the past.

Well, anything’s possible.

With Game of Thrones, I thought the same thing. Everyone who lives north of the wall has hoods on their coats but the men of the night watch, who are in the same cold most of the time, have none. Odd.

Devlin, Mad Men gets it right. Not only do the characters sport hairdos appropriate to the period, but the less youthfully conscious Don Draper keeps his fifties clean cut look while the younger guys are growing sideburns and wearing flashier clothes.

Yes! I too have felt the same way watching both classic and modern films and TV shows!! Ugh! I love most of them anyway.. especially if they are fictional settings as opposed to strictly historical and non-fiction settings. “Dr. Zhivago” is a tough movie for me to say I love it or hate it. Hate is too strong. It has flaws. Julie Christie is gorgeous!!! I envy her looks! Sure, who wouldn’t? My friend, Natasha, who is from Siberia, Russia, says Julie actually looks like a Russian girl. That’s good enough for me. Ok. This too clean look– yes, I know everything from Errol Flynn’s “Robin Hood” and pirate flicks to a plethora of old Westerns, his and other old timey ones. Love them, but so squeaky clean! And those hair styles and costumes would make the lead characters targets to get their butts kicked just like poor Marty McFly in “Back to the Future III”. Which is my favorite of the series. On the subject of Westerns, I think some of time “Gunsmoke” and “Rawhide” had fairly convincing cowboys- sure they had the likes of Ben Johnson and L.Q. Jones,who were real cowboys!! Ok,later there was “Dr. Quinn:Medicine Woman”, “Peacemakers”(short-lived,but good),and now “Hell on Wheels” on AMC. There is a lot of blood,sweat and tears on those shows! Not as fakey as previous Westerns have been. So I like them better. That and they have gorgeous Natives who I’m related too. Alas,that is another subject for another time. Adios amigos!

It always makes me laugh to see how tidy and wellkempt people generally look in Fifties westerns, (Shane being the big exception. Like they just stepped out of a Western Outfit store after having a haircut. Suits you, sir!
Thankfully the Italians came up with the now standard grimy look; Leone sure did his research.

While watching a documentary about the making of Tombstone, the filmmakers were discussing the research they did on the clothing of the period. They stated that not everything they wore was brown. People liked to wear colors. In a big, bustling town like Tombstone people would get cleaned up and dress up in their best clothes for a night on the town. Not everything was drab and dreary and grimy, like in Leone’s westerns and almost every western made since the late 60′s. I prefer 50′s westerns. The amount of grime, or lack of it, is not as important as the story being told, and in my mind there was no better decade for western stories than the 1950′s.

@robbushblog: Each to his own; i prefer the Italian movies to 50′s Westerns, but this blog does deal with the look of movies, not so much the stories.But even in that respect i prefer the grit of 60′s Westerns. And i simply can’t believe that in the Old West people looked so well scrubbed at all times, as in most 50′s westerns. IMO it much more reflects the 1950′s rather than the 1850′s.

i guess the 50′s westerns,Shane included…could be explained by them slicking their hair back with bacon grease,or in Van Heflin’s case a curling iron on the wood stove…i still love ‘em though

Greg…only watched a few episodes of Mad Men,to be honest i’m more a fan of AMC’s repeats of the Rifleman,something i watched faithfully as a kid,in syndication,the good old days when there were 6 stations tops in any major city that had UHF

I’m a fan of “the Rifleman” too! Yay! I love so-called Hippie Westerns and those Spaghetti Westerns too. They are surely a portrait of their times. I love Westerns!!! Yes, so much so I’ve actually watched 100′s of them! It’s true. Thanks for mentioning “Shane” and “Tombstone”, my favovites for sure. Special favorites:”High Noon” and “Liberty Valance”. I don’t know if “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” is stictly a Western but it is in my heart! I love the look of the characters in those films. I could go on about a topic like this….

As a girl, one weird modern style I notice in period pieces is that women always seem to have smooth legs/armpits- not a hair in sight! But to my understanding, shaving your arms didn’t become the norm until the 1910s, and legs later on. Like imperfect teeth, I suspect it’s become such a non-glamorous bit of historical accuracy no one wants to see it.
“Dances with Wolves” is one movie I can think of where the leading (white) lady did look (more-so) realistically “wild”. Her hair was a mess, and I did notice she had under-arm hair.

DevlinCarnate- I was recording The Rifleman every Saturday, but then they started showing Rawhide and I’ve been recording every episode of that instead, beginning with season 1, episode 1. I can’t have too much on the old DVR. I set up my mom’s DVR to series record Wagon Train from Me-TV too. She really liked Wagon Train growing up.

One of the most fun of the 1980′s comedies, “Rustlers’ Rhapsody” did something which should bring a smile-the Colonel (Andy Griffith) and his bad guys (American horse opera types) team up with the railroad Colonel (Fernando Rey) and his men (Spaghetti Westerners)to try to stop Rex O’Herlihan. Hilarity ensues. Marilu Henner plays nearly the same part as she did in “Johnny Dangerously” but I have no complaints.

You can almost always tell the approximate year an American western (movie or TV) was made by looking at the hair and makeup. False eyelashes on the frontier! Zandypop, what you wrote was so true. This largely holds true for historical dramas as well.

When I first saw A CLOCKWORK ORANGE in the early ’80s, I was annoyed at how Kubrick’s future looked so thoroughly 1971. Later, in the mid ’90s, I realized that now that we’d reached approximately the time of the film’s setting, the world looked like 1971 again!

@robbushblog & Juana Maria…one of the things i never picked up on until they started the Rifleman re-runs a few years back,is that Sam Peckinpah directed and or wrote some of the episodes,and that Joseph H Lewis (Gun Crazy) directed some too before he retired in the mid-60′s…it’s funny the things you miss when you’re a kid just waiting for Lucas to fire that rifle of his

Well, the nineties never quite looked like the setting of Clockwork Orange as much as 1971 did. And the year 2001 didn’t have flight attendants looking at all like they did in the movie where they looked exactly as they did in 1968.

Another one that comes to mind is Back to the Future, Part II. If you haven’t seen it awhile, give it a look just to see how 2015 looks to them. Basically, it looks exactly like the eighties, only more so. Bigger shoes, baggier pants, more neon colors. All they did was heighten the time the movie was made in and call it the future.

I’ll put in my vote on westerns. I like the look of the later ones much better but I do like the earlier movies better. I like Stagecoach, Shane, The Searchers, Rio Bravo and the like much better than the later westerns of Eastwood and Leone. I like those, don’t get me wrong, but I prefer the ones from the 30s through the 50s.

I was also a huge fan of Gunsmoke and even like the radio version. It’s a good listen.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Surely you’ve seen some Renaissance paintings of a bible scene with everyone wearing doublets and hose? I used to think that the painters just couldn’t imagine anyone wearing anything else. Now I wonder if those clothes were, like, 50 years out of fashion, and everyone would understand that they were really really old.

And concerning hairstyles – you say you never see greasy matted hair on savages and primitives? You do now, now that dreadlocks are fashionable.

Cool Bev, Renaissance artists saw plenty of examples of ancient art, and knew that people dressed differently in the past. The point of depicting Bible characters in contemporary dress and settings was to make it clear that the Bible’s lessons and warnings applied to the artists’ contemporaries – especially the corruptions and perversions of churchmen, royalty, merchants, etc.

It’s the fashionable 1950s foundation garments worn by the leading ladies in westerns that I have had to learn to overlook. It ain’t easy with all that lifting and separating!

To Patricia Nolan-Hall: Those women needed all the support they could get!

To Thomas F. Hering: Often, Renaissance artists put themselves or their patrons, usually the Medici, in their artwork. I’ve seen some of these in galleries. Thanks for your comments, everyone!

Rawhide fan here, been dvr-ing it and then watch it on Sundays. I am glad AMC has shown the Rifleman episodes, now I want them to show Have Gun will Travel! Clint’s hair-style on Rawhide is the same as in the Dirty Harry films, but his sideburns aren’t quite as long. I do think the crew on Rawhide looks appropriately dusty and dirty at times. The other day they were dying of thirst and made that look pretty real. One pet peeve of mine, and it happened a lot in old movies and tv shows, a character has fallen into some water, their soaked in that scene, and then moments later, they appear looking to be almost dry, hair looking great!

So, I just got back from seeing BLACK NARCISSUS at the AFI tonight (first time on the big screen, multiple times before on DVD and tv) and I gotta say, David Farrar looks dirty and unkempt in every scene and when they show close ups of the nuns hands, they’re dirty and messy. The old woman tending the convent has rotting teeth and dingy clothes. Only the prince looked uber-clean, as would be expected.

Oh well, I guess that accuracy on hygiene makes up for our having to accept Jean Simmons as an Indian girl! (Though truth be told she’s so beautiful I can’t really object to seeing her in anything — which is the same logic that allows me to accept Natalie Wood as Maria for that matter …)

Nim, if this article were on white people playing non-white roles there wouldn’t be room for anything else. What’s kind of amazing about her role in Black Narcissus is that other Indian characters are played by such and especially given her role has no dialogue, it’s puzzling why they couldn’t have cast a beautiful Indian girl in the part. I mean, she hadn’t even become recognized internationally yet with Hamlet, so it’s not like they did it because she was a huge star.

Greg said: “it’s puzzling why they couldn’t have cast a beautiful Indian girl in the part.”
In 2013 it would be puzzling. But in the racist past, that doesn’t surprise me at all. I’m assuming that the ‘powers that were’ didn’t think that the movie going public would accept a non-white as beautiful. They were wrong.
Another example: Ava Gardner in Showboat,
playing a mixed race beauty; if the film were being made today, the role would would be cast differently.

True, and I don’t disagree about the time and methods of casting but the thing is, Sabu plays the handsome prince and they have no problem presenting him as attractive. Plus, the beautiful lead is Deborah Kerr, even presented in flashback in her full lovely beauty so, to my mind, the orphan girl isn’t a rival in that area. Still, what you say meshes well with the fact that Simmons was under contract with Rank, who produced the film, and they probably wanted her in there somewhere.

Okay, I came late to this party but I have to put in my nominee for most egregious hair-don’t anachronism. In Roman Polanski’s otherwise excellent (and very gritty) Macbeth we have the amazing sight of Lady Macbeth, who looks like she just came from a performance of an early production of Godspell and forgot to go to makeup before stepping in front of the camera. What a colossal blunder in a film that is, in other respects, very, very good.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned “Inside Daisy Clover,” set in the mid-thirties with a look pure mid-sixties.

And this is nothing new, BTW; check out a 1934 Carole Lombard-George Raft dance film called “Bolero.” It’s set in the 1910s around World War I, but Lombard’s hair is pure ’30s. (And the film itself is an inherent anachronism; Ravel’s “Bolero” wasn’t introduced until the late ’20s.)