I was thinking the other day how many different ways Susan wore her hair in movies. She wore it long in flicks like David and Bathsheba (in glorious color) and I Can Get It Wholesale (black and white).

In Back Street and Where Love Has Gone she wore it shorter (maybe because she was older when these flicks were made).

In Deadline At Dawn she wore her hair in an upsweep.

So, my question is for you Susan Hayward fans: which hairstyle did you prefer, and why?

Hi Gloria. I loved Susan's hair long when she was young..in such films as Young and Willing, The Lost Moment,etc. Her long hair was such a beauty asset. After she got older I thought her hair looked prettier when it was cut shorter. I loved her hair in With a Song in My Heart. To me the haircut gave her a more mature, womanly quality. She was beautiful in David and Bathsheba and Demetrius and the Gladiators but I didn't particularly like her long hair in these films..well, maybe as Bathsheba, but not as Messalina (However it might have been the eye make-up as Messalina that really bothers me.. ha).

BTW.. one of the our Susan cyberfriends, Larry Dennis, used to be Susan's hairdresser in Atlanta. He has told me some interesting little tidbits about Susan when she came to the salon where he worked. He said she was always so nice and liked to show him photos of her twin sons. He said before he started working on her hair she liked to put her head down and then pull her head back and shake out her hair. Maybe I can get Larry to share some on the message board for us. He's been ill and I haven't heard from him in a while, but I'll see if I can get in touch with him. He also has a nice website and his email address is on the site. I'll post his site on the messageboard just a little later. I know he wouldn't mind people asking questions if he's feeling up to answering I think he would be glad to answer.

Susan's hair was truly her crowning glory.

P.S. I liked her hair when she wore it up. I'm thinking particularly of some scenes from "Untamed."
There are some scenes in that film where she in just wearing the farm clothes and is worn out and in one scene I think she is telling Agnes Moorhead that she is pregnant. She had her hair pulled back but it was also in a little disarray (spell?) because of her "exhaustion"..but I thought she was gorgeous in this scene.

One last thing. Most of us have seen the photo of Susan with a scarf around her head and she's wearing sunglasses. This was toward the end and she had to wear the scarf because she had lost all of her beautiful hair. Remarkably , this is one of the most beautiful photographs of her to me..so poignant...she really didn't even need her hair to be beautiful.

She certainly was blessed with a beautiful head of hair wasn't she.

I agree with Ginger's point that as Susan aged it was far more flattering to have her hair worn in shorter styles,and it looked wonderful whether in "I Want to Live" or "Where Love Has Gone" etc, but I tend to prefer the earlier longer styles,especially in "Garden of Evil" and "The Conqueror".

There is only one film that I remember not particularly liking the style of Susan's hair and that was "Soldier of Fortune". It looked great as always in full face shots, but in many of the shots from the side and rear, it had a part halfway across the back of her head and a tuft appearance on the top.

Perhaps memory is playing me false, but if you have a copy of that movie, have another look at it and see whether you agree.??

Kerry

Kerry, I had remembered that you had mentioned Susan's hair in the film Soldier of Fortune, but I never got around to looking at that film again. I'll check it out and get back with you. I'd like to watch that film again anyway. I loved Susan and Clark Gable together. I wish they could have made more films together.

Just putting my 2 cents worth in...Loved her hair long but hated it in Demetrus and the Gladiators. Ugly costumes too...I never thought purple was a color for her.

BUT...when 20th wanted her to bobb her hair for With a Song in my Heart...she was truly beautiful. The long hair in Rawhide...I Can Get it for You Wholesale was wonderful.

Worst hair..I thought...was Soldier of Fortune and then she had the same 'awful' hair for that off-the-wall...Marriage-Go-Round. To me, nothing worked in that film....Not even Julie Newmar, who had done the role on Broadway.

Errol