Heavy Hang the Heads Wearing Hats

There were days when I worked in a public relations office for motion picture and television personalities when I was in sore need of something to make me believe there was a real world somewhere out there and something to make me laugh. Not that there is anything dishonorable about doing that kind of work. It is, however, not my choice.

I sat and ground out those awful stories that appear in motion picture and television fan magazines, often without having exchanged a word with the subject of the story.

Surely, they must do better than that, now. But I simply made up the stuff so the poor slavering readers who bought the magazines would have something to cut out and paste in their scrapbooks.

I met a lot of fan club members in those days, and I was constantly amazed that they didn’t do themselves in with their blunt scissors and library paste.

During those days of writing junk slathered over with adjectives and adverbs, I clung to a few things that would make me smile, really laugh out loud. One of these was a picture, which proves what should be a political homily. If you are an office-holder, do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to be photographed in a hat or head-dress of any kind.

The picture was of a worthy named Fletcher Bowron, who was mayor of Los Angeles from 1938 to 1953. He was kind of a pudgy man with wire-rimmed glasses and thinning, nay, thinned hair. He was obviously a very good mayor or he wouldn’t have lasted so long. He took over the office when Los Angeles city government was something less than simon-pure.

But no one had warned Mayor Bowron never, never to have his picture taken in a hat, which was not generic to a middle-aged man in Los Angeles. The picture I had and kept under the glass on my desk was one of Fletcher in a Balinese dancer’s headdress, the kind that raises up like a pagoda and has a giant outrigger of ornaments on each side of the head. Also, the hat was too large for him and rode almost on the bridge of his nose. The side outriggers had dangles and loops of chains which hung almost to his shoulders. Now, good, kind, honest Fletcher did not have a face you’d select to carve on Mt. Rushmore, to begin with. He was not a stupid man. And when someone in a visiting trade delegation popped this Balinese temple on his head, he knew he looked ridiculous but like any of us, he didn’t want to be rude so he suffered the elaborate thing. It looked as if it should light up and play “Song of India.”

Dear Mayor Bowron never knew how many times that poor, unsure simper he wore beneath the headdress brought me back to sanity and enabled me to face my tacky chores of inventing romantic advice articles to run under a star’s byline. Fortunately, I was only in this strange business until Doug came back from World War II and we were married and I left the mad world of motion picture publicity.

But Bowron’s picture has always made me think that every candidate should receive a kit, on the first page of which is written, 1. Do not underestimate the intelligence of the voter. 2. Do not have your picture taken in a strange headdress.

Poor President Calvin Coolidge did and, no, I do not remember the original appearance of the picture, but it has been reproduced forever. Poor old Silent Cal allowed himself to be snookered into wearing a full Indian feather headdress. I don’t know which tribe, but it was the one whose headdresses are full and voluminous with eagle feathers and festooning down the back below the hips. I have read that the President also wore the leather, beaded tunic and trousers, but all my memory brings back is of that poor, sharp-faced Yankee from Massachusetts eclipsed by enough feathers to start an eagle refuge. Doubtless Calvin Coolidge had hundreds of pictures taken, but whenever I think of him, not often, all I can see is the poor man in the Indian regalia. And he must have been an eminently decent man because he and his wife had collies, the dog of gentry everywhere.

My latest treasure is a recent Associated Press photo that appeared in The Times of French Premier Jacques Chirac wearing what looks like an explosion in a florist’s shop. He was touring the Pacific and was on a remote island, obviously without my second rule. He has on a grass skirt, a lei and a crown of flowers. He looks like Oberon in a tent show production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

He is clutching his knees with his hands and wears the smile of a man who has just been told that he has left his trousers on the plane. Poor Chirac is having an awful time now with all the strikes in France. I hope he knows I will always think kindly of him because he had that picture taken. But, Jacques, if you plan to run again, deep six the funny hats.