Barbershop Blues: “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”

Who knew that a haircut could cause such a commotion? In 1920, the young F. Scott Fitzgerald published in the Saturday Evening Post a short story he drew from his younger sister’s social anxieties. It was called “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” and the title had always made me curious. I finally caught up with Bernice and her social set via a 1976  episode of The American Short Story, an ambitious TV anthology series hosted by PBS between 1974 and 1980. The 17 episodes all featured major Hollywood stars and first-class directors presenting works by some of America’s most revered authors, including Mark Twain, Hemingway, and Flannery O’Connor.  

 At the close of PBS’s 46-minute Bernice Bobs Her Hair, one of the major production credits goes to a wig-maker. This is hardly surprising, because all the women in the story start out with great masses of long hair, which (true to the style rules of 1920) they pile onto their heads during the day and arrange into long, thick braids before going to sleep. One of these proper young ladies is Bernice (Shelley Duvall), visiting her big-city cousin Marjorie from her home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Marjorie is a social butterfly, who knows how to flirt with the young men, back for the summer from Ivy League colleges, who are at her beck and call. Bernice, by contrast, is shy and awkward; her only social gambit is to complain about how much hotter St. Paul is than Eau Claire.

 Finally, pushed by her mother to treat her cousin more kindly, Marjorie tutors Bernice on how to flirt, and how to become a witty conversationalist, going right up to the edge of social propriety. Learning her lessons perhaps too well, Bernice begins to enthrall the young men with daring remarks. At a swanky dinner party, she announces her determination to bob her hair, in emulation of the sexy “picture-show vampires” of the day. (Today we would call them “femmes fatales“ or “vamps.”) Her listeners, accustomed to far more conservative styles, are both fascinated and scandalized by her daring. She acknowledges that for a woman hair-shearing would be immoral, but (with her cousin across the table quietly signaling assent) she declares that to get on in this world you’ve got to amuse people, or shock them.

 It's unclear if Bernice will go ahead with her boast, until Cousin Marjorie eggs her into putting her bold words into practice. At which point several things happen, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the story’s highly ironic ending. Let’s just call it bittersweet.

 I discovered this filmed version of the Fitzgerald story while exploring the career of the late Shelley Duvall, best known for being absolutely terrified as Jack Nicholson goes crazy in The Shining. Duvall, who by all accounts fell into the film world accidentally, never had the look of a conventional Hollywood glamour-girl. With her huge eyes, buck teeth, soft voice, and beanpole frame, she easily projects a wallflower’s discomfort. But when she begins to show her saucy side, it’s remarkable how she sparkles, only to retreat once the deed is done back to a version of her former self. Kudos to her, to Veronica Cartwright as Cousin Marjorie and to Bud Cort (of Harold and Maude fame) as a promising suitor. Big congratulations to the talented Joan Micklin Silver, who in the previous year had written and directed Hester Street, an adaptation of Abraham Cahan’s 1896 novella about love among Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side. Silver is adept at establishing precise social milieus through a canny use of visuals and music. Brava!