Fashion: And Now, George

In gratitude, one movie actress gave him a Lincoln Continental convertible. Another lady, still tingling from his touch, gave him a stereo phonograph; still another thanked him with a complete set of expensive china. In Hollywood, where $1,000 gifts are exchanged as casually as husbands and wives, hairdressers are rarely so rewarded. But George Masters, hair stylist of Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, is more adored than all the cars, phonographs and dinnerware can tell. At 23, George of Beverly Hills is Hollywood’s answer to Kenneth of Lilly Dache, the man that Jackie Kennedy made famous.

Last week Saks brought George to its Manhattan headquarters so that New York sophisticates could sample his talent. George hovered about the salon, supervised underlings (“Set her sides in pins, the top so, so and so in rollers. Oh God, just give her what she wants”), and longed for home (“New York is overrated; the West is so much further ahead in fashion”). Blond and slim and looking slightly like the late James Dean, George first started styling hair eight years ago in Grosse Pointe, Mich. The heads he dressed then belonged to ordinary, everyday $100,000-a-year executives’ wives. Today he teases hair (at $25 a turn in the salon, $75 for a house call) on heads that belong to world-famous names.

When Marilyn Monroe felt an operation coming on last summer, George (for $1,000 plus expenses) says that he flew to New York to be sure that she looked her best entering the hospital.* When the late Marion Davies traveled East for the inauguration of President Kennedy, George (for $2,000 for two days) accompanied her. He has flown to San Francisco for two hours to “do” Perle Mesta, and to Europe for two months as Jennifer Jones’s personal hairdresser. His income this year will be $65.000. but George is dissatisfied (“If I could do what I want. I’d give it all up and be a beach bum”).

Stuck with his success. George deals authoritatively with his work. “I simply will not associate myself with anything I don’t believe in. like the artichoke hairdo. I don’t like it. and I won’t do it. and that’s that. I will take no one with plastic shoes or purses, and I won’t do anybody under 18.” His clients include Cyd Charisse, Hedda Hopper, Mrs. Henry Ford II and Anita Colby, all out of their teens, and not one of whom would be caught dead in plastic. And George is as admiring of his patrons as they are of him. “Hollywood glamour girls,” he says, “are chicquer than these New York society women. They know what to wear and what to do for themselves. Like Marilyn, for instance, she knows every pore in her face. And what wonderful hair she has, what body.”

George of Beverly Hills wears his own hair on the longish side, but cautions women against too much hair-fullness. “Women.” he says, “should look like little European boys. Their hair should be short and cropped. Any woman who will not wear her hair that way is basically very insecure. And Kenneth, with his big poufy bouffant jobs, is just too jazzy for me”. Mrs. Kennedy, believe me, could look a lot better.”

*For her exit, Marilyn called in Kenneth.