Edna Swanson and the Wig

The following story was related to me quite a few years ago by an elderly lady, a patient of mine.  She would now be somewhere around 120 years old.  The story is true.  

Sometime in the 1920s she was living in San Francisco and was a young woman with a sense of adventure.  Perhaps the term “flapper” could be applied to her.  She heard that a new hairstylist had come to town from Paris.  He offered the latest in Parisian coiffures.  It was all the rage. It was expensive.  She gathered her dollars together and went with a friend to try a new style.  I’m not knowledgeable as to what exactly was done, a snip here and there, perhaps some strong lotions, some rinses, some electric curlers, I don’t know, but the result was amazing. So beautiful, so stylish, so chic. Unfortunately, after a day or so, all her hair fell out.  She was as bald as a billiard ball.

That it was disconcerting  was an understatement but she decided to make the best of it.  Having been a brunette she always wanted to be a blond so she decided to go out and buy herself a long blond wig, perhaps to look like Marion Davies or Thelma Todd from the silents.  It was a platinum wig that hung down around her shoulders with a profusion of curls.  It made her stunningly attractive.  She received beaucoup invitations from the young beaus of San Francisco to dances and balls and to dance “le jazz hot”.  She also bought herself a few fashionable dresses.  It was the life of a debutant.  So elegant, so intelligent.

For one particular occasion she bought a long-sleeve dress with some cleavage, though to be modest about it, upon reflection in the mirror, perhaps it wasn’t.  The dress had a row of small buttons along the sleeves to the wrist.  She met her date at a ballroom and the band began to play a fox trot.  Slow – slow – quick – quick. They got up to dance. It was most exciting, swinging about, tossing her blond curls over her shoulder.  During one particular number, as the young man twirled her around dancing like Fred and Ginger, she felt like a movie star. While holding his hand she swung out to the left with her arm extended.  Unfortunately, as she swung out the strands of the wig caught on the small buttons above her wrist.  The wig immediately flew off with a centrifugal force thereby revealing her alopecia totalis for all the world to see.  The young man took one look at her, dropped her hand and ran through the doorway into the night. She never saw him again.  She picked-up the wig, adjusted it on her pate as best she could and then disappeared into the anonymity of Knob Hill.  

Gradually her hair returned.  Gradually her social life returned.  She got a job with the San Francisco Examiner and apparently did well as a reporter.  She later married a newspaper man but not William Randolph.  Eventually they moved to the Seattle area which is where I met her and where she told me this story.  We became friends and she later gave me a wooden seagull. 

James L. Littlefield February 4, 2020