“THAT RED-HAIRED GAL”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 170, 8 October 1927, Page 26 (Supplement)

“THAT RED-HAIRED GAL”

An Arraignment and a Defence...

kN you place a flaminghaired beauty beside a sister blonde or brunette and expect her to show the same qualities of character under the same

Has she a sense of responsibility? Can she be depended upon in a crisis? Is she faithful and unselfish? Can she be deeply moved? Or were all these enduring qualities left out when a fairy godmother conferred instead that supreme gift to a godchild—red hair? In good faith the charge has just been made that the red-haired woman has no soul.

A famous English woman writer comes forward with this indictment. She is Mary Agnes Hamilton, twice a candidate for Parliament and a keen student of human affairs. Somewhere in her study of the human family Miss Hamilton lias made the finding that red hair in a woman has drained her Titian-haired sister of her soul. Have the gods punished a woman with red hair? Are two gifts—a glory without and a glory within —too great for her to bear?

Red hair has blazed a way down the path of history. Cleopatra is said to hav e had it. Queen Elizabeth had locks w r hich flamed. Nell Gwyn, of court-upsetting fame, was a Titian beauty. To come to closer cases, there is probably none of us who does not know some lovely red-haired woman. Perhaps when you carefully study her looks she is only moderately pretty, but the flaming aura of her tresses turns her into a beauty who takes your breath away. When she enters a room every one turns to look. Before her beauty that of every other woman is dimmed. There is a glamour and wonder about her that cannot be put down in words. A celebrated psychiatrist admits that the woman of this colouring is more highly emotional and yet not more deeply emotional. She finds it hard to make decisions and to stick to them. And since this is so. her sense of responsibility is less because she is likely to change her mind.

The red-haired woman is, of course, you know, only what we call an extreme blonde. The emotion of the blonde is nearer the surface and more easily stirred. With the red-headed this is accentuated. “Of course, we are only generalising. There are numbers of red-haired women in the world to-day who disprove everything I have said. Yet tho general findings remain the same, and these women are the splendid exceptions who have managed to wrest two gifts from the gods, the radiant beauty that goes with red hair and great depth of nature as well.

But while medical science with measured phrases indicts the little carrot top of backyard squabbles, the findings of everyday life leap loyally to her aid. Red-haired women are in the minority among those fighting to get fid of their husbands, is the verdict of a judge in a California divorce court. The brick-top brigade provides the best school-teachers in the world. This is another contention which has found generous support. And the consensus of the heads of a large manufacturing plant where hundreds of girls are employed is that red-haired young women are dependable and vivacious, full of pep and initiative, that they have an acute sense of humour and plenty of stamina. A study of the celebrated Titianhaired beauties of the present day

bears out thhe psychiatrist's admissi that exceptions are likely to seem disprove his rule. 10

Margaret Anglin, whose tresses as coppery as the sun and who he"' the honour of being one of the distinguished actresses of this j was lately awarded the Laetare one of ihe highest honours that be'conferred on an American Catholic. In awarding the model , Miss Anglin, Notre Dame CnhrwJ! for only the second time in the last Ivears singled out a member of rt theatrical profession. “** The announcement that went win. the award read: “Miss Anglin has C mw tributed a great deal to the art of tii theatre, but she has kept her work characteristically pure and noble in it nature. Her name has never associated with anything questionable cn the stage, and those familiar wits her career attest that more than one. she has made definite sacrifices ratb~ than associate herself with monev making productions that would not reflect credit on her ideals.” 1 Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske, another distinguished actress who can lav claim to the glory of Titian tresses has had a long and honourable career on the stage, but in her private life there is something for which she has gained more love and tribute than for all her achievements before the footlights. Mrs. Fiske has showered years of devotion on children and animals. There would be no way to set downali the work she has accomplished to these fields. Billie Burke, who is Mrs. Klorent Ziegfield in private life, furnishes one of the most striking examples of redhaired beauty of the present day. at.. she has bobbed her bright tressesTbS

a nimbus still remains like the high noon of the sun itself, and those who look upon this radiance can easily imagine thrones toppling, crowns crashing and rolling downhill in its cause. There is one bright mantle ol red hair in this decade, however, which has entangled a throne. It belongs to Madame Lupescu, the beautiful womao who won the heart to young Prince Carol and caused him to forswear the crown of Rumania. Over those rippling tresses, five-year-old Michael, Carols son, made his ascension of the throne. No one, however, gets particularly excited about the soul of a red-haired man. It’s no proverb, but there rurs the good old every-day tradition that there’s no one in the world loves a figure half so well as the gentlemen with idle flaming thatch. Yet no ore has put the psychologist after him. In the meantime, the riddle of the milir. skinned woman with the brilliant rippling tresses persists.