When asked to define the essence of Hollywood glamour, the multi-talented director Edmund Goulding replied:
“It’s the magnetism that changes the current of every movie fan’s life and persuades a girl that she must have a dress like the one Joan Crawford wore in her last picture. It’s the mesmerism that induces a boy to spend his last penny on a dress suit so that he can take his best girl out in the same style in which Clark Gable escorted Myrna Loy.”
Perfect.
As a child growing up in Brooklyn, my maternal grandmother, Genia Keiler, referred to “fancy head shmattes,” or as we know it: The Turban.
We don’t see many turbans anymore, except on the heads of murderous jihadis.
But there was a time in Hollywood when the simple turban was transformed into an object of high glamour.