Chances are, if you saw a movie with one of the stars of the 1930s or
1940s, her hair was done by Carmen Dirigo, who passed away on July 25
in Van Nuys at the age of 99.
Dirigo, born Daisy Obradowits, was a prominent hair and wig stylist in
Hollywood's Golden Age, working at the various studios and later in
television. Among her stable of stars were Joan Bennett, Yvonne De
Carlo, Joan Fontaine and her sister, Olivia de Havilland, Ann Blyth,
Elena Verdugo, and many others.
She was born in New York on December 30, 1907 and moved with her mother
Lilley to Southern California in the 1920s. Soon after, Lilley started
a beauty shop on Cahuenga in Hollywood while Carmen went to school. But
the younger Dirigo had show business dreams. From an early age, she
worked as a dancer at the Egyptian, Chinese, and Pantages theaters
doing prologue shows before feature films ran.
At Carmen's urging, Lilley finally attempted to get into the movie
business during the last years of the silents. "I kept after her, but
she was very shy," Carmen recalled in 1999. "One day, she went and made
an appointment at Universal with Carl Laemmle and she sold him on the
idea of having a hairstylist established on the lot. She told him that
she once saw a picture where the actress is out in the rain, and when
she comes in, her hair is all dry. She told him that he could have
someone established on each picture to read the script and follow the
story and do it accordingly. He thought that was brilliant, and that's
how it all started."
By 1933, after taking a state test to get her cosmetology license,
Carmen followed her mother and entered the hairstyling field, first
working at United Artists. After four years, she moved to Paramount
where she first worked with stars like Fontaine and Fredric March.
Eight years later, she came to Universal as head of hairstyling, where
her mother had broken ground working with legendary makeup artist Jack
Pierce, famous for Universal's slate of classic monster films.
Of the rapid pace of the classic studio days, Carmen remembered the
structured approach to the work. "They didn't have time to talk about
stuff then," she said. "We would get there early, and have to rush to
get people out on time. If I had wigs to do, I'd have to be there at
6:30AM and take the wigs off the block. Max Factor's on Highland and
three wigmakers out of Universal would ventilate the wigs. Then, I
would style them the night before."
One of her biggest challenges at Universal was the 1948 film, Mr.
Peabody and the Mermaid which featured underwater photography of star
Ann Blyth. "The producer wanted her hair to look as beautiful
underwater as out of the water.," she recalled. "I had to get together
with a chemist to figure out what we could use that would be pliable in
the water. For days, before the picture started, I would be in my
department with a fishbowl, and I'd have a hunk of hair which I waved
first and sprayed with this chemical. I'd plunk it in the water and
swish it around and see if it held the curl. When it did, I knew that
it was okay."
While at Universal, Dirigo served as president of the Cinema
Hairstylists, an elite association, and was the first hairstylist in
the business to get screen credit. In 1951, the nascent television
medium beckoned, and she moved to TV on shows including Fireside
Theater, which ran until 1955. Around that time,, she did several
episodes a CBS show called You Are There, which recreated significant
moments from history. For an episode which aired in April, 1955, using
wigs and makeup, she and Jack Pierce transformed actor Jeff Morrow into
Abraham Lincoln for a staged recreation of the signing of the
Emancipation Proclamation.
Dirigo's last job in the business was as hairstyling department head
for TV's Petticoat Junction, where she worked until 1970. She retired
to her house on Coldwater Canyon Boulevard in Van Nuys where she lived
the rest of her life. Until a severe fall at home in 2000 left her
partially immobilized, Dirigo was an avid equestrian and enjoyed
watching her Academy screeners on VHS tapes. She leaves behind no
living heirs.
Her legacy, along with her mother's, was creating firm aesthetics for
women's hairstyles in films that remains to this day. One Universal
press release from 1946 stated: "She is a firm believer in frequent
hair style changes and in the choice of simple styles for business and
sportswear. Elaborate hairstyles should be created only for evening and
formal occasions, she recommends."
