We would like to salute a sub-sub-sub-movie genre that's more appropriate for us ? great Barbershop Movies. To be fair, there aren't many movies that completely revolve around the Barbershop?except, of course, Barbershop?but a lot of memorable scenes with some of the greatest stars of all time happened around a haircut. In any case, here's a look at some great cinema in which barbers played parts both big and small.
Let's start with Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), or, as we like to call it, ?When Haircuts Go VERY Wrong.? The story of Sweeney Todd first circulated in the 1850's ? and, to be honest, the bloody saga of a barber killing his customers and turning them into a cheap lunch isn't very good publicity for a barber club franchise such as ours. However, we can take some comfort in the fact that the character is completely fictional ? and you can rest assured that no Kennedy's would ever employ a barber who used his own tricked-out chair to slit our patron's throats. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you?not good for business!
The Barbershop also had a memorable ? and bloody ? cameo in one of the great films of all time, The Godfather (1972?and one of our 100 favorite guy films as well, naturally). That's where Vegas chief Moe Green (played by Alex Rocco) got a bullet right through his glasses during the epic film's climax. That was a real eye-opener.
Who remembers John Wayne's last movie, The Shootist (1976)? If you do, the scene you probably think of is the Duke's final shoot-out in the huge, elaborate saloon. Earlier in the film, however, Wayne, playing a famous gunfighter close to death, heads for a haircut at the town Barbershop. There, the town undertaker comes in and offers to take care of his funeral for free. Wayne, knowing the guy is preparing to sell tickets to see his body, instead turns the offer around to where the undertaker pays him for his funeral. The chastened undertaker slinks out of the Barbershop.
A minute later, as Wayne is leaving, he turns to the barber and tells him he probably could make a profit selling his hair clippings, too. The barber laughs, but after Wayne's out the door, he thinks a moment and starts picking up the cuttings to make a fast buck later.
The Barbershop, fortunately, has also had a lot of lighter moments on the silver screen ? thanks to some classic comedians. If you're a Marx Brothers fan, you can enjoy Harpo and Chico torpedoing a ship officer's hair and moustache in a cruise ship Barbershop in Monkey Business (1931), Charlie Chaplin portraying a barber who gets mistaken for Hitler (never a good thing!) in The Great Dictator (1940), and the ever-reliable Bugs Bunny doing his own cartoon Sweeney Todd on Elmer Fudd in the brilliant Rabbit of Seville (1940). A snippet of memorable lyric from that animated opera:
Bugs: Now we're ready for the scraping There's no use to try escaping Yell and scream and rant and rave It's no use, you need a shave!
