A few weeks ago I wrote an incredibly stupid post about the immaculate and hilarious eyebrows belonging to Dallas star Larry Hagman. In the post, I speculated that he had to use some sort of styling product to achieve the dramatic swooping effect you see above, as — from my experience at least — eyebrows do not reach for the sky like a hostage in a bank robbery without some assistance. I assumed that would be the final, inconclusive word on the matter, because I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the world would actually care enough to, oh I don’t know, interview the head of makeup on Dallas and ask her a bunch of questions about eyebrows.
I was very wrong.
Entertainment Weekly did just that yesterday, and I am pleased to report that we have answers. Here the most important excerpt:
How do you groom them?
They kind of have a life of their own. In the morning, after doing his makeup, I would just wet my fingers with a little water, sometimes put a product on there if one was giving me problems, and we’d just swoop ‘em into that form that they had, like horns. He would just lay back in my chair, close his eyes, and take a little nap. We’d transform him into J.R., and he’d sit up, look in the mirror, give a little nod, and that was it. He went in as Larry and came out as J.R. Every once in a while, I would say, “Larry, I have to cut a hair.” And he’d go, “Okay.” But it was a hair. And it was with very precise little scissors that I got at a hair show. You have to dial the scissors in, they’re not just normal scissors…. We never wanted one hair sticking out, a wild one. Because I would hear about it from the camera operator. “Lynn, there’s one eyebrow!” (Laughs) They were watched by more than one department.
So there you go. The makeup department at Dallas puts considerable effort into sculpting Larry Hagman’s eyebrows. I’m glad we settled that. Next up: Solving the Zodiac murders.
