I recently had the opportunity to try my hand at an iconic role. The Walnut Street Theatre, here in Philadelphia, annually produces Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL for student and family audiences on their main stage, and they offered me my first try at playing the old miser himself, Ebeneezer Scrooge.

I’m still a tad on the young side of life for a proper Scrooge, but I went through a daily course of skin aging, and hair whitening makeup application to achieve a more traditional look.

But one element of my Scroogian style was not artificial: I grew my own sideburns.

I frequently change my hair and beard styles to suit whichever role I happen to be playing at the time. Enacting an outward, physical transformation is part of the fun of the work for me. I rarely even give it much of a second thought. I forget that other people I encounter in my life WILL notice these changes and have a response to them. But I’ve rarely experienced the many and varying responses that came my way this November and December thanks to my sideburns. So, I started cataloging the mentions and comparisons I heard from both friends and strangers.

So here is the informal list, in no particular order…

WOLVERINE

This was BY FAR the most common thing I heard: “Hey, you know who you look like? Wolverine!” Friends at my day job said it. People passing by on the street said it. The guy who sold me a pair of socks at H&M one day said it. And I confess, the predictability of the common observation got a little tiring for me. At least it did until I pulled up a few photos like this
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And I started to think, “Are they secretly telling me I look like HUGH JACKMAN?? Because I think I’m pretty ok fine with that idea.

But then, looking at handsome, matinee idol, Hugh Jackman as a dreamboat, lip-pursing Wolverine gave me a very different thought. That being the thought of a very geeky 13-year-old Greg, who spend an inordinate amount of time (and money) reading superhero comic books in his room on random Saturday afternoons, when, outside of a few like-minded friends, NOBODY in the general populace would have known why Wolverine was cool, or why he was, by far, the greatest x-man, or why any superhero would have occasion or cause to grow an epic pair of sideburns on his face in the first place (let alone why the hair on top of his head seemed to grow into a wing-ear shape, and AND, why that made him an even bigger badass, and totally not stupid or silly at all.) Now, of course, thanks to Mr. Jackman, Wolverine is a Hollywood icon.

The Wolverine of my youth, though, looked a lot more like these sketches posted below (thanks to artists like Barry Windsor Smith and Marc Silvestri). Trust me, if you were a certain kind of nerdy, pre-teen kid growing up in the ‘80s, this ugly little Canadian furball was the biggest, coolest beserk of them all, and he was always the best there was at what he did, even if what he did wasn’t very nice.

NEIL YOUNG

This one came from a customer at the store one afternoon, and it happened as one of Young’s songs was playing over the speakers from the store’s music for the day. (The soundtrack at a Trader Joe’s can be delightfully eclectic.) Here are some random facts about Neil Young:
1. His middle name is Percival.
2. Neil is canadian, but his mother, named Edna Blow Ragland “Rassy” Young, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, meaning she could trace her lineage directly back to individuals involved in the American Revolution.
3. Kurt Cobain’s suicide note quoted Young’s song, “My My, Hey Hey,” writing, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”
4. Neil loves model trains and became a part owner of the toy brand Lionel Trains in the early 1990s

5. Finally, though I’ve never been a particular fan of Neil Young, but I do know his music, and for various reasons, “LONG MAY YOU RUN” has always been a favorite of mine. That song was the title track of the only duo album Young made with his former CSNY band-mate, Stephen Stills, but ironically, the title was not prophetic: A tour was announced to promote the album, but after only 9 tour dates, Young abandoned the tour, and his partner. Young informed Stills of his departure by telegram: “Dear Stephen, funny how things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach. Neil.”
(P.S. I am relatively certain it is only a coincidence that both Neil Young and Wolverine are Canadians with famous sideburns.)

STARBUCK from MOBY DICK

This was from a friend who surprised me with his literary acumen. And shame on me for underestimating one of my friends ever again.

I did try to read MOBY DICK once, and I got a full 80 or so pages in before I politely let myself get distracted by other mental exercises. Shortly after taking that intermission from the text, a fellow I knew at the time extolled his love for the book and tried to entice me to return to its pages by proclaiming Melville’s genius, and offering, as example, the one full, complete chapter in the novel wherein the narrator does nothing but list all the vast varieties of whales that had ever been recorded in the history of time, how they were hunted and what they were used for. His reverent recollection did not have, upon me, the desired affect.

My friend Chris did, however, not only remember the character, Starbuck, one of the Pequod’s crew, but also that Melville had described Starbuck as having long, thick sideburns. (Not unlike the way Leo Genn wore his ‘burns when he played Starbuck in the 1956 film version starring Gregory Peck, pictured, right.) I for one, am glad to have a friend like Chris, who not only respects good sideburns, but also may hold the virtues of MOBY DICK in his iron-jawed memory so that I don’t have to.

A STAGECOACH DRIVER

Right, so this one was actually even more specific than that. The full description from one of my day-job co-workers went thusly: “You look like a grumpy stagecoach driver from the early nineteen-hundreds who is beginning to lose out on work because of all the new-fangled ‘horseless carriages’ that are showing up on the road.” Yep, he went into that much detail. And how could I not include an observation so thick with imagination on this here list. Because even though I’ve rarely spent any time around horses, and I’ve never been on a stagecoach before, I DID have an epic pair of mutton chop side burns, and I HAVE, on occasion, been more than grumpy at the way other people choose to operate their horseless carriages. So, yes.

Besides I did a quick image search and I did find this one sketch image that seems to justify my co-worker’s notion. (Rocco. My co-worker’s name is Rocco.) Though to be completely fair, I can’t tell if that stagecoach driver is being depicted with long, hairy sideburns, or if the artist was simply a little heavy-handed with his shading pencil in an attempt to show how gaunt and hungry the poor man has become since losing all that work to the Model T’s hogging his roadways.

SCROOGE!

Finally, a great many folks immediately identified my sideburns as “Dickensian,” and many of those people also guessed that I must be playing Ebeneezer Scrooge. Though, let’s be honest, I am an actor, it was Christmas time, and A CHRISTMAS CAROL is only one of the most famous stories in the history of the English Language. (I have friends in non-English speaking countries who knew the story of CAROL even though they said they’d never heard of Charles Dickens.) SO, to guess I might be playing Scrooge under those circumstances is about as remarkable as correctly guessing that the pope is catholic.

However, in the history of A CHRISTMAS CAROL on film (or tape, or digital), mutton chop sideburns have been far from required:

George C. Scott, was picking up what I was putting down, but Alistair Sim, the first on-screen Scrooge, was burns-less. Michael Caine offered a “sim”-ilar look during the Muppet Christmas Carol movie, and Patrick Stewart, the peterbald cat of RSC graduates, performed, as always, with virtually no hair at all.

AND LAST, A BURN TOO FAR…

Before I conclude, I am forced to admit, there were some references I’m palpably disappointed not to have heard. There are a wealth of men with noteable sideburns in the history of our great, blue orb, especially now that we have survived both the 19th century, AND the 1970s.

How could I have heard shout outs for Young, but not for the King?

How could I have heard for Melville, but not for Puskin?

And lastly, how could the Dickensians have gotten so much love, while our eighth president, Martin Van Buren, received nary a wisker… uh… whisper?

Perhaps these and other great mysteries shall be revisited once again, next year, during Christmas Burns Season. Until then, my friends!

(btw, Here is where you’ll find my source for facts about Neil Young. They collected 70 of them on his 70th birthday.)

GREGORY ISAAC

Up Next: Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival 2023 / June 8, 2023 by Gregory Isaac

Burns on the Side: A Hirsute Chronicle / January 11, 2020 by Gregory Isaac