Hair Hall of Fame: Gene Shacove

While Jay Sebring is usually credited as the inspiration for Warren Beatty's "George Roundy," in Shampoo, the real inspiration was one Gene Shacove. He even played himself (uncredited) in "Wild in the Streets."

I had a charmed life once I reached the sunny shores of Los Angeles in 1967. A few weeks after I moved to California, I was sitting outside a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard when a man approached me. This started it all.

"You have beautiful hair. I would love to shoot a commercial with you," he said.

He turned out to be a famous hairdresser named Gene Shacove, who was later the inspiration for Warren Beatty's character in the 1975 film, Shampoo.

Gene practically invented the term "celebrity hairdresser"; made friends with world-famous personalities, often becoming their long time stylist and confidant, an association that granted him a movie star's social life.

Gene also owned the Candy Store, the 1960s and '70s-era nightclub he operated beneath his Rodeo Drive salon, a move that made him the center of social L.A ... I made a move myself—into Gene's home once I shot his commercial. We lived together for about a year in his beautiful Bel Air home on Stone Canyon Road.

That's from the incredibly titled "The King, McQueen and the Love Machine: My Secret Hollywood Life with Elvis Presley, Steve McQueen and the Smiling Cobra" - an excerpt of which I found here.

Here's a bit from his obit in the LAT:

"He was, in fact, the only rooster in a very beautiful henhouse," said Towne, who stayed for a few days with Shacove to study his lifestyle and mannerisms for "Shampoo." Hefner recalled that Shacove, a Los Angeles native who married many times but was more often single, "got into hairstyling because he thought it would be a wonderful way to meet girls." Clients of both genders poured into his spacious salon.

Aha! I knew I read somewhere that Peters lied and claimed that he was the inspiration for "Shampoo." Sure enough, it's on page 18 of "Hit and Run: how Jon Peters and Peter Guber took Sony for a Ride," by Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters:

" ... Peters found a new role model. Gene Shacove owned and operated his own salon on Wilshire Boulevard and Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills. Shacove was hip and handsome, a stud with a blow dryer, the real-life model for Warren Beatty's character in Shampoo. (Later, in embellishing his own legend, Peters would lead interviewers to believe that he, not Shacove, had been the inspiration for Shampoo. "That was me," he told Women's Wear Daily in 1978, "making love to a lot of women, but too afraid to communicate with any of them.""

This is a book I must get! From "Hair Heroes," by Bumble and Bumble founder Michael Gordon:

And then there's the poignant tale of Gene Shacove, the flesh-and-blood model for the womanizing hairdresser played by Warren Beatty in ''Shampoo.'' In an interview last week, Mr. Gordon described meeting Mr. Shacove, who died last year, as ''an eerie experience.''

''I realized what a brilliant acting job Beatty had done,'' Mr. Gordon said, ''because Gene's way of speaking and his language was exactly like Beatty's in the movie.''

In the book, Mr. Shacove says he was paid $1,000 for two days of film hairdressing on ''Shampoo'' but got no screen credit. His bitterness was sharp and tangy: ''I called Warren Beatty and said that the least he could have done is send me a new car. He said, 'What, are you kidding? Do you expect me to send every hairdresser in Hollywood a Rolls?' ''

Mr. Shacove summed up his life for Mr. Gordon: ''The women used to seduce me. And, at that age, I loved it. But there was a lesson to be learned. Like ''Swept Away,'' about the girl married to the rich guy. She gets shipwrecked and falls in love with the peasant -- eating, drinking and sleeping with him. She promises to give up the money and marry him, if rescued. Of course, as soon as they are rescued, she goes back to the money. Emotionally, I was used until I was drained, and then I was back to being just their hairdresser.''