The World of SJ Perelman: The Marx Brother's Greatest Scriptwriter by S.J Perelman

Author:S.J Perelman [Perelman, S.J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

The Longer The Lip, The Smoother The Grift

Do young men nowadays still become hopelessly enamoured of married women easily ten years their senior who have mocking, humorous mouths, eyes filled with tender raillery, and indulgent husbands? Back in the twenties, when it was a lot easier for a woman to be ten years my senior than it is now, I was privileged to know one who fitted these specifications and who inflamed me deeply. By the time the lava cooled, I found that the tender raillery in her eyes was actually pseudoblepsis, a form of myopia, and that her husband was somewhat less indulgent than I had supposed. The experience, nevertheless, had a certain salutary effect. It forever dispelled the notion I had cherished from boyhood that a moustache makes you irresistible to the opposite sex.

I grew one that summer in a dogged attempt to bridge the disparity in our ages, modelling it on those worn by the Coldstream Guards I remembered in the pages of Chatterbox. It was a dismal tuft—cinnamon-coloured, rather spiky, inclined to droop at the corners in a depressing Mongol fashion. If I resembled anybody, which was questionable, it was Ginger Dick or Russet in W. W. Jacobs’ stories. After carefully grooming and disbudding it for three weeks, I entered the lady’s presence in snowy flannels, negligently plucking a round-bellied mandolin. There was no immediate reaction. At length I yawned, flicked an infinitesimal speck of zweiback from my lapel, and inquired lightly: “Notice anything different?” “God, yes,” she replied in a strangled voice. “You look like a dentist. A mechanical dentist,” she added cruelly, bursting into a shriek of maniacal laughter. I arose, my lip curling as far as the moustache would permit, and, stumbling over a rubber plant, swept out of her life.

I bare this early scar only to prove that my credentials are in order at a moment when moustaches, for some inexplicable reason, suddenly seem to have become especially newsworthy. As influential and responsible a journal as the New York Post, for instance, apparently considers them significant enough to merit a poll of opinion. A few days ago it sent its inquiring photographer out to ask five moustached citizens at random: “Is a moustache an advantage or a disadvantage to you in the business world?” Every man interviewed replied without equivocation that a moustache had aided him immeasurably in his career. All concurred that it gave them a “more mature and distinguished appearance” and inspired “confidence”. One of them, a stock clerk, stated: “I am 21, and I find that the moustache makes people think I am much older, and they seem to have more confidence in me.” Another, a salesman who claimed that he was known to the business world as “Lester with the Moustache”, said: “A moustache seems to give the customer confidence that he is dealing with a person who knows his business.”

Now, gracious knows I approve wholeheartedly of anything that tends to banish distrust and engender a universal spirit

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