The Beverly Hair Billy

My first recollection of the importance of hair and its maintenance was accompanying my mother to a tiny salon in East Los Angeles in the ‘50s, right down the street from my father’s office. As an only girl, I was introduced to the mid-century feminine rituals of unfurling capes to keep an outfit dry, the gentle baptism of the neck and scalp into a head-shaped sink, and the nose-burning aerosol of lacquer hair spray. It was her weekly Friday visit to get her crowning glory Sabbath-ready, while I was given a nickel to visit the newsstand outside the salon for the latest Wendy/Casper/Archie comics. I might have been five. As my mom’s friendship with her stylist grew, Pat would eventually come to the house on Fridays, for a fish dinner (Pat was a devout Catholic) along with my mom’s Preparation Day 'do.' 

Seventh-day Adventists (as I was raised), like Jews, consider sundown Friday to sundown Saturday (Sabbath) as a time where no unnecessary labor could occur, and that certainly included hair prep. In those teased-up beehive days, a new coif would be wrapped, mummy-style with toilet paper to cause minimal sleep muss to best be church-ready Saturday morning. Ladies like my mom could make it a week on their Friday hair with more TP, some hair pins, and a rat tail comb, always backed up with a rigid spritz of Aqua Net.

My own hair stayed mostly ponytail long, with occasional detours into short, permed efforts to match the current whims of whatever my latest Barbie sported (The Bubble was my favorite.)

Once Barbie was in the rear-view mirror, my naturally straight hair returned, nicely coinciding with the hippie/surfer girl ethos of the Southern California ‘60s. And it stayed that way (with occasional, failed attempts at Mary Quant-style bangs, thanks to a rebellious cowlick) until I married in December 1971 at the too young age of 20. In those pre-blow dryer, curling iron days, young women routinely went to bed with a head full of pink plastic curlers.

So it was, on my honeymoon, that I determined to cut my hair, to avoid the horror of the “I give up” slovenly newlywed. Having been away from salons since childhood, I settled on a random department store salon, believing (erroneously) that a fancy store (and to my college-age self, department stores were fancy) would feature fancy stylists. I emerged with what is best described as a weed-whacker fright wig, except it wasn’t a wig. 

An English Lit classmate had a short haircut I had long admired, so during the painful growing-out stage, I asked her where she got her hair done. “Eric Linterman’s in Beverly Hills.” Ah, I had cracked the code. Of course, Beverly Hills is where one gets a good haircut. Swimming pools, movie stars. The price was twelve dollars, a price that in those days left my graduate student head reeling. That was more than my weekly grocery budget, a quarter of my student housing rent. Nevertheless, I managed to salt away a dollar a week for three months, and off I went. And, with few exceptions, never looked back.

I was a devoted Eric Linterman client until he moved to the Valley (no doubt to escape the escalating rents of his posh location.) I was hair-adrift until my gay brother hooked me up with a stylist he knew, Ray B., also in Beverly Hills. Ray was charming to his customers, but a hot-head to his fellow stylists, so was routinely fired, moving from salon to salon, until the scourge of the early 80’s stole him and so many of his compatriots from those of us who loved and relied on the gay sensibility. 

Intermittent pangs of guilt (what kind of graduate student-turned-librarian gets her hair done in such luxe surroundings?) would drive me to closer to home salons, leaving me with henna-red Flock of Seagulls swoops and other not-quite-right iterations of “what the kids are wearing.”

Until I happened upon a Vogue column in late 1991 entitled “A New You in ’92.” The hottest stylist, they claimed, was Zito (a single name like Cher!) out of the Umberto Salon on Canon Drive in, you guessed it, Beverly Hills. Just when I thought I was out, here I was dialing up the 310 where everyone’s job is to get you to fabulous. And Zito it was, until life brought me to New Mexico, and even then I could finagle a long L.A. weekend to visit my ailing dad, to run a marathon, or some other gravitational westward pull, until more guilt pangs of finding a new dentist, new gynecologist, and even new running friends left me with hunting down a New Mexican stylist, which involved a continuous series of fried highlights and old lady “practical” cuts until I employed the same method of my college self: I hunted down women with decent cuts and procured names and numbers. 

In particular, an artist friend whose general shambolic appearance belied an underlying commitment to style gave up the secret of her messy but clearly tended-to hair: another local artist: Polly V., an L.A. trained stylist who, when not creating interesting artwork, had a salon not more than two miles from the house. It was a match that worked well for several years, until the pandemic forced our aging selves into two directions: retirement for Polly, and my own curiosity about pursuing the gray mane emerging from months of quarantined no-care hair. 

Having a pandemic-induced airline credit (I was set to watch some Olympic trial swimming in swim mecca and close-to-hometown Mission Viejo when the world shut down in 2020) and fretting about an unheard of nine-month hair hiatus, I pondered, once travel restrictions began to lift, about returning to the Hills of Beverly to seek out expert guidance for going gray. Turns out, it’s not as easy as one might imagine—a head of hair that’s half processed color and half unprocessed gray requires a deft hand and a pretty open schedule. Zito was up for the cut, but transitioning to gray required a specialist, the epistolically named Korinthia, who dedicated four-hour blocks to what she referred to as “projects.” And that was just visit one. So while the hoped-for silvery tresses a la Emmylou Harris was not to be (as a swimmer, pool chemicals are a constant threat to not only dyed hair, but to my nascent au natural efforts as well) after four years of low-light toners and purple shampoos, I at least look like my own gray/silver/ash mélange is the result of purposeful effort and not neglect.

So back to the place where everybody knows your name, who remembers you from twenty-five years ago, when I would visit with my mom for our quarterly “days of beauty” including star-watching at the legendary Nate ‘n Al’s lunch counter, and window shopping along the ever ostentatious Rodeo Drive. For a large, some might say imposing, glitzy salon (stairways flanked by faux Greek statues, chandeliers and retro seventies mirrors down every hallway) there is surprisingly little turnover—Zito’s chair is right next to a gal named Gabby, who’s been there at least as long as he has, now over thirty years. The receptionist is the same woman, whose own close-cropped ‘do is the same, but now gray. The manager, the ever stylish Mimi, is still rocking her of-the-moment designer frocks and her Catherine Zeta-Jones Chicago bob, busily moving from chair to chair to deliver tips and to check on clients. Gee but it’s great to be back home.  

Carol Davenport is a former Medical Librarian and Advertising Copywriter. Also a serious runner and triathlete, she lives and trains in Santa Fe, New Mexico.