(X-posted from Texas Hillel’s blog)
November means Movember, a month of growing mustaches to bring awareness to prostate cancer and other male cancers. In honor of this, Texas Hillel’s blog presents: Five Great Mustaches… And the Jews Who Wore Them.
When comedian Groucho Marx didn’t want to take the time to apply a pasted-on mustache for a vaudeville show in the early 1920s, he used greasepaint to put one on instead. In the 1950s, he grew a real one, which he would wear for the rest of his life. This mustache is the inspiration for the Groucho glasses.
Physicist Albert Einstein’s image would not be complete without his mustache. Along with his crazy hair, it gave him the appearance of an intelligent, albeit absentminded, professor.
The mustache of journalist Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, sprouted its own meme, known as the Mustache of Understanding.
Talk show host Geraldo Rivera recently trimmed his iconic mustache. On Twitter, he announced he had finally yielded to producer pressure to do so.
Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz originally grew his mustache because a college coach told him he couldn’t. He intended to shave it off when he got to the Olympics, but he received so much attention over it, he decided to keep it.
