50 years ago, ‘Shampoo’ introduced us to the world’s horniest hairdresser

Warren Beatty, at the height of his New Hollywood fame, starred in Hal Ashby's 1975 film as a promiscuous hairdresser who brushes up against the politics of the time.

Hal Ashby’s Shampoo is the story of a male hairdresser who has affairs with numerous women who are his clients. The movie premiered 50 years ago today. But it’s not hard to imagine a movie with that plot coming out at various times in the years since.

I could easily envision the early 1990s erotic thriller version, the early 2000s raunchy comedy version, or a 2010s edition that leaned into plot point about other men assuming the hairdresser must be gay. Adam Sandler’s 2008 comedy You Don’t Mess With the Zohan included a Shampoo riff where Sandler’s male hairdresser is schtupping all of his clients; the not-especially-funny twist that time was that they were all old ladies.) Sandler, for part of that film, even wears his hair like Beatty did in Shampoo.

But at no other time would that film lake the exact tone, look, and feel of the version that came out in 1975, at the height of the New Hollywood era. It’s an extremely ‘70s movie, kind of slow-moving and inward-facing, with many long dialogue scenes. And while it’s largely about sex and has a lot of it, the film isn’t especially titillating.

Set against the background of the 1968 election, Shampoo is like a lot of movies of its era in that it comments on the events of the late ‘60s from the vantage point of the ‘70s.

Warren Beatty, then at the height of his stardom, starred as George Roundy, a Beverly Hills hairdresser in his early 30s who serves a large succession of beautiful women and is also having affairs with most of them.