The following is a section from Jane & Michael Stern’s book “The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste” (1990 HarperCollins). It’s one of the most informative and humorous books on the odd and occasionally outlandish social crazes of twentieth century America, especially in the post-war era.

Poodles (P)

   Poodles are not sissies; they aren’t even French. But it’s easy to understand how they got their reputation if you see one in full dress clip. It is a stunning sight, like topiary shrubbery but able to beg, fetch, roll over, and play dead. To gaze upon a standard (full-size) poodle in a “Miami Sweetheart” cut with centered fur hearts on hips and back, pantaloon legs sculpted lathe-smooth, tassel ears, a Van Buren mustache drooping from its muzzle, a ribboned topknot, and a wagging pompon tail, parading along the boulevard in a rhinestone collar at the end of a jeweled lead, is to see an animal that has become a walking, barking work of art.

   Poodles have been known erroneously as “French” poodles since the nineteenth century, when they won fame as the great trick dogs of the French circus. Extraordinary intelligence and an uncanny sense of humor fated them to become the clowns’ clowns, in which capacity their coats were sheared into plumes and ruffles, and they were dyed bright colors to add to the merriment as they jumped through hoops, walked around the circus ring on their two front legs, and balanced duckpins on their noses. Such talents subsequently made them renowned in American vaudeville shows and on Ed Sullivan’s television program in the 1950s and 1960s.

 

The idea of shearing and clipping poodles was not originally clownish. Before the Frenchification of poodles by the circus, they were well-respected European gun dogs, and their coats were clipped by hunters as a means of improving their performance. In fact, the most familiar fey poodle look, known as the “lion” cut, was developed to help them slog through rugged swamps. Poodles needed their thick coats for warmth in the cold water, but it was a hindrance when they swam fast, and it caught on brush; so only the hindquarters were sheared, with cuffs left around the ankles and hips to protect against rheumatism. Even the gay ribbon tied around the topknot had a purpose: Each hunter marked his dogs’ heads with his own colors, allowing groups of hunters to tell their dogs apart.

In postwar America, where poodles went from the twenty-fifth most popular breed in 1946 to number one in 1960, the full possibilities of poodle extremism were realized. It was an era when perspective and scale in all forms of decoration went haywire; and so it made perfect sense to take the most decorative of dogs, the poodle, and breed it in tiny sizes guaranteed to be even more amusing than the normal one. As standard poodles rose in popularity, miniatures (under fifteen inches tall) and toys (under ten inches) zoomed. Shrunken poodles had been around for nearly a century, but “the rise of the miniature poodle was meteoric in the years after World War II,” wrote Harry Glover in Pure-Bred Dogs. 

    In this same spirit of making cute things cuter, the poodle’s ordinary colors (a wide range, including blue, gray, silver, brown, cafe-au-lait, apricot, and cream) were supplemented by vegetable dyes that could turn them more shades than nature ever knew.  The Vita coat company made “Marron” to make beige poodles a lovely chestnut brown and “Silver Sheen” to cause , silver-coated poodles to sparkle. But the serious poodle colorist started with a white-coated dog, which could be tinted with pastels as pretty as those of a Coupe de Ville. “Women like to make them the same shade or a contrasting shade, to go with their wardrobes,” observed “Miss Cameo” (Kay Waldschmidt), the great poodle stylist of the fifties, who worked in St. Louis and Tucson. Miss Cameo also advised coloring poodles for Easter or Christmas, suggesting pink, orchid, and green as especially becoming. Tinting poodles was an exacting craft, using a bucket of dye and a ladle to bathe the dog in its chosen hue, but always being careful that one area didn’t get too much dye and become darker than the others. Shaved parts, such as the stomach and face, were colored with cotton swabs. Along with Cadillacs and Harry Winston diamonds, poodles became one of the preeminent symbols of wealth and luxury as well as ostentation in the fifties.

  Nearly every glamorous movie star had one, or at least got herself photographed with one:  Joan Crawford had a toy poodle; Jayne Mansfield (who also had Chihuahuas) had a couple of standard poodles that she regularly dyed pink to match her home. In the Douglas Sirk comedy “Has Anybody Seen My Gal?” (1952), a movie about a nice middle-class family that suddenly inherits a fortune and becomes obnoxious, the change is expressed when they abandon their loyal old mongrel in favor of a brace of high-bred, snooty French poodles. That same year, Doris Day played an American chorus girl who has to pass for a diplomat at a Parisian art show in a musical called April in Paris. To promote the film and signify the pretense of the masquerade, she appeared on the cover of Collier’s holding a sextet of clipped and dyed poodles: two pink, two aqua, one green, and one gold.

  The remarkable thing about poodles as a status symbol is that they were a symbol available to nearly everyone. That is because they symbolized something bigger than just money. They were chic; they stood for modernity and sophistication, which anyone could shoot for, whether they were rich or just wanted to appear a la mode. Teenage girls wore stylish poodle skirts decorated with felt appliqued French poodles wearing rhinestone collars; ladies bought handbags with embroidered poodles on the side and decorated their powder rooms with wallpaper that had pictures of poodles strolling down the Champs-Elysees.

 

  

For something to be labeled French in America in the fifties and early sixties usually meant that it was as soigne as it could be. French cuisine was the epitome of high style; in the world of high fashion, Paris was still Ie dernier cri. Poodles were now commonly known as French poodles, and vast numbers of them got named Fifi, Gigi, and Pierre. They appeared alongside Parisian looking fashion models in hundreds of advertisements for products from perfume to washer-dryers in hopes that their elegance would convince consumers to buy. And as they grew in popularity, that aspect of them that was considered the most French, their ridiculous haircuts, was even more exaggerated. Miss Cameo’s Poodle Clipping Book in 1962 was the first encyclopedic survey of poodle- grooming styles, featuring step-by-step instructions and such chapters as “Your Clipper and Blades,” “Basic Round Head Styles,” and “Mustaches.” In a revealing chapter called “Why Your Poodle Should Be Well Groomed,” the answers to the rhetorical question include:

1}   An ungroomed poodle doesn’t look like a poodle at all!
2}   It will bring you prestige in many ways.
3}   When you go on vacations or trips, you will be able to take him with you, because most motels and hotels do not object to a clean, well-groomed poodle, even though they have a “NO DOGS ALLOWED” sign posted.
4}   He is a thing of beauty and should be kept that way.

   In the instructional section of The Poodle Clipping Book” Miss Cameo takes the reader from basic “Puppy Trim,” “English Saddle,” and “Continental Clip” (the only cuts permissible in the show ring) to such stupendous styles as the “Bell Bottom Banded Dutch” cut (with a rounded head like a Cossack’s hat), the “Scottsdale “ Exquisite” (puffs on legs and hocks, tasseled ears, and pointed head), and the “Triple Puff Sweetheart” (heart-shaped puffs on jacket and hips, double puffs on back legs, single puffs on front legs). In her preface to her magnum opus, Miss Cameo (who was also a founder of the Chihuahua Club of St.Louis) says she knows that publication of the Poodle Clipping Book will permit other professional poodle stylists to pirate her work. But she is not disturbed. She concludes her remarks, “As long as poodles look better, I will have my reward.”