Did Joe McCarthy have a "heavy beard"?

[dreakx]

With Big Business, the military, liberal intellectuals,Rockefeller Republicans, the media, all ranged against him,McCarthy was finally brought low. He had almost no movement behind him; he had no political infrastructure. And Joe McCarthy was, unfortunately, not suited for the new medium -television - that he had been using so effectively to reach the masses directly. He was a 'hot" person for a "cool" medium; his jowls, and his heavy beard, wrecked his standing with an image-bound public. And above all, by getting the U.S. Senate -an institution which McCarthy, not a libertarian, loved and revered- to censure him, they broke Joe's heart, and he was finished from then on.

source: http://rothbard.altervista.org/articles/right-wing-populism.pdf (page 9, middle column)

I don't think I miss the meaning of any word in here, but I can't understand why he wrote about "his heavy beard". Did McCarthy had one? The most appropriate picture of McCarthy I can find is with a 1-2 days unshaven "beard" - I wouldn't call it beard. Can this be called a heavy beard? Is heavy beard an idiom for something else than facial hair?

 

[jutfrank]

He apparently did have a heavy beard at that time.

I've never seen a picture of him with one, either.

 

[GoesStation]

He apparently did have a heavy beard at that time.

I've never seen a picture of him with one, either.

McCarthy didn't wear a beard. He had a heavy beard in the sense that he didn't shave often enough to conceal the growth that, if he continued not to shave for a couple of weeks, would produce one. He habitually appeared in public with a five-o'clock shadow.

 

[jutfrank]

McCarthy didn't wear a beard. He had a heavy beard in the sense that he didn't shave often enough to conceal the growth that, if he continued not to shave for a couple of weeks, would produce one. He habitually appeared in public with a five-o'clock shadow.

A 'heavy beard' is five o'clock shadow? I would never have guessed.

 

[GoesStation]

A 'heavy beard' is five o'clock shadow? I would never have guessed.

In this context, yes.

 

[Tdol]

I have not heard it used this way for many years, which fits the context.

 

[Skrej]

I imagine it's hyperbole, given the clean-shaven norm at a time where a 5:00 shadow would have been considered 'unkempt'.

During that era, somebody in a position where they would have been working with other people or making public appearances late in the day would likely have shaved a second time if they developed such facial hair.

Today of course it's considered fashionable by some - the so-called 'designer stubble'.

 

[GoesStation]

In the Sixties my dad, who had what we called in those days a "heavy beard", kept an electric shaver in his desk. If he had a meeting in the afternoon, he'd shave first.

Beards were so rare in the Fifties that a friend of mine (who worked with my dad) once received a letter addressed simply "The bearded guy, Yellow Springs, Ohio".