- Toothbrush moustache
A
toothbrush moustache (also called a Hitler moustache) is a bushymoustache , shaved at the edges, except for three to five centimetres above the centre of the lip. The sides of the moustache are vertical rather than tapered.This moustache is most famous for having been worn by German dictator
Adolf Hitler , although it was already well-recognised due to movie starCharlie Chaplin wearing it as part of his iconic Little Tramp costume. Chaplin did not wear the moustache in daily life. In a 1933 interview, Chaplin said he added the moustache to his costume because it had a comical appearance and was small enough so as not to hide his expression. Chaplin took advantage of the noted similarity between his on-screen appearance and that of Adolf Hitler in his 1940 film "The Great Dictator ", where he again wore the moustache as part of two new characters that parodied Hitler.The style is now unpopular in the West due to its strong association with Hitler. Less well known is that Hitler originally sported a longer, "Kaiser"-style moustache. While historians have long assumed that Hitler adopted a toothbrush moustache to follow the style of the time, a recently-recovered essay by writer
Alexander Moritz Frey suggests that Hitler was ordered to trim his moustache during World War I—a long moustache would have interfered with the fit of respirator masks worn to protect soldiers from mustard gas attacks. [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/06/whitler06.xml Hitler was ordered to trim his moustache - Telegraph ] ] .In China a trimmer version of this moustache is viewed as a stereotype of Japanese people, especially of Japanese soldiers from the
Second World War .Fact|date=February 2007 An extreme variant of the toothbrush moustache narrows it to thephiltrum only.Robert Mugabe is noted for this style.Notable people known to sport a
toothbrush moustache include:
*Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov
*Merle Allin
*Reynir Axelsson
*Hovhannes Bagramyan
*Abdalá Bucaram
*Sepp Dietrich
*Tav Falco
*Gottfried Feder
*Max Fleischer
*Otto Frank
*Adolf Galland
*Oliver Hardy
*Martin Heidegger
*Heinrich Himmler
*Adolf Hitler
*Friedrich Kellner
*Fumimaro Konoe
*Ron Mael
*Zoltán Meskó
*Kevin Millar
*Robert Mugabe
*Julius Kambarage Nyerere
*Hermann Obrecht
*Marcel Pilet-Golaz
*Karl Plagge
*Sayyid Qutb
*Fritz Sauckel
*Julius Schreck
*Moshe Sharett
*Jan Syrový
*Ludwig von Mises Well-known fictional characters who sport a toothbrush moustache include:
* Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp
*Fred the Baker
*Bartemius Crouch Sr
*J. Jonah Jameson
*Inspector Cyril "Blakey" Blake
*The Gumbys
*Roderick Spode
* Sam Waldron, mobile shop owner in Postman Pat
* SergeantHans Schultz in the television seriesHogan's Heroes References
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