“Just when Jayne was in need of new hairstyles came the Great Wig Robbery of 1965. When the US banned human hair imports from Communist countries, wigs suddenly became worth their weight in gold. In February 1965 a band of well-organized crooks hit Wigtowne’s warehouse in Brooklyn. The thieves broke in through the skylight and then through a first-floor wall and made off with $60,000 worth of goods, including four extra-fancy “nude white” wigs (worth $1,200 apiece) set aside for Jayne, and seventeen wigs that customers had left to have restyled. On their way out, the gang also pilfered an astonishing $15,000 worth of false eyelashes. Wigtowne was not the only target in that year’s hair heists. That same week salesman Alfred Averell was arrested with $111,000 worth of hot wigs and hairpieces stolen from his employers, Sylvester & Sons. He was nabbed when his getaway driver left hair hanging out the back of the truck, and police thought it was a murder or kidnapping.”
Eve Golden reporting on Jayne Mansfield’s 1965 wig crisis in the essential 2021 biography Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn’t Help It.
