Paul V. Coates -- Confidential File, July 15, 1959

Confidential File Harry Karl's Barber Is Pro Tem Leftist When he's not busy totaling the day's receipts, Harry Karl, the shoe tycoon, is a member in good standing of a social class known as the idle rich. He is, so to speak, loaded. Unlike you or me, he doesn't wait until the "January white" sales are announced to replenish his home linen supply. If his neighborhood supermarket is featuring ground round as a week-end special, he's the kind of guy who'll shrug it off and plop a seven-bone roast into his push-cart. You get the idea? Money, with Harry, is no object. Take haircuts. I know, and you know, that at $1.75 a head, barbers are getting away with daring daylight robbery. But that's not Harry's feelings. For a perfect trim and the proper swivel-chair treatment, he'll go as high as $1,000. You don't believe me? Well, sit down and hear me out. Recently, Karl was sitting in Maury's chair at the Beverly-Wilshire Health Club, pondering a problem of relatively immense proportions, considering the moment. He was about to leave on an extended vacation to Hawaii. While there, he would need a haircut. And Maury, his barber for 22 years, wouldn't be available, obviously, to perform the ritual. "The only answer," Karl sighed finally, "is for you to fly over after me." Maury, a man quick to oblige the whims of his customers, agreed to make the trip. On schedule, Maury arrived in Honolulu. Karl's chauffeur met him at the airport and drove him to the hotel. Although it was still before 7 a.m., the barber went directly to his customer's hotel suite. He banged on the door until Karl woke up and opened it. The shoe magnate muttered a sleepy greeting, yawned luxuriously and rubbed his eyes until he could see reasonably well. What he saw made him turn pale. The barber's right arm was neatly encased in a plaster cast. "Maury!" he cried, pointing at it in horror. "What's that?" "My arm," the barber replied. "I broke it three days ago." "You can't do that to me," Karl screamed. "Look at my hair. Three weeks I've been waiting for you to come over here and cut it. And whatta you do? You break your arm." "I didn't do it on purpose," Maury pleaded. "A thousand bucks it cost me to get you over here," Karl raged, pacing up and down. "Why didn't you call and tell me you broke your arm? Why did you come all the way over here?" Maury shrugged. "You got me the ticket, I figured I might as well use it. I never been to Honolulu before." Karl collapsed into a chair and buried his uncut head in his hands. Maury patted him on the back with his good arm. "Look," he said soothingly, "we'll go to the hotel barber and I'll give him directions how to cut." "Directions!" Karl shouted. "You could've done that on the telephone. A thousand dollars you cost me. You're a rat, Maury. You hear me? A rat." Karl continued pacing and furiously banging a fist into his hand. Finally, with an exasperated sigh, he said: "As long as you're here, you might as well stay for a day." "No hard feelings?" the barber asked meekly. "My luck," Karl muttered bitterly. "I got to wind up with a one-arm barber." Guy Needs Some Killing "No hard feelings?" Maury repeated. "Let's shake on it." With a flourish, he thrust out the "broken" arm. "See? It isn't broken," he said brightly. "It was just a gag I thought up before I left." I'd like to end this story by telling you that Karl took the barber's arm and broke it. But he didn't. If he had, it would mean flying in Maury's partner from the mainland. And, after all, who ever heard of paying $2,000 for one haircut.