Outed as heterosexual: why a mysterious fire-bearded Montreal hairdresser sued Woodstock

   One of Montreal's most recognizable hairdressers from the early 70s wore a flaming long beard and was assumed to be homosexual but - it turns out - was a smoothly seductive ladies man with a habit of seducing women at hippie festivals on camera.
   The hair stylist made a small notch in hippie history but surprisingly, nobody knows who he is, in spite of his high profile shenanigans.
    The unidentified hippie hairdresser gained prominence by being featured in the Woodstock film, based on the festival that took place 50 years ago this month.
   When the three-hour Woodstock film hit theatres in late March 1970, the hairdresser was astounded to see himself featured in a 150-second segment getting undressed with a 20-year-old secretary from Pennsylvania.
   The two looked like they were going to have sex, but apparently ultimately did not because she didn't have her birth control pill.  
   Her version was that they had met just met and had skinny-dipped together in a nearby lake. They didn't have sex but they embraced in the tall grass.
   The cameraman commented in one oral history of the festival:

  This guy, it turned out, was a  hairdresser in Montreal and he was supposed to be gay; his clientele expected him to play the gay role. And he sued for a million dollars because he claimed this was ruining his business to show him as a heterosexual. And besides, they didn't do it because the girl didn't take her pill that day. I couldn't go to that trial. I was going to Samoa, I think. I had a five-way conversation with a bunch of lawyers and gave a deposition and they knocked that one out.  P. 313 Woodstock The Oral History by Joel Makower

   The unidentified hippie told the court that the sequence exposed him to ridicule. He claimed it was  libelous.

    The defendants, Warner Bros. and United Amusement Corp. said that the hairdresser - who appears to have had an outlandishly large red beard - was not recognizable.
  One Warner Brothers' lawyer said the scene depicted "beautiful people doing beautiful things."
   Montreal Judge Paul Langlois replied "I'm not sure I would agree with that."
   We don't know if redbeard won his case or not.  

     But Coolopolis remains a bit irritated that nobody has come forth to identify what must have been a highly-recognizable figure in the hair-cutting community of the time.