Swept up in the Elvis Presley rage, seventeen-year-old Susan Hull of Grand Rapids, Michigan, stunned her boyfriend and made the pages of Life magazine when she cut off her, foot-long ponytail, dyed black what hair remained, and slicked it back in homage to the King of Rock 'n' Roll. In reacting to his girlfriend's new coiffure, Lew Potter voiced the bitterness of many Michigan boyfriends and husbands whose Presley-obsessed women were flocking to the barber chair: "I could hang you for that." If Michigan men were truly looking for someone to hang, however, they could have turned on Grand Rapids beautician Glenwood Dodgson, who created the new look for women—complete with stray locks dangling over the forehead and sideburns. Charging $1.50 a cut, Dodgson in March 1957 reported that he had made Presleys of a thousand women—ranging in age from three to...