First it was the river. Then it was the mayor’s hair. In 1972, Mayor Ralph Perk attended the American Metals Society show. As Perk cut a ceremonial metal bar with a blowtorch, a spark flew and set Cleveland’s mayoral mane aflame. A bystander quelled the fire by dealing Perk’s noggin a very dignified slapping. “This job is more hazardous than I thought,” Perk joked, according to Cleveland Press.
The photo spread around the world. The mayor’s singed head, and thus the city, were yet again the butt of jokes. Comedian Bob Hope cracked many of them, on trips around the country and overseas USO jaunts.
In 1976, Perk tried to fix the damage (and a skosh of natural baldness) with a hair transplant at the Cleveland Clinic. Months later, Perk invited a barber to his office for what he probably hoped was a reputation-saving photo op, ahead of a joint appearance with Hope.
Perk brandished a globe-shaped locket. It was soon filled with hair. He presented the globe to Hope 12 days later onstage at the Front Row Theater, as a locally rooted revenge for all the gags the Cleveland-raised Hope had told around the world. The “long lock of [Perk’s] ubiquitous hair” was “all done up in a glass globe,” reported The Plain Dealer’s Mary Strassmeyer. “For the globe-circling Hope, of course.”
1976: Ralph Perk's Hair Catches Fire
The mayor was forced to remedy the embarrassing situation with a hair transplant from the Cleveland Clinic.
