NEW YORK - For just the fifth time in the history of the company, The Gillette Company has offered to pay for exclusive shaving rights to a public figure. Agent Drew Rosenhaus announced today from his Park Avenue office that his client, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, would allow the famous beard he has worn since coming to power on January 1, 1959 to be shaved on a special Late Show With David Letterman to be taped on location in Havana in July. "President Castro is a big fan of the [Letterman] show," said Rosenhaus. According to Rosenhaus, Castro occasionally sends Letterman jokes to use on the air and, in fact, Letterman's entire monologue on one recent show was written by Castro. This will mark the first time that Castro has appeared on an American television program since his 1959 appearance on What's My Line, which led to a well-publicized affair, and messy break-up, with Arlene Francis.Other celebrities who have submitted to a public shaving using Gillette products are Russian mystic Gregory Rasputin, former Red Sox center fielder Johnny Damon, and in a prime-time publicity stunt gone awry, beloved British actor Sebastian Cabot. Cabot was shaved with disastrous results by a group of pre-schoolers who were not instructed as to how to use a razor while Cabot read to them from Winnie the Pooh. Following Cabot's disfigurement, he successfully sued Gillette but thereafter was relegated to movie roles that hid his face, including the serial killer in the first three Halloween films.
Rosenhaus said that Mr. Castro, who once vowed he would never shave until "the Russians give me back my missiles," was so impressed by the clean, close shave Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger received on Letterman's program earlier this month using the revolutionary new "Fusion" razor that he "simply had to try it." The only condition? "David, and only David, is permitted to shave me," Castro said.
Gillette's signing of Castro follows its unsuccessful attempt to sign the so-called "Unabomber," convicted serial killer Ted Kaczynski, to a similar contract, a failure that caused Gillete's stock price to plummet. Rosenhaus, who has represented Castro since the Mariel Boatlift in 1980, said that Castro would donate his beard trimmings to charity. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
