Hue And Cry Over Nightmare Hair Fiasco Leaves Her ‘Just Beyond Upset’

When Patricia Graham went to have her hair dyed, she thought something in a pretty blond would be nice.

Instead, she says, a dark forest-green color showed up in her hair - just weeks before her wedding.

“I cried hysterically all the way home from the salon,” Graham said Thursday. “I was just beyond upset.”

Earlier this month, Graham filed a lawsuit against both her hair stylist, Dennis Spranger, and the Manthos Hair Salon where he works.

But the stylist and his co-workers insist he did not dye Graham’s hair green. They say the 32-year-old Coeur d’Alene woman’s body chemistry is the real culprit.

“There’s no way we would let somebody walk out of here with green hair,” said Sally Manthos, owner of the salon.

Graham, a nurse, administers chemotherapy to cancer patients. Spranger believes the chemotherapy may have affected the chemical balance in Graham’s body, causing her hair to react strangely with the dye. Plus, Spranger says, her hair never turned green.

Graham went to the salon in November 1994 to have her hair professionally colored, according to the lawsuit. The bride-to-be hoped the dye would cover the gray in her dishwater-blond hair.

But when Spranger had finished his work, Graham’s hair was nowhere near the color she had expected.

“It was a real dark deep chocolate brown with a real forest-green hue to it,” she said.

Spranger and Manthos admit Graham didn’t get the color she wanted.

“She had an ash hint to her hair, but she did not go out with forest-green hair,” Manthos said.

A week later, Graham returned to try to correct the color, according to the suit.

“I kept thinking (Spranger) can fix it because they had told me he was an award-winning colorist,” Graham said. “I wanted the best right before my wedding.”

Spranger said he stripped the color out and tried to re-dye the hair, only to have it turn an ash color again.

Graham insists it turned to a lime green hue the second time. She also said Spranger burned her scalp with the chemicals he was using.

“It was burning so bad, my eyes were watering,” she said.

Spranger said he has been coloring hair since 1967 and insists the strange color - green or ash - was not his fault. “She has a chemical problem in her system,” Spranger said.

And he insists, “She didn’t have one burn mark on her scalp.”

Despite the dyeing drama, Graham was married about a week later.

“I have a really supportive husband,” she said.

The green hue didn’t show up too much in her pictures, she said. However, during their honeymoon in Hawaii, the new bride couldn’t swim in the swimming pool for fear the chlorine would turn her hair more green.

Graham claims a very light tint of green still can be seen in hair when she’s out in the sun. She is asking for more than $10,000 in damages.

But “there’s no way you can put gold blond on her hair and get a green color,” Manthos said. “It’s a false claim.”