THE FUNDAMENTALS: JACK PIERCE THE MAN BEHIND THE FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER

Los Angeles -- We continue the fundamentals of movie entertainment with a look at the Make Up Artist.  Horror has been a mainstay revenue stream for the studios as far back as when movies were silent and the way to heighten the suspense and terror was communicated through pantomime and make-up.  Lon Chaney Sr.  without doubt is considered the father of the Horror genre and make up.  His pantomime and endless fiendish characters that he created with his legendary make up kit laid the foundation for the Horror formula and subsequent character make up.  

Jack Pierce was a Hollywood makeup artist best remembered for creating the landmark iconic makeup worn by Boris Karloff in Universal Studios' adaptation of Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece "Frankenstein" (1931).  He also was responsible for various other classic monster make-ups such as "The Mummy", "The Wolfman" and "Dracula".  Although Bela Lagousi insisted on doing his own makeup for the role of the blood sucking Count.  Pierce created the overall look and feel of the aristocratic ghoulish vampire from Transylvania. 


So what better way to examine the craft of the makeup artist than to begin with the man who would helm the Universal Studios' make-up department for the next 20 years and literally brand the studios iconic creations till this day. Let's then take a look at the craft of the make up process that literally propelled a middle aged British actor into a life long career of scaring the be Jesus out of all of us.

Here is what Wikipedia had say about this short unassuming man whom you would hardly notice in a crowd were it not for his genius in creating the archetypal horror movie characters. 

After immigrating to the United States from his native Greece as a teenager, Pierce tried his hand at several careers, including a stint as an amateur baseball player.

In the 1920s, Pierce embarked on a series of jobs in cinema—cinema manager, stuntman, actor, even assistant director—which would eventually lead to his mastery of in the field of makeup. The small-statured Pierce was never a "leading man" type, and he put his performing career aside to or other performers. In 1915 he was hired to work on crews for the studio's productions. On the 1926 set of The Monkey Talks, Jack Pierce created the makeup for actor Jacques Lernier who was playing a simian with the ability to communicate. The head of Universal, Carl Laemmle, was won over with the creative outcome. Next came the rictus-grin face of Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs (1928), a silent picture. Pierce was then immediately hired full-time by the newly established Universal Pictures motion picture studio. The death in 1930 of Lon Chaney, who throughout the 1920s had made a name for himself by creating grotesque and often painful horror makeups, opened a niche for Pierce and Universal, Chaney's films provided audiences with the deformed, monstrous faces that Pierce and moviegoers so clearly enjoyed.

The most significant creation during Pierce's time at the studio was Frankenstein (1931), with Lugosi originally cast as the Monster. The preliminary design (from contemporary newspaper accounts and a recollection of the screen test by actor Edward Van Sloan) was similar to Paul Wegener's German film of The Golem (1920). This is not surprising, since studio head Carl Laemmle, Jr. and director Robert Florey were both familiar with German Expressionist films. When James Whale replaced Florey as director, the concept was radically changed. Pierce came up with a design which was horrific as well as logical in the context of the story. So, where Henry Frankenstein has accessed the brain cavity, there is a scar and a seal, and the now famous "bolts" on the neck are actually electrodes; carriers for the electricity used to revive the stitched-up corpse. 

Collaboration with Karloff....They both cooperated on the design of the now iconic make-up, with Karloff removing a dental plate to create an indentation on one side of the Monster's face. He also endured four hours of make-up under Pierce's hand each day, during which time his head was built up with cotton, collodion and gum, and green greasepaint (designed to look pale on black and white film) was applied to his face and hands. The finished product was universally acclaimed, and has since become the commonly accepted visual representation of Mary Shelley's creation.