Making of a monster
QUESTION Who created Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney’s Frankenstein make-up effects? STEPHEN JACOB’S excellent Boris Karloff biography More Than A Monster, describes how Universal’s head of makeup, Jack P. Pierce, created ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ design alongside suggestions for it from Karloff and director James Whale.
Pierce, born in Greece in 1889, already had experience in film make-up when Universal boss Carl Laemmle employed him, after his work on The Monkey Talks (1926), providing striking hair and facial designs such as Conrad veldt’s maniacal appearance in The Man Who Laughs (1928).
On Frankenstein he worked with Karloff for up to three weeks on the make-up (with the costume, it weighed 48 lb) using wax, collodion, gum, dark greasepaint, cheese cloth and wire clamps to achieve the monster’s vacant expression and flat head.
Bela Lugosi was originally cast as the monster, but quit in pre-production after a disastrous test film, and Karloff (who described Pierce as ‘the best make-up man in the world’), plucked from obscurity, was a last-minute replacement by Whale, the film’s new director.
Lugosi had shunned Pierce’s skills while preparing for Frankenstein and earlier on Dracula, preferring, like Lon Chaney, to apply his own make-up.
Whale’s sketch of the monster’s head proved useful to Pierce and Karloff removed his false teeth to collapse his cheek. Creating the make-up took up to six hours and removing it, painfully, about an hour, so it was rumoured that Karloff sometimes slept fully made-up to avoid the early 4am starts.
In spite of his groundbreaking association with the studio, adding The Mummy and Wolfman make-ups, plus Elsa Lanchester’s ‘shocked’ Bride Of Frankenstein barnet to his Cv, he never signed a contract.
He left Universal after 20 years in 1947, allegedly over a refusal to use foam latex, and later worked on films such as The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty and manipulated the mouth of Tv’s talking horse Mr Ed.
Pierce died childless on July 19, 1968, at 79, leaving a widow, and had a mere 24 funeral mourners at Forest Lawn cemetery, Burbank. Karloff, in failing health and remembering the friend and colleague who worked with him many times, helping him to stardom, sent flowers.
Simon Morris, Loughborough, Leics. LON CHANEY (1883-1930), known as ‘The Man of a Thousand Faces’, did his own make-up and owned a personalised makeup kit he’d use to transform himself from pirate, to Chinese shipwreck survivor, tough Marines sergeant, Russian peasant, mandarin, circus clown, crusty railroad engineer, to Fagin in Oliver Twist (1922).
Two of Chaney’s best-remembered films are The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1923) and Phantom Of The Opera (1925).
In both films, Chaney completely distorted his own face by using wax, false teeth and greasepaint. In the phantom he pulled the tip of his nose up and pinned it in place with wire, enlarging his nostrils with black paint to terrifying effect.
Make-up aside, Chaney was a great actor; he could instil both fear and heartbreaking empathy into his characters, but he never played Frankenstein’s monster.
His son, Lon Chaney Jr (1906-1973), did play the monster in The Ghost Of Frankenstein (1942) using Jack P. Pierce’s design, though he had little of the rugged, menacing presence of Karloff.
Daniel Forster, Wrexham. QUESTION Despite the fact we ‘lost’ 11 days in the 1700s, how come the stones still align with the sun on the Solstices at Stonehenge? THE problem was with the calendar, not Stonehenge. The ‘ heel’ stone faithfully records the summer and winter solstice no matter what date is imposed on it. The old Julian calendar was ahead of the earth’s actual position because of a miscalculation in the leap years.
In 1752, Parliament and King George II adopted the Gregorian system. To synchronise the calendar with astronomical events such as the vernal equinox or winter solstice, 11 days were dropped and the more accurate leap year formula imposed. The correction had been adopted by Pope Gregory XIII in October of 1582, but was not adopted at that time because of Protestant antagonism to the Catholic church. Oliver Talbot, Chester, Cheshire.
QUESTION
What examples are there of intelligent and ambitious peasants who were born in the Middle Ages who managed to climb the social ladder and become prominent figures? WHILE peasants were usually bound to the land by feudal law, it was occasionally possible for a poor boy to rise to high social station. One example is William of Wykeham, born around 1324 in what is now Wickham, Hants.
His outstanding intelligence saw him educated at Winchester Cathedral school at the expense of the lord of the manor. In 1349, he was appointed rector of Irstead in Norfolk.
William developed a reputation for the administration and supervision of royal building works during the reign of Edward III, and he was appointed surveyor of the long-running works to develop Windsor Castle in October 1356.
In June 1363 he was appointed Lord Privy Seal and was so powerful that, according to medieval historian Jean Froissart, he ‘reigned in England, and without him they did nothing’. He was consecrated Bishop of Winchester and appointed Chancellor of England in 1367.
William went on to found a free school, to offer 70 boys from poorer, rural backgrounds a proper education, and also a university college. Both have survived: Winchester College and New College, Oxford. William’s own motto, ‘ manners mayketh man’, became the motto of both. ‘Manners’ here meant being a capable and reliable member of society — a peasant, rather than an aristocratic attitude.
Henry VIII (1509-47) promoted ‘ new men’ , such as Thomas Wolsey, the son of a butcher, Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith, and the Bishops Richard Fox and John Morton. Unlike his nobles, these men were dependent on him for their position and prospects.
Alice Leese, Montrose.
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