Jack Pierce (makeup artist)
| Jack Pierce | |
|---|---|
Pierce working on Boris Karloff
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| Born |
May 5, 1889 Greece |
| Died | July 19, 1968 (aged 79) Hollywood, California |
| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale |
| Occupation | Makeup artist |
Jack Pierce (born Janus Piccoula; May 5, 1889 – July 19, 1968) was a Hollywood makeup artist best remembered for creating the iconic makeup worn by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931), along with various other classic monster make-ups for Universal Studios.
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 the field of makeup. The small-statured Pierce was never a "leading man"-type, and he put his performing career aside to specialize in make-up for 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 hired full-time by 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 make-ups—opened a niche for Pierce and Universal, Chaney's films provided audiences with the deformed, monstrous faces that Pierce and moviegoers of the time enjoyed.
Universal's first "talkie" horror film, Dracula (1931), eschewed elaborate horror make-up. Pierce designed a special color greasepaint for Bela Lugosi for his vampire character, but Lugosi insisted on applying his own make-up. For all film appearances of the character thereafter, Pierce instituted a different look entirely, recasting Dracula as a man with graying hair and a mustache. 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. How much input director James Whale had into the initial concept remains controversial. Universal loaned out Pierce for the Lugosi film White Zombie. Lugosi had collaborated with Pierce on the look of his devilish character in the film.
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