With great sadness we learn that special effect makeup
master Dick Smith has passed away, July 30, 2014. He was 92 years old.
Dick Smith was a giant in his field, an innovator, and
massively influential, though he might be best remembered for his generosity as
a teacher and a mentor to aspiring makeup artists. He was even willing to share
his knowledge with the very youngest monster movie fans as he did in 1965 with
the magazine-format Do-It-Yourself Monster
Make-Up Handbook published by James Warren’s Famous Monsters.
Here, reposted, is an article I wrote back in 2010 about
Smith and the Handbook.
Dick Smith's Frankenstein
For first generation Monster Kids in 1965, Dick Smith’s
Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-up Handbook was the holy grail. There had never
been anything like it before. Here, incredibly, was a step-by-step guide on how
to turn yourself into a monster, written in simple language, easily understood,
and published in an inexpensive magazine format by Famous
Monsters!
I sent away for the book and would spend the next year or
two experimenting with monster makeup. I hunted down the suggested ingredients,
esoteric stuff like spirit gum, collodion and thick, smelly liquid latex.
Soon, I could lace my arms with disturbingly realistic scars
and give myself a bubbly burned face using corn syrup and breadcrumbs, adding
red and blue strings for veins. I could arthritically deform my knuckles using
glue and cotton matted down and shaped with acrylic paint. I even made a
bald-head skullcap, painting liquid latex on a balloon, and worn to hilarious
effect.
Smith’s book described a number of makeups, from an easy
Weird-Oh
character and a painted on split-skull face to more elaborate jobs, stepping up
the difficulty level as he went on.
I never
attempted the complex werewolf or the book’s pièce de résistance, Smith’s New Frankenstein Monster,
which took its cue from Mary Shelley’s description, “His
yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.”
I can’t imagine how any kid could achieve this one without
infinite patience, helping hands, and uncommon talent. The full-head job
required hammering out a metal skullcap, carefully building up facial muscles
with cotton and mortician’s wax (an anatomical diagram of facial muscles and
arteries was provided), and covering everything with a transparent gelatin
skin. The finished effect must have been stunning. Smith admitted that it did
not photograph well, writing “the weird transparency of the skin is
more apparent to the eyes than to the camera, but it was most
effective.” The
whole thing would theoretically peel away easily, though Smith suggested using
baby shampoo to clean the red stains off your face!
Dick Smith’s book is symbolic of his generosity and his
eagerness to share his knowledge, an avowed reaction to the wall of silence he
encountered as a fledgling makeup artist in the late Forties. Hollywood makeup
men wouldn’t share their secrets. “None of them would give you the
time of day,” Smith
said. Throughout his life, Smith was kind to fellow artists, most notably in
his mentorship of Rick Baker, who was guided and encouraged by Smith when still
a teenager.
Amazingly, when Dick Smith wrote his
Handbook
in 1965, his best work was still ahead. Smith would go on to create the latex
appliance methods still in use today. He introduced the use of bladders for
breathing effects, spurting blood, and the crawling skin transformations seen
in Altered States (1980). He created the ultimate “old
man” makeup, still a reference, for Dustin Hoffman’s Big
Little Man, a
design also used on vampire Barnabas Collins in House of
Dark Shadows, both
made in 1966. Smith designed the gruesomely realistic effects of violence in
Coppola’s Godfather pictures, Scorcese’s Taxi Driver
(1976) and, in what
is perhaps his masterpiece, he created the astounding makeup effects on display
in The Exorcist (1973).
Dick Smith’s Do-It-Yourself Monster Makeup
Handbook, in both
its original Warren magazine format and an updated book edition from 1985, is
an expensive collector’s item today. Still available is a 40-minute
demonstration video, Monster
Makeup Hosted by Dick Smith, directed by John Russo.
Scans from the original Warren edition are on view
over at the Magic Carpet Burn blog archives.
Here’s The
New Frankenstein Monster. Click and scroll
around to see the rest of the mag.
Still online, an abandoned blog, Max and Courtney Make
Monsters, attempted to recreate every makeup
described in Smith’s Do-It-Yourself book.
