Happy 91'st birthday to makeup legend Dick Smith

[mego73]

Happy 91st birthday to legendary makeup artist Dick Smith. Dick's legacy and inspiration to other makeup artists after him is incalculable and widespread. His earlier days in makeup was in early TV and stage. Dick's makeup for the TV productions of The Picture Of Dorian Gray and Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain Tonight (turning Hal into a remarkable visage of Twain) are legendary. He also did work on the gothic TV daytime drama Dark Shadows (most notably the old age makeup on Barnabas Collins). But his breakthroughs in film effects are what he is best known for and served as continued inspiration for generations of makeup artists. He innovated more realism in old age makeups beginning with Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man. He was quick to credit Stuart Freeborn's innovation on an overlapping bald cap as a big help but among Dick Smith's innovations in the makeup were sculpted eyelids that moved with Dustin's own. It was Dick Smith that began to have a more standardized formula for fake blood using Karo syrup adopted by most in the industry. A lot of it got used in his work for both 1970's Godfather movies. Smith's work in the film included innovations on bullet hits and other bloody depictions of Mafia violence and also another old age makeup on Marlon Brando. Arguably, the biggest showcase of his skills came through in The Exorcist. From taking 12 year old Linda Blair from a normal looking girl to a demon possessed monstrosity to perhaps his most remarkable old age makeup on Max Von Sydow (filmed in harsh sunlight and the frigid cold of the bedroom set but still successful enough to make viewers believe that Max was actually that old) he was the unseen force in the power the movie had. It wouldn't be until 1984 that Dick would win the makeup Oscar (mostly because it did not exist for most of his career) for Amadeus but he recently got an honorary Academy Award recognizing his remarkable contributions to the film industry and to those he inspired. Perhaps the most amazing thing about all this is that in an industry where manual dexterity is important, Dick did all this minus a finger on one of his hands.

[PNGwynne]

Happy birthday to one of my idols! I have Smith's amateur how-to book and love it.

His proteges won the Oscar for the Dick Tracy crooks' make-up as well.