OGRE OF THE MAKE-UP BOX

Happy New Year, everyone! Welcome to a new page in the chronicle of the life and career of Jack P. Pierce, makeup artist extraordinaire. Let's dive in, shall we?

The clipping shown above is from The New York Times, Sunday March 31, 1935. It includes the article, "Ogre of the Make-Up Box", written about two months after Werewolf of London began shooting. The author also includes info on The Bride of Frankenstein that had just been completed.

“The Frankenstein of Universal City has just finished his biggest job to date and is well advanced on his next assignment of turning men into monsters. This practitioner of occult arts, before whom strong actors tremble is Jack Pierce, half man, half plasterer. After making two monsters a day (male and female created he them) over a stretch of thirty-two days for ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ which James Whale has just finished, he is now filling the hair-restorative companies with consternation by growing hair on the palm of Henry Hull for the ‘Werewolf of London’. He is now on location at Vasquez Rocks, California, a weird desert tract of jagged cliffs which look like geological formations on Mars.

“Pierce is the centre [sic] of attention for all the players and staff. A wry, irascible-looking chap, with black mustache and steel-rimmed spectacles, he looks precisely like a German scientist. Especially is this so, when, attired in his white surgeon’s tunic [actually a barber’s smock; Pierce was a professionally-trained barber] worn over a sweater, he is busy doing unprecedented things to the visage of homo [sic] sapiens.”

LA OPINION ON JACK PIERCE

The drawing shown above of Jack and Boris was included in an article about Pierce in the July 22, 1982 edition of the Spanish language Los Angeles newspaper, LA Opinion. The artist appears to be uncredited, but it is likely to be the work of a staff artist.

NOTE: We are taking a holiday break. As a result, this will be our last post of the year. Happy Holidays, and we'll see you back here after the first of the year.

BEHIND PIERCE'S MAKEUP: JACQUES LERNER

The Fox Film Corporation's The Monkey Talks was released on February 20, 1927. It was directed by Raoul Walsh and based on the 1924 French stage play Le Singe qui parle by René Fauchois. Both starred the actor Jacques Lerner as the titular monkey. We've yet to find any photographs of Lerner in the stage play or any information on his makeup. It is likely that he did his own.

Lerner was born in Russia and raised in Paris, France. At the age of eight, he joined the circus as a tumbler, after which he began playing on the stage. He became quite popular, and at some point was considered by the press as the "continental Lon Chaney".

When Fox bought the rights for the story, they located Lerner to play his role on screen. A young Jack Pierce, who had already become an accomplished makeup artist, was hired to transform Lerner into a simian.

And what a convincing job it was! Accolades were given to the unknown person who had turned a man into a talking monkey.

This article on Jacques Lerner is from Picture Play, June 1927. Pierce is unsurprisingly not mentioned.