"To My Friend Jack Pierce"

French-American actor Charles Boyer signed a three picture contract with Universal in January 1942. During that period he had numerous occasions to sit in Jack Pierce's makeup chair. The photo shown above with the message, "To my friend Jack Pierce" is just one of the many photos like this where actors and actresses thanked Pierce for his work.

Note that the photo is copyrighted 1941. It's likely he was negotiating his contract with Universal late in the year and this publicity portrait taken during that time.

A BIT OF FUN ON THE SET OF TOWER OF LONDON

Above is a shot of Jack shaving Boris Karloff's head for his role of Mord in Universal's historical drama, The Tower of London (1939). The image below shows Karloff returning the favor!

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.”