Monday, August 6, 2012

Jack Pierce, Wally Westmore mentioned in 1931 column

(Note: The following column is reprinted as it was first published, complete with typographical errors.)

Hollywood Sights and Sounds
The Carroll Daily Herald, Oct. 20, 1931

Sometimes it just happens that screen stories are timely, even though writers comb the newspapers for plot suggestions.

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring Frederic March, as in production weeks before the so-called "Ape Man" broke into Hollywood news with a series of attacks on women.

But the marauder's cruelty parallels the methods of Robert Louis Stevenson's fiction character, the bestial Mr. Hyde, who was the high-minded Dr. Jekyll's lower nature.

Another screen story long in preparation, "from an original story by Edgar Allan Poe," as the trade would say, has for its murdering villain a huge ape. It's called, of course, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

Another Thriller
Unrelated tr. apes and "apemen," but similarly of the movie cycle of horror stories following up on the success of "Dracula" is "Frankenstein," which features a monster created by a scientist from fragments of dead humans and given by mistake the brain of a criminal.

All these horror tales are giving studio make-up men opportunity to exercise their genius along macabre lines. Wally Westmore makes Frederic March such a grotesque Mr. Hyde that March, when in that character, shuns the studio lunchroom.

And Jack Pierce who spends three hours each morning tranforming Boris Karloff into the "Frankenstein'" monster, did weeks of research in  medical libraries to perfect his conception of an "undead"' pieced-together being.

When made-up Karloff goes to the set under a sheet, and it is just as well. I witnessed the make-up process and can report that I'd rather not meet this "monster" in a dark deserted srreet or anywhere except the screen.

The ape of Rue Morgue will be comparatively simple, but "The Invisible Man" (not a horror story) will present a real problem. This character is supposed to have ability to render himself invisible, but I am told, cannot restore himself to normalcy, although his clothes.

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