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In
Remembrance: William Tuttle
William “Bill” Tuttle, the pioneering Hollywood makeup artist whose
work transforming Tony Randall into The Seven Faces Of Dr. Lao
moved the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to award its
first special Academy Award for Achievement in Make Up has died July
30, 2007 in Pacific Palisades, CA. He was 95.
During his 35-year career at MGM Studios, Tuttle trained numerous
young makeup artists and developed innovative techniques for both
glamour and effects makeups. In addition to his work on The Seven
Faces Of Dr. Lao, where he created several distinct character
makeups for Randall, Tuttle also created the look of the Morlocks in
the 1960 classic The Time Machine and transformed Peter Boyle
into the Monster of Mel Brooks’ comedy Young Frankenstein
(1974).
Tuttle was also known for his more traditional makeup work,
glamorizing the likes of numerous Hollywood stars including Fred
Astaire and Jane Powell in Royal Wedding (1951), Gene Kelly
and Leslie Caron in An American In Paris (1951), Spencer
Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in Pat And Mike (1952), Esther
Williams in Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), Kathryn Grayson
and Howard Keel in Kiss Me Kate (1953), Frank Sinatra and
Debbie Reynolds in The Tender Trap (1955) and Bing Crosby and
Grace Kelly in High Society (1956). In total, Tuttle worked
on nearly 350 films over his four-and-a-half decade career.
For television’s The Twilight Zone, Tuttle’s work served to
punctuate the twist ending of the episode “Eye Of The Beholder.” In
the episode, doctors and nurses, faces hidden by shadow, work
feverishly on a young woman who wants her deformed famous to be made
to like a normal person. When the bandages are removed, the doctors
discover that their efforts have failed. While the audience sees the
patient as a beautiful young woman, played by future Beverly
Hillbilly Donna Douglas, the doctors and nurses are revealed to
have large, twisted lips and pig-like noses. After he turned
fifteen, he dropped out of school to help support his mother and
younger brother Thomas. At age 18, he moved to Los Angeles,
enrolling in art classes at University of Southern California.
Landing an apprenticeship at Twentieth Century Fox, Tuttle found
himself in the makeup department studying under department head Jack
Dawn. In 1934, Dawn moved to MGM Studios, taking Tuttle with him.
Some of his earliest work was creating a bullet wound for Bela
Lugosi’s character in Mark Of The Vampire (1935) and work on
The Wizard Of Oz (1939). After Dawn retired, Tuttle took
charge of the makeup department, running it for over two decades.
Working under studio chief Louis B. Mayer’s directive that “all
women should appear beautiful and all men should be handsome,"
Tuttle constantly strove to create new makeup techniques throughout
his career. In 1975 he unveiled a line of cosmetics, Custom Color
Cosmetics, which were used extensively in the industry for two
decades.
When MGM began downsizing in the mid-1970s, Tuttle was forced to
close the studio’s makeup department. He continued to work in films
for a few more years before retiring after finishing work on the
comedy Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981). He also taught at USC
from 1970 to 1995. |
