The Guardian (23/Aug/2007) - Obituary: William Tuttle
(c) The Guardian (23/Aug/2007)
- keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, Grace Kelly, North by Northwest (1959), Paul Newman, Shirley MacLaine, William Tuttle
Obituary: William Tuttle
Eminent Hollywood makeup artist who worked with the glamorous and great
By using an assembly of cosmetics, wigs and hair dye, makeup artists played a significant role during the heyday of the Hollywood studio system, giving performers flawless complexions, wrinkle-free skin and perfect teeth, making them seem more attractive than they really were. The most glamorous of the studios, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, which made "beautiful pictures with beautiful people", was where William Tuttle, who has died aged 95, worked for 35 years. He was head of the makeup department there from 1950 to 1969.
Makeup is an aspect of a film on which critics rarely comment, unless it is especially outlandish, though Tuttle was pleased to paraphrase Beau Brummell's celebrated epigram, "if people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed", to "if people notice your makeup, then you are not well made-up". However, no one could fail to notice, even subliminally, the perfection of the MGM stars, male and female, when Tuttle ran the department, although it was more difficult to disguise imperfections in Technicolor, which was becoming more and more dominant in the 1950s.
Adapted to the lighting and colour of the image, Tuttle's work on three of Vincente Minnelli's best musicals was particularly notable: An American in Paris (1951), The Band Wagon (1953) and Gigi (1958). He also did Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), in black and white, showing three faces of Lana Turner - drunken extra, glamorous star, neurotic rejected lover; Some Came Running (1958), with Shirley MacLaine looking kooky as a heart-of-gold hooker; and Lust for Life (1956), with Kirk Douglas transformed into a hallucinatory likeness of Vincent Van Gogh.
In the same decade, Tuttle worked on Richard Brooks' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman in their prime; Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest and George Sidney's Show Boat, in which Ava Gardner was slightly darker skinned as the tragic Julie Laverne, a mulatto who passes as white, shown in a final close-up, seemingly without makeup.
"Hollywood's Mermaid" Esther Williams, of whom someone unfairly cracked, "only on dry land was she truly out of her depth", was a particular challenge for Tuttle. Forever smiling and blowing bubbles under water during her spectacular aquaballets, Williams would always emerge still impeccably made up due to the waterproof cosmetics reapplied after each take. In Singin' in the Rain (1952), Tuttle worked wonders with "period" makeup, allowing Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Jean Hagen to look like stars of the late 1920s. Among the 300 or so other films he made were 10 starring Elvis Presley.
Tuttle was born in Jacksonville, Florida. After his father abandoned the family, William dropped out of school to support his mother and younger brother Thomas, who would also work as a makeup artist in the film industry. Tuttle, who had learned to play the violin as a child, joined a burlesque orchestra, later forming his own band.
At 18, he moved to Los Angeles and took art classes at the University of Southern California, after which he became apprenticed to Jack Dawn, his predecessor as head of the MGM makeup department. Dawn was particularly impressed by his young assistant's work on Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire (1935), in which Tuttle had created a convincing bullet hole in Bela Lugosi's head.
Many years later, Tuttle created the monstrous Morlocks in The Time Machine (1960). The wigs and body hair were made of white monkey fur. The glowing eyes of the Morlocks were small light bulbs placed in the eye sockets of the foam masks, with wires running down the back of the actors' necks and into a pocket which held the batteries.
To prove that all his hard work "was not in vain for nothing", as dumb blonde Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Rain might have said, Tuttle won an honorary Oscar in 1965 for his work on 7 Faces of Dr Lao, 16 years before makeup became recognised as an official academy award category. In Tuttle's hands, Tony Randall was transformed into the eponymous Chinese doctor, an aged Merlin the magician, Medusa, the Abominable Snowman, a giant serpent, Apollonius of Tyana and Pan. "[Tuttle] shaved my head and eyebrows. The effect gave me an unborn look. But professionally, it was a masterstroke," Randall recalled. "All of my preconceived notions on how I would play the characters vanished. As soon as Tuttle applied his makeup magic, I felt myself actually become these strange people."
Over the years, Tuttle created plaster masks of the faces of a great many film stars, which allowed prostheses-like scars, wrinkles and false noses to be custom-fitted, even when the actors were not present. They were part of a system he developed to speed the process of repeatedly applying makeup during shooting. About 100 of the masks are now at the University of Southern California, his alma mater, where he taught for many years.
After his long stint at MGM, Tuttle developed his own makeup line, Custom Color Cosmetics, and worked on a number of films including Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974), for which he was responsible for Peter Boyle's monster makeup, wittily based on Jack Pierce's original design for Boris Karloff in 1931. Television also benefited from his experience, especially about a dozen episodes of The Twilight Zone. His final film was Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981).
Tuttle's first wife was the actor Donna Reed, whom he met while doing her face at MGM in 1943. He is survived by his fifth wife, whom he married in 1965, and a daughter from his second marriage.
William Julian Tuttle, film makeup artist, born April 13 1912; died July 27 2007
