00:00Presenting, The King of the Duplicators.
00:09This is where The King of the Duplicators works, the Bass Studios of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
00:15This man is capable of duplicating the face of practically anyone.
00:21For instance, as these black and white photographs show, he can make a leading man into Abraham
00:29Lincoln, or a Natalie Wood into An Old Woman, or a Tony Randall into Dr. Lau.
00:50Bill Tuttle, head of the makeup department for MGM for 30 years, and the only makeup man
00:56to receive the coveted Oscar.
00:59Wayne Thomas, here on the scene with Bill, as he is covering this actor's face with
01:04hot wax.
01:05Bill, why are you doing that?
01:07Well, we have to do a character makeup on him.
01:10As a matter of fact, he's playing Humpty Dumpty.
01:13And I have to take an impression of his face first in order to model the necessary effects
01:18to produce Humpty Dumpty.
01:21Later on we'll show you exactly what happens in the following steps, but right now this
01:25poor man has to sit motionless for about 30 minutes, I think, while he covers his face
01:29with the wax.
01:30Is that similar to candle wax, or is that a special kind of wax?
01:33This is a very special wax, Wayne.
01:35It's called Negacol, and it has to be heated in a double boiler for about three hours in
01:41order to break it down to this consistency, and then it's cooled to a comfortable temperature
01:46so that it can be applied directly to the face.
01:49Okay, Bill.
01:53At this point, Bill Tuttle has covered our actor's face with a hot wax.
02:00Everything except the nose holes, so he can breathe, of course, and little eye slits.
02:05The next step is to cover the wax with a plaster of Paris.
02:09Bill will explain later exactly why he's doing that.
02:12He's so busy right now, I don't want to interrupt him.
02:14This is done for almost all actors and actresses that come into this department to have a character
02:20makeup applied.
02:22What are you doing now, Bill?
02:27We're ready for the lift-off.
02:31Off comes the mask.
02:32Inside, the wax has made a perfect impression of every line and facet of this man's face,
02:38right?
02:39You see, the reason we use wax, Wayne, we get a much more accurate impression than you do
02:43with just plaster of Paris alone.
02:45And the plaster of Paris on the outside is for what purpose?
02:47Just to support the wax.
02:49I see.
02:50Now you have a perfect shell.
02:51Well, the next step is filling the mask.
03:01Bill, what are you doing at this point?
03:03We're now pouring plaster into the impression that we just took.
03:08And this will make an exact replica of the actor's face when we peel the outer shell off, correct?
03:15That's right.
03:16Why is all this being done?
03:18Well, as we mentioned before, when an actor or an actress needs a character makeup, there's
03:23a lot of extra things, of course, that have to be done.
03:26And rather than have them sit here in the makeup department by the hour, they work on the mask.
03:29We'll show you what we mean in a moment.
03:36Now the plaster is hardened inside the shell, and Bill's taken most of the shell off.
03:41Here's the last piece.
03:42And here is the actor that you saw at the beginning of our program.
03:45His mask completed right down to the last wrinkle.
03:48All ready for you to fashion the character makeup of, what was it, Humpty Dumpty?
03:51Humpty Dumpty.
03:52Fantastic.
03:53Let's put that over there and show some of the masks here in the MGM mask room of some
03:57of the famous people that you had masks made of so that you might form a character makeup
04:02on them.
04:03Here we have Doris Day, Martha Ray, Jimmy Durante, could you mistake that?
04:12And above him?
04:13Fred Astaire, and the King, Clark Gable, Paul Newman, and let's see, who might that be?
04:24I think this is the one you made of me a little while back.
04:26I'll take my glasses off so they can get a comparison of the mask you made right on my
04:30face not too long ago.
04:32By golly, when you put that wax on, it felt as if I were being smothered alive.
04:36Now these masks are what you use to form these different character makeups, correct?
04:40That's right.
04:41For instance, once used a mask of Anne Francis.
04:44This was in a Twilight Zone.
04:46In a Twilight Zone thriller.
04:47She played a mannequin.
04:48Now this head was mounted on a mannequin body.
04:50This, of course, in vivid color looks exactly like Anne Francis, right down to the beautiful
04:55eyes.
04:56This is one of the uses of the mask that you make here.
04:59One of the most dramatic ones was the picture of Dorian Gray that goes back a few years.
05:04Take that cover off and let's see something that's quite startling.
05:07Remember Heard Hatfield in the picture?
05:09Here he was as a young handsome leading man.
05:12Then what happened to him here, Bill?
05:14That's a slight case of dissipation to say the least.
05:16And then the finale of the picture.
05:18Complete deterioration.
05:20And to begin with, you made a mask of Heard Hatfield's face and then made these different
05:26appliances on the mask so that he would look like this character.
05:30Okay?
05:31Right.
05:32Now let's go in the other room and see how this is done.
05:36Now we're showing the mask and, Bill, you're modeling on it.
05:39What are you doing?
05:40This is for Arthur O'Connell and the power.
05:42He gets caught in a centrifuge with his face on the outer rim and it causes his tongue
05:47to pull out and all the facial features to move out.
05:49What's the next step after this?
05:50The next step is we make a mold of this as we have done for some ears.
05:54Now this is for the extraordinary semen where we have some diac natives with elongated earlobes.
06:00I see.
06:01We have the molds all set up here and we're about to pour sponge rubber into the mold.
06:07Charlie Schramm, your assistant here, is filling the little molds with liquid rubber.
06:11Now you put a top on it, I guess, huh?
06:13The top of the mold goes on like so and it's weighted to create a pressure on it.
06:18We have to move very fast on something like that because it sets up very rapidly.
06:23We have now filled the molds with the latex.
06:29They've gone into the oven to bake.
06:31How long, Bill?
06:32About two and a half to three hours.
06:34Then when you open those up, you have little rubber earlobes that'll go on the natives.
06:38I have one of the ones that you already cooked and is ready to go.
06:41Let's try that on you, Wayne.
06:43Okay.
06:44That fits the lower part, is adhered with spirit gum, and then this is all colored to match.
06:49So it looks as if in the band, the actor, has a long ear as the natives would in that part of the world.
06:55Now to kind of wind things up today, I thought Bill Tuttle ought to put one of these appliances on me.
06:59And what have we selected, Bill?
07:01This is a bald cap.
07:02In other words, when you get this on, glued down around the edges, and I guess covered with makeup,
07:06it's going to look as if I had nothing on the top of my head.
07:10So hold on to your seats.
07:11We're going to see how I look completely bald.
07:18Well, it looks like he's just about finished.
07:20Bill, what have you accomplished so far?
07:21You put it on, glued it down, then what?
07:23Blended the edges and then applied the makeup color to the entire cap.
07:27Now this is just one of the many appliances, as they call them,
07:30the things that are added to an actor's or an actress's face to make them look as some other character.
07:35In other words, he duplicates on them the face of another person,
07:39or perhaps in some cases, an animal.
07:41This time, I'm an old man, out of hair, and I think we're just about out of time.
07:46Bill, it's really been a pleasure.
07:47I think we've learned a great deal about the makeup department
07:49and how these fantastic makeups are done.
07:52Head of the makeup department for MGM for 30 years, Bill Tuttle.
07:56Thank you so much.
07:57Thank you, Wayne.
07:58And thank you, too.
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