Jack Pierce - The Man Behind The Monsters - Plot & Excerpts
by Junior Laemmle in 1930. While Dracula afforded Pierce the chance to bring a vampire character unlike any seen before to the screen, Béla Lugosi arrived in California with different plans. As Lugosi had always applied his own makeups on stage, he assumed the same situation would occur in Universal’s film version. Steadfast that he make himself into the cinematic version of Count Dracula (below), Jack Pierce was relegated to designing a green greasepaint for the character (through Max Factor’s organization), and likely designed the widow’s peak hairstyle in concert with hairstyling department head Lily Dirigo. Instead of working on the title character, Pierce, Dirigo, and costume designer Vera West collaborated to create the looks for Helen Chandler as Mina (above left) and the Count’s brides (above right). Nonetheless, when it was released in February of 1931, Dracula was an unqualified smash, and the Universal brass clamored for a follow-up. Though Lugosi was originally cast as the Monster when screenwriter-director Robert Florey was putting together the next Universal horror effort, Frankenstein, Junior Laemmle dismissed the test footage, claiming that the Lugosi Monster was too derivative of the title character in the German classic Der Golem (1920).
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