Of all the Frankenstein photos I've seen, this is my favorite. The monster attacking it's creator, Dr. Henry Frankenstein near the end of the movie. After escaping, the Monster corners Henry during a search party, knocks him unconscious, and carries him to an old windmill.
Whenever I think about the story of Frankenstein, the first thing that comes to mind is Boris Karloff as the monster, much like Bela Lugosi with Dracula, Boris Karloff set the bar at an unreachable height as Dr. Frankenstein's monster, he stole the show, he was the show.
That really goes for Lon Chaney as well, he set the bar for the cinematic werewolf with his portrayal of Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941). His performance introduced the tragic, sympathetic element of the cursed man fighting his own monstrous instincts, rather than being a pure evil creature. This portrayal became the gold standard for werewolves in film and established the enduring "Wolf Man" mythology.
And we have to give a shout-out to Jack Pierce, the legendary Hollywood make-up artist who turned men in monsters. It's interesting, Lon Chaney actually hated the make-up process and gave Jack Pierce all kinds of hell about it.
The ‘sadistic’ makeup master who made The Wolf Man and Frankenstein – and died in obscurity
Jack Pierce terrified audiences – and annoyed Lon Chaney Jr – with his work on the Universal horror films. Why has he been forgotten?
Lon Chaney Jr did not enjoy transforming into the Wolf Man. The actor – who played the cursed monster in the 1941 original – endured hours upon hours at the mercy of Jack Pierce, Universal Pictures’ makeup maestro. Pierce was a stickler for meticulous, hand-crafted designs, glueing yak hair to Chaney’s face and then singeing it with a curling iron.
Pierce’s work remains so iconic, so influential, that the all-new Wolf Man film – a modern-day reinvention from director Leigh Whannell – pays homage to his makeup by insisting on practical effects for its creature transformation, an unusual move for a modern blockbuster.
Back in 1941, though, Chaney was less impressed – more sourpuss than werewolf. He growled and grumbled about Pierce’s makeup more than other horror stars from the era – certainly more than Boris Karloff, who played Frankenstein’s monster with the patience of an undead, stitched-together saint. But there was a howling irony to Chaney’s complaints. The Wolf Man – intended as a throwaway “B” picture – led Chaney to play more Universal monsters than anyone in the Forties. He played the Wolf Man again in several sequels, Dracula in the Son of Dracula, the Mummy three times, and Frankenstein’s monster.
For the Mummy, Chaney wore specially treated bandages that he said burned his skin. As Frankenstein’s monster, he wore a glued-on head piece that gave him a rash. When Chaney ripped it off in frustration, he took a strip of forehead skin with it. Chaney once signed a photo for Jack Pierce that read, “To the greatest goddamned sadist in the world. – L.C.”
But Pierce had no time for Chaney’s griping. “Pierce was going to do his work. If you didn’t like you’d better just shut up or fall asleep in the chair – like a lot of ‘em did,” says Pierce biographer Scott Essman. Indeed, Pierce, a Greek immigrant, is remembered as feisty, stubborn, and egotistical in his own right – an artist whose first priority was his painstaking makeup applications.
Horror fans are surely grateful that Chaney and other actors endured Pierce’s makeup. Pierce – who wore a small moustache and a white smock, looking like a beautician-turned-mad scientist – is as crucial to horror cinema as Dr Frankenstein himself. Pierce’s version of Frankenstein’s monster – with its flat head and electrode-bolted neck – is one of the most recognisable characters in movie history. His other monster creations – the shock-haired Bride of Frankenstein and the Wolf Man – aren’t far behind.
Essman, who wrote a 2000 biography on Pierce, grew up watching repeats of Universal horrors on local TV in New York. “A phantasmagoria of monsters and lighting and effects,” Essman says. “For me, it wasn’t scary – it was sensational.” Essman later wrote and directed a play, Jack Pierce: The Man Behind the Monsters, about the makeup man’s life and work.
Pierce did regular and beauty makeup for lots of non-horror films – he worked on dozens of Universal productions – but he’s best remembered for the monsters. If, that is, he’s remembered at all beyond horror fanatics and historians. In 1947, Pierce was unceremoniously fired from Universal and died in obscurity in 1968, aged 83.
Born Joannis Picoulas in the Greek town of Porto Heli, he changed his name to Jack Pierce shortly after his arrival in the United States in 1908. As a teenager, he played semi-professional baseball in Chicago; Pierce moved to Los Angeles with hopes of going pro but, at just 5’6”, he was deemed too short.
Pierce got his start in movies in 1909, beginning as a primitive projectionist, and worked various jobs on both sides of the camera, including theatre manager, cameraman, assistant director, and stuntman. He even managed a basketball team belonging to actor Larry Semon, who gave Pierce film work in return. (Pierce went on to coach the Universal Pictures basketball team, who won a tournament to represent the US at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Berlin. Some of the Universal team joined players from a Kansas oil refinery team to make up the US Olympic squad and – incredibly – won gold.)
At the time, actors did their own makeup – a carryover from theatre – and Pierce looked to follow the example of Lon Chaney Sr, the “the Man of a Thousand Faces”, with whom he worked at Universal. Father of the future Wolf Man, Chaney created his famous makeup designs in silent classics The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
In 1924, Pierce ditched his acting aspirations and concentrated solely on makeup, transforming actor Jacques Lerner into an ape for the 1927 Fox-produced film, The Monkey Talks – way ahead of Planet of the Apes. In fact, Pierce’s ape was so convincing that one critic wrote “the well-trained chimpanzee had almost human qualities”.
Seeing his work for Fox on that film, Universal made Pierce the head of its makeup department. Pierce then created the makeup for Conrad Veidt in the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs, in which Veidt is disfigured with a permanent, maniacal grin. The character is widely credited as the inspiration for Batman’s arch nemesis, The Joker.
Following The Man Who Laughs, Universal’s Carl Laemmle Jr – the 21-year-old head of production (and son of studio owner Carl Sr) – put a cycle of monster classics into production, beginning with Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, in 1931.
Pierce had designs on doing something along the lines of Lon Chaney’s top-hatted, razor-toothed villain in London After Midnight. But Lugosi – who had played Count Dracula on stage – insisted on doing the makeup himself, which caused friction between Lugosi and Pierce. Lugosi was then cast as the monster in Frankenstein, also set to be released in 1931, and once again had his own ideas. He wanted to make the monster a hairy abomination. “Lugosi thought his ideas were better than everybody’s,” Pierce later said.
Pierce worked with Lugosi and director Robert Florey on a design for test footage – creating a Frankenstein’s monster based on the clay Golem from Jewish folklore – but it proved disastrous and made Laemmle Jr laugh out loud. Florey and Lugosi were replaced by director James Whale and Boris Karloff, respectively. Pierce found Karloff to be an amenable subject. While working on another film at Universal, Karloff would stay at work for three extra hours every day for three whole weeks so he and Pierce could work on the monster.
Pierce later explained the reasoning for his monster’s flat head: that Frankenstein was “a scientist but no practicing surgeon” and would take the quickest route to his creation’s brain – by sawing the top of the skull off, then hinging it and clamping it back down with rivets. And it was scary: Karloff went for a walk in full makeup one day and bumped into a studio secretary, who promptly fainted. Afterwards, Karloff had to walk around with a veil over his head while Pierce led him around by the hand – all of which made good publicity.
Almost 100 years on, Frankenstein’s monster (Jack Pierce’s monster, to be exact) still towers over the cultural psyche. It lurches beyond the parameters of its own story – or even the horror genre – as the definitive movie monster: the blueprint against which other movie monsters are judged. When Guillermo Del Toro unleashes his version later this year, it will have to stand up to the flat-headed Karloff.
In Karloff, Pierce had found his greatest collaborator. Karloff always credited Pierce, and Pierce had a deep admiration for the star. “He was a gentleman, always on time, and everything an actor should be,” Pierce later said.
“Karloff was willing to put up with the four hours it took to put the face and head on – and an hour to take it off,” says Essman. “And during the summer in the San Fernando Valley. It must have been uncomfortable!” He adds: “I don’t think Jack Pierce got on with Lugosi nor Lon Chaney Jr because of his feistiness and his meticulousness. But he and Karloff loved each other.”
Pierce teamed with Boris Karloff on numerous horror pictures, with classic makeup jobs in The Old Dark House, The Black Cat, and The Raven – transformations that didn’t hide Karloff but accentuated the features that made him such a striking screen presence. Indeed, Karloff was willing to endure the makeup process but he was also one of the great faces of cinema – the gaunt, sunken look and mesmerising stare.
As Rick Baker, An American Werewolf in London’s Oscar-winning makeup effects master, has said, no actor ever looked as good as Frankenstein’s monster than Karloff in the first movie. The magic of Pierce’s makeup is that Karloff’s performance shines through it – the pathos and childlike vulnerability as crucial as the monstrosity.
Horror makeup aficionados also point to 1932’s The Mummy – starring Karloff again – as some of Pierce’s best work. It took eight hours to wrap the actor in burned bandages and cover him with muck. The idea was to make it look like he’d really been buried for 3,700 years. When he arose and walked, the bandages would break and the muck would fall off.
“Supposedly, during the eight hours in makeup, Karloff – gentleman that he was – said, ‘Excuse me, but I have to go to the bathroom.’ Pierce cut a fly so he could go,” says Essman. Pierce received a Hollywood Filmograph award for The Mummy – his only notable award.
Pierce was a star on the Universal lot, and while he wasn’t especially well known to the public, he did get some column inches for his achievements (“Make-up man becomes real star of screen,” proclaimed the Los Angeles Times in January 1932). Pierce was certainly sure of himself as the film biz’s top makeup star. He didn’t suffer prima donnas easily, but he was prone to prima donna behaviour himself. Actress Jane Wyatt recalled protesting against Pierce plucking her eyebrows before her film debut: “He said, ‘Listen, little girl, I have made up the greatest. Don’t you tell Jack Pierce what to do. Look!’ And he waved his arm toward all the pictures he had up on the wall. Well, they were not glamour pictures, they were Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and I don’t know who else!”
In 1935, Pierce did the makeup for the first werewolf feature film, Werewolf of London, starring Henry Hull as a botanist who comes down with a case of lycanthropy. Pierce designed a werewolf makeup that Hull rejected – believing he should be more recognisable in wolf-guise – so Pierce used a minimalist werewolf makeup (which seems to be an inspiration for Leigh Whannell’s new Wolf Man). That same year Pierce created the Bride of Frankenstein, starring Elsa Lanchester as the strangely beautiful bride. Her look is also a cultural touchstone.
In 1937, Universal was taken over and horror fell out of favour. But a Dracula and Frankenstein double bill in 1938 did, well, monster business, and so a second wave of Universal horror pictures went into production. They were mostly sequels, though with a key addition to the monster squad: The Wolf Man. That 1941 film sees Lon Chaney Jr travel to his ancestral home in Wales and get bitten by a werewolf.
Pierce returned to the design that Henry Hull had rejected. He boasted that he never used masks or appliances and insisted on applying the hair from scratch. “I put all of the hair on a little row at a time,” Pierce said. “After the hair is on, you curl it, then singe it, burn it, to look like an animal that’s been out in the woods. It had to be done every morning.” The only appliance used was a snout-like nose – and only because it would have taken too long to build the nose from putty every single day of production.
It took two-and-a-half hours to apply, but Chaney was also bothered by the removal process after a long day’s werewolfery. “What gets me is after work when I’m all hot and itchy and tired, and after I’ve got to sit in that chair for forty-five minutes while Pierce just about kills me, ripping off the stuff he put on me in the morning,” Chaney complained at the time.
For Chaney, the most arduous task was filming the dissolve transformation sequences. He would have to sit still for long hours while they shot him in various stages of Wolf Man makeup, filming just a few frames at a time. Chaney later embellished the ordeal. “Well, we did 21 changes of makeup and it took 22 hours,” the actor would say. “I won’t discuss the bathroom.”
There’s an oft-repeated story that Chaney claimed Pierce burned him with the iron on purpose. Essman doubts Chaney actually said it and can’t believe that Pierce would have burned him. But there was no love lost.
“Jack Pierce didn’t like Chaney’s unwillingness to be a team player, the way Karloff had been,” says Essman. “Pierce didn’t like his complaining, but, ultimately, I think Pierce was about getting the best possible character on screen – whatever that took. I’m sure there were some arguments.”
Pierce had the last word on their monster feud. Interviewed in 1966, he was asked what Lon Chaney Jr was like to work with, Pierce replied, “Yes and no. That’s about all I can say.”
In 1947, following a Universal merger, Pierce was suddenly fired. He freelanced as a makeup man but never did anything close to his classic Universal creations, and his methods became old fashioned. “It’s sad because after the Universal years were over, I don’t think he thought anyone knew or cared anything about him,” says Essman. “At the end of the Forties and through the Fifties he felt like he was forgotten.”
Pierce never earned a dime in royalties for his culture-defining creations. Even his one award was lost – left behind in his office after he was fired – and was later found under a sink. And he had no children. “We don’t know of any other living heirs,” Essman says.
Pierce’s last job was on late Sixties talking horse comedy, Mister Ed. “Did he feel love from anyone after he retired? I don’t think so.” says Essman. “People went round knocking on his door, asking ‘Can we see a picture of Frankenstein?’ – but I understand he was kind of bitter by then. Crabby and not in good spirits.”
Pierce died of uremia in 1968. Just 24 mourners attended his funeral. The following year, Lon Chaney Jr gave his final interview (he died in 1973). But despite his grumbles, even The Wolf Man had to admit that Jack Pierce was “one of the finest makeup men who ever lived.”
Lon Chaney was just one of those complainers, he didn't like the make-up process, it could be a little uncomfortable at times, but he had a lot of respect for Jack Pierce and his work, and how could he not, the man made magic, he was a genius. Here Jack Pierce is pictured turning Lon Chaney into The Mummy in 1944.
It's fascinating, Frankenstein's monster is famously depicted with bolts in his neck, but this is a Hollywood invention, not from Mary Shelley's original 1818 novel. The iconic look was created by makeup artist Jack Pierce for the 1931 film to represent electrodes used for reanimation. Here Jack Pierce is seen making Boris Karloff into the monster and putting the bolts in his neck.
Behind the scenes from 1932's The Mummy. Director Karl Freund helps make-up artist Jack Pierce (blocked by equipment) get Boris Karloff ready for his close-up.
Mike Hill's acclaimed realistic sculpture of makeup artist Jack Pierce working on Boris Karloff for The Mummy (1932). This sculpture has been featured in high-profile exhibitions, including the Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters exhibit. Hill is renowned for his lifelike tributes to classic Hollywood monsters.
Mike Hill also did a sculpture of the legendary Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. It's really cool because the sculpture portrays her in the process of writing the novel itself.
It's absolutely fascinating that there is only one known actual photo on this planet of Mary Shelley herself. This is the only known photo in existence of Mary Shelley, it is a 3x2 inch daguerreotype taken in 1842 when Shelley visited Bath (where she wrote Frankenstein) to promote the novels sequel The Bride of Frankenstein. This daguerreotype sold at auction for 17,000 pounds back in 2025.
Notice the Bride has visible scalpel marks around her neck and jaw to indicate that her face was grafted onto a new body, highlighting the artificial and constructed nature of her creation. My goodness Jack Pierce did a fantastic job on the make-up for the scalpel marks.
The Bride of Frankenstein is the sequel to Frankenstein (1931) and a classic, great film, highly recommended.
REVIEW: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
As Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is pulled from the wreckage of the burned-out windmill, so too does his monster (Boris Karloff) survive. As the latter wanders the countryside in search of companionship and peace from persecution, the former finds himself forced by the insidious Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) to continue his experiments into creating life from dead bodies.
Produced four years after Frankenstein, James Whale’s 1935 sequel Bride of Frankenstein continues the story of Frankenstein and his monstrous creation in an unexpected dual narrative that only winds itself together during the film’s final act. It is commonly regarded as a rare sequel that is superior to the original; I am not entirely convinced that is the case. While Bride certainly demonstrates a surer directorial hand and is technically superior, it presents a different enough take on the characters are the material to feel more like an equal than a substantively better film. Whale’s first Frankenstein offers a much more streamlined and pure take of Mary Shelley’s novel, whereas his sequel diverges and explores the ideas in more depth. It is an odd, idiosyncratic kind of a film.
Frankenstein freely took what elements it wanted from Shelley’s novel, and that leaves plenty of material behind for Bride to exploit. In particular the film draws extensively on the novel’s middle section, in which the monster – abandoned by its creator – befriends an old blind man, learning to talk and read. Giving the monster the ability to communicate, however primitively, allows for significant character development. While this is nominally a horror film, it ultimately feels more like tragedy. Boris Karloff, armed with this additional capacity and plenty of dramatic material, turns in a far more interesting and nuanced performance. The pure iconography of his debut appearance is watered down, but we get something much more fascinating and thought-provoking instead.
Colin Clive takes a much smaller role here; it is very possible that was due to his real-life alcoholism leading Whale to minimise his participation. In his place the majority of the antagonist role goes to Ernest Thesiger’s prim, mannered Doctor Pretorius. Frankenstein wants to abandon his experiments and retire with his wife Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson filling the role vacated by an ill Mae Clarke). Pretorius forces him back, ultimately relying on taking a hostage to force his hand.
Pretorius seems actively bizarre. He reveals his own successful experiments to create new life: little dancing humans in miniature, each dressed like a king, queen or bishop. After formulating his evil plans in a crypt he sits down to smoke a cigar and drink some wine – still inside a crypt full of bodies. He seems entirely relaxed in the presence of Frankenstein’s monster. This slightly odd, relatively absurd tone is what I like about Bride of Frankenstein the most.
Technically it is wonderful, with evocative camera angles duplicating the long shadows and expressionistic tones of the first film. Franz Waxman’s score is excellent and atmospheric. The make-up on the monster has advanced considerably since his debut, and now incorporates scarring from nearly burning to death at the end of Frankenstein.
The titular bride’s appearance is remarkably brief, and is presented in an unexpectedly tragic fashion. Elsa Lanchester looks striking in the role, with her famous zig-zag hairdo and weird hissing voice. It is no wonder she made such an impression: despite only appearing for all of five minutes she is probably the most immediately recognisable feature of Universal’s monster movies after Frankenstein’s monster himself. Lanchester also gets another role, in a slightly misplaced prologue scene where she plays Mary Shelley introducing the next chapter of the Frankenstein story. She does okay in the scene: her co-stars Douglas Walton and Gavin Gordon (playing Byron and Percy Shelley) are, in a modern context at least, pretty risible.
This is an unexpectedly bold and inventive sequel, that takes creative angles with the material and dares to advance its story beyond a simple follow-up to the enormously popular original. It is no surprise that Bride of Frankenstein is heralded as one of Hollywood’s best-ever sequels: it does everything a good sequel should. It advances the story, brings back the characters, and casts them in a fresh and clever new light.
The Bride of Frankenstein, Doctor Pretorius trying to convince the monster to help him with his schemes. Doctor Pretorius was creepy as hell, totally mad.
Fantastic shot of the monster with Minnie the maid, she was a constant source of humor throughout the film. Minnie, played by actress Una O'Connor, is the housekeeper for Frankenstein's fiancé, Elizabeth, and provides comedic relief with her fearful reactions to the monster. Look at the size of the monster, the effect of the modified asphalt boots really shows.
The Monster finds temporary refuge and companionship with a kindly, isolated blind hermit (played by O.P. Heggie). The hermit, grateful for company, shares his food, shelter, and tobacco, teaching the monster to speak and offering him friendship.
At the end of The Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein was also supposed to die when the monster blows up the lab. You can see him left of the stairs. In the final cut, Dr. Frankenstein is allowed to leave but the actor Colin Clive had already been filmed being caught in the explosion which could not be reshot.
Time for a music break. This is one of the most brutal diss tracks in hip-hop history. Nas had beef with Jay-Z back in 2001 and he released this track entitled "Ether" and he absolutely torches Jigga, shreds him.
I have to say, truly one of the most frightening movie monsters ever right here. Lon Chaney's horrific, self-applied makeup for "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925) was kept secret right up until the film's premiere. Not a single photograph of Chaney as The Phantom was published in a newspaper or magazine or seen anywhere before the film opened in theaters. Universal Pictures wanted The Phantom's face to be a complete surprise when his mask was ripped off. According to the film's cameraman Charles Van Enger, one of Chaney's most trusted associates, co-star Mary Philbin's reaction to the unmasked Phantom was real--she had no idea what he would look like until that exact moment. The Phantom's makeup was designed to resemble a skull. Chaney attached a strip of fish skin (a thin, translucent material) to his nostrils with spirit gum, pulled it back until he got the tilt he wanted, then attached the other end of the fish skin under his bald cap. For some shots, a wire-and-rubber device was used, and, according to Van Enger, it cut into Chaney's nose and caused a good deal of bleeding. Cheeks were built up using a combination of cotton and collodion. Ears were glued back and the rest was greasepaint shaded in the proper areas of the face. The sight was said to have caused some patrons at the premiere to faint. Van Enger he had a very strong reaction as Lon Chaney's unsuspecting "guinea pig". Chaney had summoned Van Enger to his dressing room without telling him why. When he got there and was standing about a foot behind the actor, Chaney suddenly spun around in full Phantom makeup! "I almost wet my pants. I fell back over a stool and landed flat on my back!" Chaney laughed so hard, and Van Enger, who by then was "mad as hell," yelled, "Are you NUTS?" Unable to clearly talk with his fake teeth in, Chaney spit them out and said, "Never mind Charlie, you already told me what I wanted to know."
Comments
A publicity still showing the creature carrying a dummy in the mill.
Of all the Frankenstein photos I've seen, this is my favorite. The monster attacking it's creator, Dr. Henry Frankenstein near the end of the movie. After escaping, the Monster corners Henry during a search party, knocks him unconscious, and carries him to an old windmill.
Whenever I think about the story of Frankenstein, the first thing that comes to mind is Boris Karloff as the monster, much like Bela Lugosi with Dracula, Boris Karloff set the bar at an unreachable height as Dr. Frankenstein's monster, he stole the show, he was the show.
That really goes for Lon Chaney as well, he set the bar for the cinematic werewolf with his portrayal of Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941). His performance introduced the tragic, sympathetic element of the cursed man fighting his own monstrous instincts, rather than being a pure evil creature. This portrayal became the gold standard for werewolves in film and established the enduring "Wolf Man" mythology.
And we have to give a shout-out to Jack Pierce, the legendary Hollywood make-up artist who turned men in monsters. It's interesting, Lon Chaney actually hated the make-up process and gave Jack Pierce all kinds of hell about it.
The ‘sadistic’ makeup master who made The Wolf Man and Frankenstein – and died in obscurity
Jack Pierce terrified audiences – and annoyed Lon Chaney Jr – with his work on the Universal horror films. Why has he been forgotten?
Lon Chaney Jr did not enjoy transforming into the Wolf Man. The actor – who played the cursed monster in the 1941 original – endured hours upon hours at the mercy of Jack Pierce, Universal Pictures’ makeup maestro. Pierce was a stickler for meticulous, hand-crafted designs, glueing yak hair to Chaney’s face and then singeing it with a curling iron.
Pierce’s work remains so iconic, so influential, that the all-new Wolf Man film – a modern-day reinvention from director Leigh Whannell – pays homage to his makeup by insisting on practical effects for its creature transformation, an unusual move for a modern blockbuster.
Back in 1941, though, Chaney was less impressed – more sourpuss than werewolf. He growled and grumbled about Pierce’s makeup more than other horror stars from the era – certainly more than Boris Karloff, who played Frankenstein’s monster with the patience of an undead, stitched-together saint. But there was a howling irony to Chaney’s complaints. The Wolf Man – intended as a throwaway “B” picture – led Chaney to play more Universal monsters than anyone in the Forties. He played the Wolf Man again in several sequels, Dracula in the Son of Dracula, the Mummy three times, and Frankenstein’s monster.
For the Mummy, Chaney wore specially treated bandages that he said burned his skin. As Frankenstein’s monster, he wore a glued-on head piece that gave him a rash. When Chaney ripped it off in frustration, he took a strip of forehead skin with it. Chaney once signed a photo for Jack Pierce that read, “To the greatest goddamned sadist in the world. – L.C.”
But Pierce had no time for Chaney’s griping. “Pierce was going to do his work. If you didn’t like you’d better just shut up or fall asleep in the chair – like a lot of ‘em did,” says Pierce biographer Scott Essman. Indeed, Pierce, a Greek immigrant, is remembered as feisty, stubborn, and egotistical in his own right – an artist whose first priority was his painstaking makeup applications.
Horror fans are surely grateful that Chaney and other actors endured Pierce’s makeup. Pierce – who wore a small moustache and a white smock, looking like a beautician-turned-mad scientist – is as crucial to horror cinema as Dr Frankenstein himself. Pierce’s version of Frankenstein’s monster – with its flat head and electrode-bolted neck – is one of the most recognisable characters in movie history. His other monster creations – the shock-haired Bride of Frankenstein and the Wolf Man – aren’t far behind.
Essman, who wrote a 2000 biography on Pierce, grew up watching repeats of Universal horrors on local TV in New York. “A phantasmagoria of monsters and lighting and effects,” Essman says. “For me, it wasn’t scary – it was sensational.” Essman later wrote and directed a play, Jack Pierce: The Man Behind the Monsters, about the makeup man’s life and work.
Pierce did regular and beauty makeup for lots of non-horror films – he worked on dozens of Universal productions – but he’s best remembered for the monsters. If, that is, he’s remembered at all beyond horror fanatics and historians. In 1947, Pierce was unceremoniously fired from Universal and died in obscurity in 1968, aged 83.
Born Joannis Picoulas in the Greek town of Porto Heli, he changed his name to Jack Pierce shortly after his arrival in the United States in 1908. As a teenager, he played semi-professional baseball in Chicago; Pierce moved to Los Angeles with hopes of going pro but, at just 5’6”, he was deemed too short.
Pierce got his start in movies in 1909, beginning as a primitive projectionist, and worked various jobs on both sides of the camera, including theatre manager, cameraman, assistant director, and stuntman. He even managed a basketball team belonging to actor Larry Semon, who gave Pierce film work in return. (Pierce went on to coach the Universal Pictures basketball team, who won a tournament to represent the US at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Berlin. Some of the Universal team joined players from a Kansas oil refinery team to make up the US Olympic squad and – incredibly – won gold.)
At the time, actors did their own makeup – a carryover from theatre – and Pierce looked to follow the example of Lon Chaney Sr, the “the Man of a Thousand Faces”, with whom he worked at Universal. Father of the future Wolf Man, Chaney created his famous makeup designs in silent classics The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
In 1924, Pierce ditched his acting aspirations and concentrated solely on makeup, transforming actor Jacques Lerner into an ape for the 1927 Fox-produced film, The Monkey Talks – way ahead of Planet of the Apes. In fact, Pierce’s ape was so convincing that one critic wrote “the well-trained chimpanzee had almost human qualities”.
Seeing his work for Fox on that film, Universal made Pierce the head of its makeup department. Pierce then created the makeup for Conrad Veidt in the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs, in which Veidt is disfigured with a permanent, maniacal grin. The character is widely credited as the inspiration for Batman’s arch nemesis, The Joker.
Following The Man Who Laughs, Universal’s Carl Laemmle Jr – the 21-year-old head of production (and son of studio owner Carl Sr) – put a cycle of monster classics into production, beginning with Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, in 1931.
Pierce had designs on doing something along the lines of Lon Chaney’s top-hatted, razor-toothed villain in London After Midnight. But Lugosi – who had played Count Dracula on stage – insisted on doing the makeup himself, which caused friction between Lugosi and Pierce. Lugosi was then cast as the monster in Frankenstein, also set to be released in 1931, and once again had his own ideas. He wanted to make the monster a hairy abomination. “Lugosi thought his ideas were better than everybody’s,” Pierce later said.
Pierce worked with Lugosi and director Robert Florey on a design for test footage – creating a Frankenstein’s monster based on the clay Golem from Jewish folklore – but it proved disastrous and made Laemmle Jr laugh out loud. Florey and Lugosi were replaced by director James Whale and Boris Karloff, respectively. Pierce found Karloff to be an amenable subject. While working on another film at Universal, Karloff would stay at work for three extra hours every day for three whole weeks so he and Pierce could work on the monster.
Pierce later explained the reasoning for his monster’s flat head: that Frankenstein was “a scientist but no practicing surgeon” and would take the quickest route to his creation’s brain – by sawing the top of the skull off, then hinging it and clamping it back down with rivets. And it was scary: Karloff went for a walk in full makeup one day and bumped into a studio secretary, who promptly fainted. Afterwards, Karloff had to walk around with a veil over his head while Pierce led him around by the hand – all of which made good publicity.
Almost 100 years on, Frankenstein’s monster (Jack Pierce’s monster, to be exact) still towers over the cultural psyche. It lurches beyond the parameters of its own story – or even the horror genre – as the definitive movie monster: the blueprint against which other movie monsters are judged. When Guillermo Del Toro unleashes his version later this year, it will have to stand up to the flat-headed Karloff.
In Karloff, Pierce had found his greatest collaborator. Karloff always credited Pierce, and Pierce had a deep admiration for the star. “He was a gentleman, always on time, and everything an actor should be,” Pierce later said.
“Karloff was willing to put up with the four hours it took to put the face and head on – and an hour to take it off,” says Essman. “And during the summer in the San Fernando Valley. It must have been uncomfortable!” He adds: “I don’t think Jack Pierce got on with Lugosi nor Lon Chaney Jr because of his feistiness and his meticulousness. But he and Karloff loved each other.”
Pierce teamed with Boris Karloff on numerous horror pictures, with classic makeup jobs in The Old Dark House, The Black Cat, and The Raven – transformations that didn’t hide Karloff but accentuated the features that made him such a striking screen presence. Indeed, Karloff was willing to endure the makeup process but he was also one of the great faces of cinema – the gaunt, sunken look and mesmerising stare.
As Rick Baker, An American Werewolf in London’s Oscar-winning makeup effects master, has said, no actor ever looked as good as Frankenstein’s monster than Karloff in the first movie. The magic of Pierce’s makeup is that Karloff’s performance shines through it – the pathos and childlike vulnerability as crucial as the monstrosity.
Horror makeup aficionados also point to 1932’s The Mummy – starring Karloff again – as some of Pierce’s best work. It took eight hours to wrap the actor in burned bandages and cover him with muck. The idea was to make it look like he’d really been buried for 3,700 years. When he arose and walked, the bandages would break and the muck would fall off.
“Supposedly, during the eight hours in makeup, Karloff – gentleman that he was – said, ‘Excuse me, but I have to go to the bathroom.’ Pierce cut a fly so he could go,” says Essman. Pierce received a Hollywood Filmograph award for The Mummy – his only notable award.
Pierce was a star on the Universal lot, and while he wasn’t especially well known to the public, he did get some column inches for his achievements (“Make-up man becomes real star of screen,” proclaimed the Los Angeles Times in January 1932). Pierce was certainly sure of himself as the film biz’s top makeup star. He didn’t suffer prima donnas easily, but he was prone to prima donna behaviour himself. Actress Jane Wyatt recalled protesting against Pierce plucking her eyebrows before her film debut: “He said, ‘Listen, little girl, I have made up the greatest. Don’t you tell Jack Pierce what to do. Look!’ And he waved his arm toward all the pictures he had up on the wall. Well, they were not glamour pictures, they were Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and I don’t know who else!”
In 1935, Pierce did the makeup for the first werewolf feature film, Werewolf of London, starring Henry Hull as a botanist who comes down with a case of lycanthropy. Pierce designed a werewolf makeup that Hull rejected – believing he should be more recognisable in wolf-guise – so Pierce used a minimalist werewolf makeup (which seems to be an inspiration for Leigh Whannell’s new Wolf Man). That same year Pierce created the Bride of Frankenstein, starring Elsa Lanchester as the strangely beautiful bride. Her look is also a cultural touchstone.
In 1937, Universal was taken over and horror fell out of favour. But a Dracula and Frankenstein double bill in 1938 did, well, monster business, and so a second wave of Universal horror pictures went into production. They were mostly sequels, though with a key addition to the monster squad: The Wolf Man. That 1941 film sees Lon Chaney Jr travel to his ancestral home in Wales and get bitten by a werewolf.
Pierce returned to the design that Henry Hull had rejected. He boasted that he never used masks or appliances and insisted on applying the hair from scratch. “I put all of the hair on a little row at a time,” Pierce said. “After the hair is on, you curl it, then singe it, burn it, to look like an animal that’s been out in the woods. It had to be done every morning.” The only appliance used was a snout-like nose – and only because it would have taken too long to build the nose from putty every single day of production.
It took two-and-a-half hours to apply, but Chaney was also bothered by the removal process after a long day’s werewolfery. “What gets me is after work when I’m all hot and itchy and tired, and after I’ve got to sit in that chair for forty-five minutes while Pierce just about kills me, ripping off the stuff he put on me in the morning,” Chaney complained at the time.
For Chaney, the most arduous task was filming the dissolve transformation sequences. He would have to sit still for long hours while they shot him in various stages of Wolf Man makeup, filming just a few frames at a time. Chaney later embellished the ordeal. “Well, we did 21 changes of makeup and it took 22 hours,” the actor would say. “I won’t discuss the bathroom.”
There’s an oft-repeated story that Chaney claimed Pierce burned him with the iron on purpose. Essman doubts Chaney actually said it and can’t believe that Pierce would have burned him. But there was no love lost.
“Jack Pierce didn’t like Chaney’s unwillingness to be a team player, the way Karloff had been,” says Essman. “Pierce didn’t like his complaining, but, ultimately, I think Pierce was about getting the best possible character on screen – whatever that took. I’m sure there were some arguments.”
Pierce had the last word on their monster feud. Interviewed in 1966, he was asked what Lon Chaney Jr was like to work with, Pierce replied, “Yes and no. That’s about all I can say.”
In 1947, following a Universal merger, Pierce was suddenly fired. He freelanced as a makeup man but never did anything close to his classic Universal creations, and his methods became old fashioned. “It’s sad because after the Universal years were over, I don’t think he thought anyone knew or cared anything about him,” says Essman. “At the end of the Forties and through the Fifties he felt like he was forgotten.”
Pierce never earned a dime in royalties for his culture-defining creations. Even his one award was lost – left behind in his office after he was fired – and was later found under a sink. And he had no children. “We don’t know of any other living heirs,” Essman says.
Pierce’s last job was on late Sixties talking horse comedy, Mister Ed. “Did he feel love from anyone after he retired? I don’t think so.” says Essman. “People went round knocking on his door, asking ‘Can we see a picture of Frankenstein?’ – but I understand he was kind of bitter by then. Crabby and not in good spirits.”
Pierce died of uremia in 1968. Just 24 mourners attended his funeral. The following year, Lon Chaney Jr gave his final interview (he died in 1973). But despite his grumbles, even The Wolf Man had to admit that Jack Pierce was “one of the finest makeup men who ever lived.”
Jack Pierce turning Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man. Notice Chaney has his fists balled up and is giving Pierce the stink eye.
Another great shot of Jack Pierce turning Lon Chaney into The Wolf Man. Notice Chaney is still giving Pierce the stink eye.
Lon Chaney was just one of those complainers, he didn't like the make-up process, it could be a little uncomfortable at times, but he had a lot of respect for Jack Pierce and his work, and how could he not, the man made magic, he was a genius. Here Jack Pierce is pictured turning Lon Chaney into The Mummy in 1944.
Jack Pierce working his magic on Boris Karloff in creating the Frankenstein Monster.
It's fascinating, Frankenstein's monster is famously depicted with bolts in his neck, but this is a Hollywood invention, not from Mary Shelley's original 1818 novel. The iconic look was created by makeup artist Jack Pierce for the 1931 film to represent electrodes used for reanimation. Here Jack Pierce is seen making Boris Karloff into the monster and putting the bolts in his neck.
Jack Pierce turning Boris Karloff into The Mummy in 1932.
Behind the scenes from 1932's The Mummy. Director Karl Freund helps make-up artist Jack Pierce (blocked by equipment) get Boris Karloff ready for his close-up.
Mike Hill's acclaimed realistic sculpture of makeup artist Jack Pierce working on Boris Karloff for The Mummy (1932). This sculpture has been featured in high-profile exhibitions, including the Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters exhibit. Hill is renowned for his lifelike tributes to classic Hollywood monsters.
Another Mike Hill sculpture of Jack Pierce making Boris Karloff into Frankenstein's monster.
Check it out up-close.
Here are the real-life photos of Jack Pierce working on a shirtless Boris Karloff that the sculpture is based on.
Mike Hill also did a sculpture of the legendary Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. It's really cool because the sculpture portrays her in the process of writing the novel itself.
It's absolutely fascinating that there is only one known actual photo on this planet of Mary Shelley herself. This is the only known photo in existence of Mary Shelley, it is a 3x2 inch daguerreotype taken in 1842 when Shelley visited Bath (where she wrote Frankenstein) to promote the novels sequel The Bride of Frankenstein. This daguerreotype sold at auction for 17,000 pounds back in 2025.
I swear, I'd give my left pinky finger to own that daguerreotype of Mary Shelley, just wow, what a treasure.
While we're on the subject of horror films, want to get these two photos in here. I actually had posters of these two images when I was just a kid.
Elsa Lanchester as The Bride Of Frankenstein in 1935.
Notice the Bride has visible scalpel marks around her neck and jaw to indicate that her face was grafted onto a new body, highlighting the artificial and constructed nature of her creation. My goodness Jack Pierce did a fantastic job on the make-up for the scalpel marks.
Scenes from The Bride Of Frankenstein.
The Bride of Frankenstein is the sequel to Frankenstein (1931) and a classic, great film, highly recommended.
REVIEW: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
As Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is pulled from the wreckage of the burned-out windmill, so too does his monster (Boris Karloff) survive. As the latter wanders the countryside in search of companionship and peace from persecution, the former finds himself forced by the insidious Doctor Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) to continue his experiments into creating life from dead bodies.
Produced four years after Frankenstein, James Whale’s 1935 sequel Bride of Frankenstein continues the story of Frankenstein and his monstrous creation in an unexpected dual narrative that only winds itself together during the film’s final act. It is commonly regarded as a rare sequel that is superior to the original; I am not entirely convinced that is the case. While Bride certainly demonstrates a surer directorial hand and is technically superior, it presents a different enough take on the characters are the material to feel more like an equal than a substantively better film. Whale’s first Frankenstein offers a much more streamlined and pure take of Mary Shelley’s novel, whereas his sequel diverges and explores the ideas in more depth. It is an odd, idiosyncratic kind of a film.
Frankenstein freely took what elements it wanted from Shelley’s novel, and that leaves plenty of material behind for Bride to exploit. In particular the film draws extensively on the novel’s middle section, in which the monster – abandoned by its creator – befriends an old blind man, learning to talk and read. Giving the monster the ability to communicate, however primitively, allows for significant character development. While this is nominally a horror film, it ultimately feels more like tragedy. Boris Karloff, armed with this additional capacity and plenty of dramatic material, turns in a far more interesting and nuanced performance. The pure iconography of his debut appearance is watered down, but we get something much more fascinating and thought-provoking instead.
Colin Clive takes a much smaller role here; it is very possible that was due to his real-life alcoholism leading Whale to minimise his participation. In his place the majority of the antagonist role goes to Ernest Thesiger’s prim, mannered Doctor Pretorius. Frankenstein wants to abandon his experiments and retire with his wife Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson filling the role vacated by an ill Mae Clarke). Pretorius forces him back, ultimately relying on taking a hostage to force his hand.
Pretorius seems actively bizarre. He reveals his own successful experiments to create new life: little dancing humans in miniature, each dressed like a king, queen or bishop. After formulating his evil plans in a crypt he sits down to smoke a cigar and drink some wine – still inside a crypt full of bodies. He seems entirely relaxed in the presence of Frankenstein’s monster. This slightly odd, relatively absurd tone is what I like about Bride of Frankenstein the most.
Technically it is wonderful, with evocative camera angles duplicating the long shadows and expressionistic tones of the first film. Franz Waxman’s score is excellent and atmospheric. The make-up on the monster has advanced considerably since his debut, and now incorporates scarring from nearly burning to death at the end of Frankenstein.
The titular bride’s appearance is remarkably brief, and is presented in an unexpectedly tragic fashion. Elsa Lanchester looks striking in the role, with her famous zig-zag hairdo and weird hissing voice. It is no wonder she made such an impression: despite only appearing for all of five minutes she is probably the most immediately recognisable feature of Universal’s monster movies after Frankenstein’s monster himself. Lanchester also gets another role, in a slightly misplaced prologue scene where she plays Mary Shelley introducing the next chapter of the Frankenstein story. She does okay in the scene: her co-stars Douglas Walton and Gavin Gordon (playing Byron and Percy Shelley) are, in a modern context at least, pretty risible.
This is an unexpectedly bold and inventive sequel, that takes creative angles with the material and dares to advance its story beyond a simple follow-up to the enormously popular original. It is no surprise that Bride of Frankenstein is heralded as one of Hollywood’s best-ever sequels: it does everything a good sequel should. It advances the story, brings back the characters, and casts them in a fresh and clever new light.
The Bride of Frankenstein, Doctor Pretorius trying to convince the monster to help him with his schemes. Doctor Pretorius was creepy as hell, totally mad.
Doctor Pretorius with his jars, the jars contained little people in them.
Love this image of Doctor Pretorius peering into one of his jars, the sepia-tone really makes it a stunningly beautiful photo.
Doctor Pretorius with the mad look in his eyes.
Doctor Pretorius with Henry Frankenstein.
Awesome behind-the-scenes photo of Colin Clive having a smoke while chatting with Boris Karloff.
Henry Frankenstein with the bride.
The laboratory in The Bride of Frankenstein.
Jack Pierce did a superb make-up job on the monster in The Bride of Frankenstein.
Fantastic shot of the monster with Minnie the maid, she was a constant source of humor throughout the film. Minnie, played by actress Una O'Connor, is the housekeeper for Frankenstein's fiancé, Elizabeth, and provides comedic relief with her fearful reactions to the monster. Look at the size of the monster, the effect of the modified asphalt boots really shows.
The Monster finds temporary refuge and companionship with a kindly, isolated blind hermit (played by O.P. Heggie). The hermit, grateful for company, shares his food, shelter, and tobacco, teaching the monster to speak and offering him friendship.
The famous scream scene when the bride rejects the monster.
Check out this image of the scream with the green color, wicked.
At the end of The Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein was also supposed to die when the monster blows up the lab. You can see him left of the stairs. In the final cut, Dr. Frankenstein is allowed to leave but the actor Colin Clive had already been filmed being caught in the explosion which could not be reshot.
Time for a music break. This is one of the most brutal diss tracks in hip-hop history. Nas had beef with Jay-Z back in 2001 and he released this track entitled "Ether" and he absolutely torches Jigga, shreds him.
A few images from The Fly, 1958, one of the most grotesque movie monsters I've ever seen.
I have to say, truly one of the most frightening movie monsters ever right here. Lon Chaney's horrific, self-applied makeup for "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925) was kept secret right up until the film's premiere. Not a single photograph of Chaney as The Phantom was published in a newspaper or magazine or seen anywhere before the film opened in theaters. Universal Pictures wanted The Phantom's face to be a complete surprise when his mask was ripped off. According to the film's cameraman Charles Van Enger, one of Chaney's most trusted associates, co-star Mary Philbin's reaction to the unmasked Phantom was real--she had no idea what he would look like until that exact moment. The Phantom's makeup was designed to resemble a skull. Chaney attached a strip of fish skin (a thin, translucent material) to his nostrils with spirit gum, pulled it back until he got the tilt he wanted, then attached the other end of the fish skin under his bald cap. For some shots, a wire-and-rubber device was used, and, according to Van Enger, it cut into Chaney's nose and caused a good deal of bleeding. Cheeks were built up using a combination of cotton and collodion. Ears were glued back and the rest was greasepaint shaded in the proper areas of the face. The sight was said to have caused some patrons at the premiere to faint. Van Enger he had a very strong reaction as Lon Chaney's unsuspecting "guinea pig". Chaney had summoned Van Enger to his dressing room without telling him why. When he got there and was standing about a foot behind the actor, Chaney suddenly spun around in full Phantom makeup! "I almost wet my pants. I fell back over a stool and landed flat on my back!" Chaney laughed so hard, and Van Enger, who by then was "mad as hell," yelled, "Are you NUTS?" Unable to clearly talk with his fake teeth in, Chaney spit them out and said, "Never mind Charlie, you already told me what I wanted to know."
Look at this photo of Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera. Just wow, the stuff of nightmares.