The Independent (11/Aug/2007) - Obituary: William Tuttle

(c) The Independent (11/Aug/2007)

William J. Tuttle

Oscar-winning make-up artist who transformed stars at MGM

William Julius Tuttle, make-up artist: born Jacksonville, Florida 13 April 1912; five times married (one daughter, and one son deceased); died Pacific Palisades, California 6 August 2007.

William J. Tuttle was head of MGM's make-up department for 20 years, and in 1965 he became the first in his profession to receive an Academy Award. It was for his imaginative work on The Seven Faces of Dr Lao, in which he transformed Tony Randall into seven disparate characters.

The Academy did not establish skilled make-up as a regular Oscar category until 1981, when the first winner was Rick Baker for An American Werewolf in London. Baker later spoke of the "great influence" that Tuttle had been for him, ever since as a boy of 10 he saw Tuttle's work on the television series The Twilight Zone and in such movies as The Time Machine. The ground-breaking transformations that Randall undergoes in George Pal's The Seven Faces of Dr Lao include a giant seven-headed sea serpent, an "abominable snowman", an aged Merlin the magician and a Medusa given lips of foamed latex to suggest femininity. "He shaved my head and eyebrows,' said Randall. "Socially it was a disaster."

As well as creating remarkable make-up for fantasy films, Tuttle was responsible for making sure the studio that boasted "more stars than in the heavens" also had the most glamorous. "Louis B. Mayer felt that all women should appear beautiful and all men should be handsome," he said. Among the actresses whose faces Tuttle worked on were Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, June Allyson, Greer Garson and Cyd Charisse. Actors included Paul Newman, Elvis Presley in his musicals Jailhouse Rock (1957) and Viva Las Vegas (1964), Cary Grant in Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and Marlon Brando as Marc Anthony in Julius Caesar (1953), an Okinawan interpreter in The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) and Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).

In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), Tuttle converted the handsome, ascetic Hurd Hatfield into a debauched old man, and in Lust for Life (1956) he helped Kirk Douglas recreate the frenzied passion of artist Vincent Van Gogh. Tuttle accumulated a huge archive of plaster face-masks of virtually every MGM player, so that he could use them to develop make-up ideas.

Born in 1912 in Florida, William Tuttle had to drop out of school at the age of 15 to support his mother and younger brother Thomas (who would also become a make-up artist) when his father abandoned them. For several years he toured music halls as a comic and violinist, and for a time he led his own dance band. In 1930 he took art classes at the University of Southern California (USC) prior to becoming an apprentice to Jack Dawn, head of make-up at 20th Century Pictures. When MGM asked Dawn to head their make-up department, Tuttle went with him.

In one of Tuttle's first films, Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire (1935), he attracted comment with a bullet hole he fabricated on the side of Bela Lugosi's head. While at MGM, he witnessed the growing dominance of colour, which he considered "murder" because the intense light would melt layers of make-up, but he later expressed gratitude that he had worked during the peak of the studio system.

Donna Reed recalled that as an unknown starlet on her first day at the studio, she was sent to Tuttle in the make-up department. "He shook his head, mumbled something about what will they dig up next, and then went to work on me," Reed said. "He changed my eyebrows, shaded my chin and made my mouth bigger. He made me very mad. Then he looked at me again and said, "Now you'll do. Except you should change something else - your name. It should be Mrs William Tuttle." Reed became Tuttle's first wife, but their marriage lasted only two years, and Tuttle was to marry four more times.

When Jack Dawn retired in 1950, Tuttle became head of MGM's make-up section. Among his first assignments were musicals produced by Arthur Freed, including An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953) and Brigadoon (1954). Show Boat (1951) was Ava Gardner's first major role in colour, and Tuttle's handiwork had her looking particularly lovely in the film's early scenes. For later sequences, when her character shows the ravages of alcohol and rough times, her moving performance has the physical benefit of a pathetically wan complexion and dark-circled eyes.

Tuttle also worked on such films as Scaramouche (1952), The Opposite Sex (1956), Raintree County (1957) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). For his acclaimed contribution to George Pal's version of The Time Machine (1960), he credited a trip to the monkey house at the zoo for inspiring him to create the fur of the cannibalistic Morlocks, and he achieved their electric-eye effect by putting tiny light bulbs into facial masks.

He left MGM in 1970 and freelanced, achieving particular success with his remarkable transformation of Peter Boyle into Frankenstein's monster in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974). For television, he created make-up for two outstanding episodes of The Twilight Zone - "The Eye of the Beholder" (1960), which imagined a world where ugliness is the norm and beauty shunned, and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1963), which featured William Shatner as an airline passenger who sees a gremlin (Nick Cravat in a rubber mask made by Tuttle) on the wing. Tuttle's last credit was on Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981).

Tuttle created his own make-up line, Custom Color Cosmetics, which is still manufactured. In later years he taught at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and he donated more than 100 of his masks to the university.