Thursday, July 31, 2014

Tribute: Dick Smith (1922 - 2014)


A Hollywood and horror movie legend has passed away. 

The press is reporting today the death of Academy Award winning make-up artist and guru Dick Smith.

Mr. Smith began his incredible make-up career in the early 1940s, and worked on television, and films both inside and outside the horror genre.  Mr. Smith served as the make-up supervisor for NBC  for a span, and contributed his creative work to genre series including the Roald Dahl-hosted anthology, Way Out (1961), the afternoon soap-opera Dark Shadows (1967), and later such programming as the syndicated Monsters (1988 – 1991), and Stephen King’s The Golden Years (1991).


In terms of horror movies, Dick Smith is perhaps most well-known and best-remembered for the stunning and grotesque make-up of Regan (Linda Blair) in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), but that film is only one of his amazing credits.

Mr. Smith also created the augmented, automaton version of Katharine Ross for the shocking ending of The Stepford Wives (1975), and contributed to such note-worthy film’s as Ken Russell’s Altered States (1980), The Sentinel (1977), Ghost Story (1981), The Hunger (1983), and Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990).  One of his earliest horror credits for make-up was on 1959’s The Alligator People.


Mr. Smith earned his Academy Award not for a horror film, however, but for the creation of the elderly Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) in Amadeus (1985).  He also aged Marlon Brando for The Godfather (1972) and Dustin Hoffman for Little Big Man (1970). 

Dick Smith mentored and inspired a generation of make-up artists, including Guillermo del Toro and Rick Baker, and his remarkable work will be cherished and remembered for generations yet to come.  

I offer my deepest condolences to Mr. Smith’s family today, and at this time of loss suggest that his artistry -- captured on film forever -- is immortal. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

My Father's Journal, Epilogue: "My Cancer"

My friends, we have reached the final entry in my father’s journal of his battle with cancer.     I want to thank all the readers who have c...