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.
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