Dick Smith, the Oscar-winning make-up artist who made the young old and the beautiful ugly has died aged 92.
His friend and fellow make-up artist Rick Baker tweeted yesterday that “The master is gone. My friend and mentor Dick Smith is no longer with us. The world will not be the same.”
Smith, who was born in Larchmont, New York in 1922 was probably most notable for his incredible work in metamorphosing Marlon Brando into Vito Corleone, which earned him the nickname “the godfather of make-up”, but his far-reaching influence is something that will resonate throughout the whole of the film and television industry for a long, long time to come.
Having worked on the likes of The Exorcist and Taxi Driver (demonic hideousness and DeNiro’s trademark look remain implanted in the mind of anybody who saw them), Smith was awarded the Academy Award for make-up in 1985 for his work on Amadeus. His work on the ageing of F. Murray Abraham from his mid 40s to his mid 80s was described by Smith as “the best job I ever had.”
“Even when the characters were fantastically weird, I always tried to make them believable” said Smith and what he said rang true in everything that he did. You only need to watch The Exorcist to recognize his incredible attention to detail.
Having studied pre-med at Yale with the intention of pursuing a career in dentistry, Smith taught himself make-up artistry in the 1940s after reading a book on the subject. Before long, he became NBC’s first ever make-up director and stayed in the role for fourteen years. He gained the role after his father suggested that he look into the fresh, exciting new medium that was television.
It was at NBC that his influence started to take hold – Smith was inventing techniques that, while initially criticized, proved to be the most effective and superior in the business. His aforementioned colleague Rick Baker said of Smith that he is “responsible for the state of art in prosthetic makeup today”. Smith worked in television until the mid-1960s and in that time he plied his trade and transformed Hal Holbrook into Mark Twain, Claire Bloom into Queen Victoria and Jonathan Frid into vampire Barnabas Collins.
In 1972’s The Godfather, the already influential make-up artist created a hardened Mafioso in the form of Marlon Brando. Smith made Brando almost unrecognisable with jowls, old-age stipple, painted shadows and grey hair.
Later in life he worked on a few films but focussed his skills in the teaching of his methods to other artists. That yearning for the spreading of knowledge exemplified Smith’s appreciation and love for his art and the passion he felt for what he did.
In 2011 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave Dick Smith – the most influential figure in prosthetic makeup – an honorary award for “unparalleled mastery of texture, shade, form and illusion.”
