Dick Smith

Biography

Richard Emerson Smith (June 26, 1922 – July 30, 2014) was an American special make-up effects artist and author, (nicknamed "The Godfather of Make-Up") known for his work on such films as Little Big Man, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, Scanners and Death Becomes Her. He won a 1985 Academy Award for Best Makeup for his work on Amadeus and received a 2012 Academy Honorary Award for his career's work.

Smith entered the field full-time after the war and was entirely self-taught. He sent photographs of his work to the film industry, but his work was rejected until his father suggested he might try the emerging new medium of television. 

He was appointed as the first make-up director of WNBC (NBC's station in New York City), working there for fourteen years, often under producer David Susskind. Smith pioneered the development of prosthetic makeup, now better known as special make-up effects, from the basement of his home in Larchmont, New York, a district in which he lived through most of his life. 

His colleagues though, he commented in a 2008 interview, "tended to be secretive. There was not at all that much make-up work in New York – and Hollywood might as well have been on another planet. They weren’t eager to share anything, and the union did its best to discourage whatever inclination there might have been."

For a television adaptation of The Moon and Sixpence (1959), Smith was required to turn Laurence Olivier into a leprosy victim: “When I finished the make-up, he looked in the mirror and said, 'Dick, it does the acting for me.' I've never forgotten his words.” 

Other early work by Smith was seen on Way Out (1961), a short-lived supernatural syndicated clone of Twilight Zone, produced by Susskind in New York City and hosted by Roald Dahl. Most memorable was the make-up of a man (Barry Morse) who had half of his face suddenly erased by a spilled vial of photo retouching fluid that affected real people when merely applied to their photos. 

In another Way Out episode, a Hunchback of Notre Dame make-up created by Smith becomes permanently affixed to an evil actor who then became his character and could never remove his make-up. Smith contributed to all 14 Way Out episodes, and other 1960s television shows as well.

In 1965, Smith published an instructional book, titled Dick Smith's Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-up Handbook, a special edition of Forrest J Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine series.