Dick Smith: "Godfather" of Make-Up

Tonight the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences is hosting a tribute to a wonderful man and a great teacher - legendary make-up artist Dick Smith.

The artist behind such memorable make-ups as those in The Exorcist and The Godfather has been a teacher for many years - first by sharing the techniques he developed with other make-up artists (many of his discoveries are now standard practice in the special effects make-up community) and later by putting together a correspondence course to help teach the next generation. Guillermo himself is one of Dick's former students (along with many, many others).

I've been enrolled in Dick's course for the last several years and I've always found him to be a warm, generous teacher, even when offering criticism. "Well, you really went out on a limb with this one," he said once while we were discussing a particularly ambitious but ultimately unsucessful project of mine, " - and the limb broke. But that's ok, that's how we learn."

Because the course is offered by correspondence all my interactions with Dick were done over the phone. I didn't get a chance to meet him in person until last summer at the International Make-up Artists' Trade Show (IMATS) in Pasadena, California. It was a marvelous treat. The only event during the whole weekend which had a line-up was the one to get into Dick's Q&A session and even then, I think they were pushing the fire regulations to the limit to allow as many people in to see him as they did. Folks were sitting on the floor all around the table Dick and his fellow panelists were sitting at, and it was standing room only at the back (I did get an actual seat, but only because I was warned in advance to line up like an hour and a half before the start of the panel).

It was a wonderful privilege to get to hear some of Dick's stories first hand. Everything from a very funny anecdote about chasing Cassius Clay (soon to be Muhammed Ali) around the boxing ring set of Requiem For a Heavyweight with a spray bottle, in an attempt to make him look sweaty despite the absolute freezing temperature of the arena they were filming in, to a very moving and touching account of his long, long friendship with Sir Lawrence Olivier.

Looking at all the faces, many my age or younger, hanging on every word the rather surreal picture popped into my head of padawan Jedi all gathered round the feet of Yoda eager to hear words of wisdom from an old master of their craft. Please pardon my extreme geekiness - I'm in no way trying to say that Dick resembles a small wrinkled green Muppet - but the sense, in many ways, that we were being taught an oral history was very strong. Hearing it in person was entirely different than reading it or watching a taped interview. It was a little mind blowing to be sitting 10 feet from the man who invented many of the techniques of prosthetic make-up (Dick Smith, for instance, was the first person to apply foam latex appliances in multiple pieces - most artists prior to that had glued large, mask-like single pieces to the actors faces. This is both much harder to do and doesn't move as realistically as overlapping pieces).

It's about 10:30 now, which, when you factor the time difference in means things should just about be getting underway in sunny L.A. I hope the ceremony goes very well and I wish Dick the very best.