Makeup artist Frank Westmore was a member of the renowned Westmore family of makeup artists, which included his father - a pioneer of the industry - and Frank's five brothers (of whom Bud had been suggested to Ben Nye as chief makeup designer for the original Planet of the Apes movie before John Chambers was approached). Frank worked on films such as Farewell, My Lovely, The Ten Commandments and The Towering Inferno, and on television series such as The Munsters, Bonanza and Kung Fu (for which he won the Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Makeup" in 1972).
In 1974 Frank worked as a makeup artist on the Planet of the Apes TV series, according to Marvel Comics' Planet of the Apes Magazine Assistant Editor Chris Claremont. "Out at the Fox Ranch when the crew was shooting the fifth episode, The Cure, I spoke to Fred Blau, one of make-up chief's Dan Striepeke's team of make-up artists assigned to handle this most critical, delicate and essential facet of 'Planet of the Apes'. I met four of them while I was out there - Fred Blau, Sonny Burman (who worked along with his brother on David Wolper's acclaimed 'Primal Man' series: in fact, only the merest quirk of fate caused them to miss flying back to LA with the rest of the crew on the doomed airliner that crashed some months back en route back from location shooting for one of the series' episodes, wiping out almost the entire production team, including designer Janos Prohaska), Ed Butterworth and Frank Westmore (of the legendary Westmore brothers, whose names can be found next to the make-up credit of more Hollywood productions than seems decent) - but there were more, one make-up man assigned to each actor who had to wear a full application, with a general crew to handle the mask-wearing Apes (the extras) and the human actors."[1] Westmore was responsible for the makeup transformation of Booth Colman, as the actor later recalled: "The full make-up took quite a bit of getting used to. Frank Westmore made me up every morning, and it took three hours. I had to be in his chair at 5 a.m. to be ready on set at 8 a.m., with a very short interval for breakfast, before they had the lower half of my face to deal with."[2] “My makeup guru, Frank Westmore, told me that we were going to be cancelled.”[3]
External Links[]
- Frank Westmore biography page at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB)
- Frank Westmore article at Wikipedia
References[]
- ↑ Journey to the Planet of the Apes, by Chris Claremont - 'Planet of the Apes' UK #15 (1 February 1975)
- ↑ Primate Time Television, by Paul Simpson - 'SFX Magazine' (2001)
- ↑ Secrets of the Planet of the Apes, By Mark Phillips - Starlog #371 (December 2008)