Constance Talmadge from D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, 1916
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MAKEUP
There are lots of people out there on the internet trying to recreate silent movie makeup “looks” to replicate the way actor’s faces looked on the shimmering black and white movie screen of the nineteen-teens and nineteen-twenties. Everyone who has had any exposure at all to the early art form of film knows what Charlie Chaplin looked like with his bowler hat, thick moustache and pale complexion that offsets his heavily outlined dark eyes. And many might recognise the names of the great actresses of the day (when female actors were still designated as actresses, tragediennes and comediennes, in a time before they thought it was somehow more powerful to take on the more generic male form of identification as an actor.)
Names like Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, Greta Garbo and Mary Pickford are surely some of the most recognized—as well as Constance Talmadge, Vilma Banke and the temptress Theda Bara, whose name was an anagram for “Arab Death”. We are accustomed to seeing black and white photos of these people with the classic pale complexion, sometimes approaching a ghoulish pallor, with eyes lined in blackest kohl and lips artificially shaped into a cupid’s bow or a tulip and coloured so dark as to appear black. I’d wager that the majority of youtube makeup pundits and makeup artists who are attempting to recreate this “look” have little idea of why the stars of the silver screen really looked the way they did. The truth is—IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MAKEUP—IT’S ABOUT THE FILM.
Actors and actresses had been wearing makeup on the stage for centuries, usually in the form of grease paint in a range of flesh tones that were designed to enhance the character portrayed from “robust juvenile” to “aging crone”. Although these skin tones were far from natural looking, owing to their opaque and oily consistency, when seen from the respectable distance of the theatre stalls they did the trick and conveyed a convincing illusion of youthful beauty or rugged manliness. But when filmed photoplays became the rage at the start of the twentieth century, most of the actors in the fledgling moving picture business were totally confounded that when they did their makeup, intending to be rosy-cheeked and youthful, on film they appeared ghostly and ashen or swarthy and ill defined. Pinks and reds photographed dark and even uncosmeticised skin with a natural “high colour” would be recorded on film as dark, blotchy and uneven.
The film used by companies filming the early photoplays was what is referred to as “blue-sensitive” film, meaning that the blue-violet part of the colour spectrum washed out and was barely visible or appeared as white when an image was recorded on the film. The yellow-red portion of the colour spectrum was not sensitive so that reds and even pink would register as a very dark grey or even black. In addition, the film created a higher contrast in what it recorded so the fair-haired, blue-eyed beauty in her stage makeup was captured on film as having white, colourless eyes in place of pale blue, dark hair, and sunken hollows where the pink rouge had been applied on the cheeks. The colour of the lips was the most difficult to control and even the lightest orange, pink or brightest red would register as near black on the gray scale of early black and white film.
Richard Barthelmess in Broken Blossoms, 1919
COMBATING THE BLUE-SENSITIVE FILM
Because most early films, before the 1920s, were mostly shot outdoors or on sets that were constructed on the roofs of buildings in order to capture the strong natural light, it was even more difficult to get makeup to look natural because the camera and the film saw a different spectrum of light and colour than the human eye. Cinematographers of the times would wear a lens made of blue glass around their neck, which they would look through to “see” the gray tones that the camera saw and better judge what might be recorded by the film.
Actors became savvy as to which colours of greasepaint or powder would translate to the appropriate gray tone on the screen to make them look their best. Since virtually all of the actors of the time did their own makeup, there was a wide range of styles discernible in any given scene of an early film. It was widely accepted that the paler the complexion, the more youthful an actor would appear. This was largely a carry-over from the theatre, and, as a result of this inherited notion, it is clearly obvious in the majority of early films that the young hero and heroine are several shades lighter than the supporting players. In fact the hierarchy of actors is clear, in that the leads are skillfully cosmeticised, the second leads have a secondary, somewhat darker colouring and the extras, who are often without makeup altogether, are dim with ill defined features.
The pale complexion was soon adopted by actresses who created characters for themselves that were meant to appear virginal or childlike. Mary Pickford with her golden curls and Dorothy and Lillian Gish with their pale, powdered ethereal beauty soon became cherished icons for the moving picture public.
It was soon discovered that pinks and reds should only be used for shading the contours of the face. A crooked nose or a double chin would seem to disappear when “shaded” with pink. Because pink does not reflect light onto blue-sensitive film, it could be used to flatten a bulge or contour a face to make it longer and more aesthetically pleasing. Pink was also the new prescription to shorten a nose and create the desired youthful effect.
Bobby Harran as “the boy” in Intolerance, 1916
By the late teens all manner of makeup was being tried to lighten and contour a face and create gray tones that the camera could “see”. It was discovered that a base colouring of yellow or pale blue yielded the desired impression of youthful vitality on film, so actors began to employ makeup “specialists” to create makeup “looks” for them that best enhanced their features and supported the types of role in which the public liked to see them. If one looks at the Gloria Swanson film “Male and Female” from 1919, the type of makeup and the difference between star and cast members is somewhat more obvious.
The early indoor lighting systems for filming, the carbon arc lamps and the Cooper-Hewitt mercury vapour lamps with their unnatural greenish glow slowly began to be replaced and, as a result, the spectrum of light and what the camera saw began to be controlled.
By the late teens and into the early twenties, the “screen test” was born and both cinematographers and the new tribe of makeup specialists “tested” actors to see how they photographed and the idea of a “camera face’ or a face the camera “loved” became an important factor in the making of a star.
PANCHROMATIC FILM— THE NEW ERA BEGINS
In the 1920s most filming companies converted to the new panchromatic film and in 1922 the first complete film, “The Headless Horseman, Sleepy Hollow” was shot on panchromatic film that captured a wider spectrum of colour and light that translated into gray tones that appeared more natural and changed the necessity to overcompensate for the limitations of the old blue-sensitive film. By 1925 the severe makeup of the early days of film-making had softened dramatically into an appearance that was much more natural and appealing.
Makeup artists had taken over the job of assisting the actors with their own makeup and pioneers in that field like Perc Westmore and Max Factor created lines of makeup that were more faithful to natural skin tones. Max Factor, who would go on to create a consumer retail makeup dynasty, was the first to create film makeup that was specifically designed for film. His product was called panchromatic greasepaint that came in a range of 31 shades of base colour and matching powder for men women and child actors and were determined in gray scale tones based on the colouring of blondes and brunettes. With the addition of tungsten lighting after 1927, the film set became a kinder and friendlier place for the actor and the days of acting opposite compatriots with yellow, pale blue or even green faces was truly a thing of the past.