Foreword

Irecall once needing a pair of ears for Abraham Lincoln. I didn’t know if such a thing could be done,
but I figured Dick Corson would, so I called.

“You want what?”

“Ears,” I said. “For Lincoln. I’m doing Abe for the Phoenix Theatre—you know, Sherwood’s play, and I’m working out the makeup.”

“And you need ears.”

“Yes, they were very big. Enormous, when you think about it,” I said. “I figure without the ears it won’t come out right.”

“But with them …?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you come on over?”

Dick always had a sense of humor about me. We became friends after he helped carry a table to the theatre in Lakeside, Ohio, when I needed help and couldn’t get it. That was many years ago.

“Now, let me explain, Hal, that I’ve never done ears like this before. It can be done, of course, but I’m not sure that it has been. There’s not a lot of call for big ears, you know. There’s a little casting problem, you see—undercuts and all that. How did you want to attach them?”

“I figured I’d just slip them over mine. Like mittens.”

“Had you planned to glue them on?”

“Yeah. Once I slip them on, I’ll glue them so they can’t fall off. Actually, you shouldn’t notice them much because his hair came out over them a lot. They shouldn’t be grotesque.”

“Just large.”

“In case someone notices.”

“I see.”

Patiently he toiled over those ears. Then one night he called me. “Would you like to come down and slip them on?” I did, and they worked beautifully. It was the touch that made the makeup work, although I doubt very many people were aware of them. But Dick and I were enormously proud of them, and they made the makeup work so well in close-up that on the night we closed, the other actors in the cast waited in a local bar for me to take off the makeup so they could remember what I looked like.

Makeup requires patience. Corson was a patient man, a meticulous man, who went about his work with the care and thought of a scientist. He was multitalented and has used many of them in creating his books—Stage Makeup, Fashions in Hair, Fashions in Eyeglasses, and Fashions in Makeup. He took most of the photographs, did the intricate drawings, experimented on himself and his friends to get the many character effects, and he was a performer himself and understood the nature of the problems actors face on the stage. He was one of those totally dedicated people you sometimes meet or know in your life who make you feel that it’s worthwhile to keep trying to do better.

It’s been a great pleasure to see his book on makeup become established as the standard one in use wherever I go, knowing something of the toil that went to make it. In the early days when I was creating Mark Twain makeup he would come to see the show and we would discuss its effectiveness and how it could be improved. His eye I could depend on.

He’s written the best book around on the subject. To all you actors who don’t feel right unless you have the ears on, trust in Dick.

Hal Holbrook