We Used to Have Faces

Where did our faces go?

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Gregory Peck

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Carole Lombard in 1934,

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Farrah Fawcett

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Charles Kuhlman in 1901. A laborer by trade, Mr. Kuhlman’s avocation was larceny (if his police record is to be believed). His no-face was subtly colored, for which I give him great credit.

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Marlene Dietrich in 1927.

In an attempt to win the highly coveted role of the robot Maria in the classic German science fiction film Metropolis (1927), Marlene Dietrich had her iconic no-face retooled and re-plated in strips of bright copper and platinum to look “super roboty" before meeting with director Fritz Lang, who didn’t get it.

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Lon Chaney in 1928.

Though once called “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” the great special effects makeup artist Lon Chaney was forced to sell off almost all of those faces to pay his fantasy football gambling debts.

In the end, the man who had brought us Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man - designing and applying the intricate, rule-breaking, iconic makeups - was reduced to the ownership of a couple Magneto and Optimus Prime masks.

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Carole Lombard in 1937.

Always the trooper, when Carole Lombard’s flesh-face got caught on a ten-penny nail sticking out of a doorjamb while filming a high-octane scene for Swing High, Swing Low (1937), causing her to lose her flesh-face, the fiery actress continued on with the combustive scene - most of which would have to be re-shot for fear of disgusting her many God-fearing fans all over the world.

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Jimmy Stewart in 1950.

Publicity still taken during the production of Harvey (1950) at the request of William Goetz, head of production at Universal-International Pictures, who was a sucker for no-face.

Harvey is an occult comedy/drama based the award-winning Broadway play by Mary Chase, as directed by Henry Koster, and starring James Stewart and Josephine Hull.

The story is about a human male’s friendship with a Hammersmith demon (though laughably referred to as a “pooka” throughout the course of the film) named Harvey, who manifests in the form of a 6-foot, 3-and-a-half-inch tall rabbit visible only to the Jimmy Stewart character.

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Marlene Dietrich in 1920s Berlin.

Marlene Dietrich disembarks at Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin wearing a no-face that gave the appearance of several layered scarves, a change for Dietrich whose no-face usually looked like a sauerkraut paste that had been left in the ice-box long after the ice had melted.