old-age makeups: movies of the 1940s
Old-age makeups: the 1930s & 1940s
This page features old-age makeups from various movies of the 1930s and the 1940s.
Given the technology available, it’s surprising how effective some of these makeups are.
The movies
Song of Love (1947); Composer Robert Schumann struggles to compose his symphonies while his loving wife Clara (Katharine Hepburn) offers her support. Jack Dawn was the makeup designer.
H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1940): A rich, staid, middle-aged Bostonian starts to write a short biography for his college reunion which sets him thinking about his life in flashbacks: is he really ‘as happy as the average man could hope to be’; what it would have been like if he had married Marvin Myles (Hedy Lamarr), the ambitious working-class woman fell in love with while working briefly in New York. But he had not been prepared to give up Boston and she was not prepared to give up her career so he had settled for the family-approved fellow-Bostonian Kay instead. By (convenient) chance Marvin happens to be in Boston on business and suggests meeting for a drink – the Production Code ensured it was nothing more – after which both return to their respective spouses – time has moved on, they have both changed, and torches are finally extinguished. Jack Dawn was makeup designer.