Jack Dawn

Jack Dawn (February 10, 1892 - June 20, 1961) was an American make-up artist whose career spanned thirty-seven years. He worked on more than two hundred films, many of them regarded as classics by historians and moviegoers alike.

As a boy living on a Kentucky farm, Dawn chopped faces in sandstone he found on the banks of a nearby creek, using a chisel, a hammer, and a spoon. He eventually gravitated to Hollywood, where he found work as an extra, portraying an Indian brave for $3 a day. He served with the British during World War I, then returned to the American film capital to work as a make-up assistant and part-time actor at Universal Pictures. One of his first creations was a stiff, uncomfortable mask he wore in the role of an ape in 1925. In order to make masks that were more elastic and lifelike, he began to experiment with a variety of materials. After nine years of research while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he developed a synthetic plastic he called vinylite resin for which he received a patent. Its first application was used to create the Chinese faces for the mostly white cast of The Good Earth in 1937.