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| TV and Movie Make-up Veteran Michael Thomas Dies at 59 |
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| ABOVE: Michael Thomas with Jennifer Aspinall. BELOW: The Coneheads on 'SNL'; Michael Jackson in 'The Wiz,' with make-up by Thomas. |
| ABOVE: Photo by Deverill Weekes. BELOW: Courtesy NBC Universal and Stan Winston Studio. |
Posted: Tuesday 25 August, 2009
Heather Wisner
Information has been updated since the original posting, including the date for a memorial service.
Michael Thomas, whose make-up creations appeared in Saturday Night Live and three decades’ worth of well-known feature films, died Aug. 24 in Belleville, New Jersey. He was 59 years old and had been in poor health for some time.
Thomas joined Local 798, the East Coast union of make-up artists and hairstylists, in 1971, with a letter of recommendation from fellow artist Dick Smith. He taught union journeyman courses for many years, including a hair-laying class this July.
He also contributed to a wide range of films, including I Am Legend, Enchanted, Across the Universe, American Gangster, Man on the Moon, Zoolander, Wayne’s World 2, Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II, Fatal Attraction, Fort Apache the Bronx, The Wiz and Serpico.
 In a departure from movie make-up, Thomas spent several years with Saturday Night Live. According to his wife, make-up artist Christine Domaniecki, Thomas worked for the program off and on from the second show through the next 20 seasons. “He was nicknamed Commander Conehead because he did so much work on the Coneheads,” she said. As he described it in Make-Up Artist magazine’s history of SNL (Issue 62), “Movie make-up is realistic, theater is impressionistic and live TV is somewhere in between.” Thomas’ work on SNL earned him an Emmy® nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series, a nomination he shared with his colleagues.
Peter Montagna, who worked with Thomas at Saturday Night Live, described him as “a very likeable guy—it was impossible not to like him. He had a great sense of humor, he was eclectic, he was very bright. I learned a lot about make-up from him.” Montagna called Thomas a skilled artist and master of color who was good at solving problems on set. “He never had a bad word to say about anybody,” Montagna said. “He will be sorely missed.”
Current SNL Department Head Louie Zakarian did two episodes of the comedy program with Thomas; they also worked together on Enchanted and Across the Universe. “He was a nice guy. He always had a story and he had a great love of old Hollywood horror,” Zakarian said.
Friends and family say Thomas was a huge fan of Universal monster movies; in 2001, he made himself up as Ygor from the original Frankenstein film for an appearance on Martha Stewart’s Halloween show. Thomas also acted in a dozen independent films over the years, Domaniecki said, including horror films. He made himself up to play Count Dracula in his latest film, The House of the Wolf Man, which is scheduled for release this October.
“I was blindsided hearing the sad news of the passing of Michael Thomas,” said colleague John Caglione. “He was such a gifted make-up artist and a generous and very kind man; I will miss him very much. When I was an apprentice at NBC New York, I had some crude little sculptures of faces and stuff in the lab. The make-up staff would walk through it to pick up supplies for shows they were working [on]. Michael came in one Saturday for SNL and was the only artist to stop and check out my work. He was so encouraging and warm, I’ll never forget it. He was a great friend. I loved him.”
 SNL alumni Carl Fullerton met Thomas in the early ‘70s through Dick Smith, who had invited the pair to his home laboratory so that he could teach them how to run foam latex. The two later worked together on The Wiz, for which Thomas applied Michael Jackson’s make-up. In Issue 79 of Make-Up Artist magazine, Thomas described his experience working with Jackson.
“We spent a lot of pre-production time coming up with make-ups—actual product—that had to match to the costumes, so we spent many an hour learning each others’ personalities,” Fullerton said. “That’s when I began to appreciate his sense of humor. He was a great storyteller and joke teller.”
He was also a skilled artist and painter, Fullerton said. When they worked on the PBS production The Adams Chronicles, Fullerton walked into the make-up room where Thomas had just finished an astounding chiaroscuro make-up on an actor. “I thought he had put on appliances,” Fullerton said. “He was a master of color. I was always impressed by his choice of color and how he applied it to the face. That was the most prominent of his many talents.”
Thomas is survived by Domaniecki. There was no formal service for him, but Local 798 is hosting a memorial at the union offices Sunday, Sept. 13 at 1 p.m.
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Make-Up Artist Magazine Features Michael Jackson Retrospective - Monday 06 July, 2009 |
| Following the recent death of Michael Jackson, Make-Up Artist magazine’s next issue (#79) will feature a retrospective of the King of Pop,
featuring interviews with a number of make-up artists who worked with
Jackson over the past three decades, as well as some exclusive,
never-before-published photos. |
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Web Exclusive: Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Young Hellboy - Monday 04 August, 2008 |
| From a make-up perspective, the first major character to appear in Hellboy 2 is
a younger version of the hero, seen in a 1955 prologue with Professor
Broom (John Hurt). The Young Hellboy character was created by the
Barcelona-based company DDT Efectos Especiales and played in a
gender-bending twist by the company’s Montse Ribé. |
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Iranian Make-up Innovator Dies at 65 - Wednesday 14 May, 2008 |
| Iranian
movie make-up artist Farhang Moayyeri died May 10 in Tehran of cardiac arrest.
He was 65 and had already fought a long battle with lung cancer, the Iran State
News Agency reported.
Moayyeri
created several make-up designs and prosthetics for Iranian theater, television
and film. He is best known for creating make-up for the films of Bahram Beizai,
Mas'ud Kimiai and other well-known Iranian directors.
According
to the ISNA, Moayyeri was born in 1943 and began his career acting on The
Brick and the Mirror (1965), then tried directing before entering the make-up
industry in 1978. He created the make-up for Bashou, the Little Stranger (1986), Maybe Some Other Time (1988), Killing Mad Dogs (2001) and
other films.
Mohsen
Maleki, head of the Iranian Association of Make-Up Designers, expressed sorrow
over Moayyeri’s death and described him as the father of modern Iranian make-up
design. Moayyeri was honored by the association in 2006 for his efforts to train
new generations of artists in Iran's film industry.
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Wake Up to Make-up! - Thursday 11 December, 2008 |
Australian make-up artist Napoleon Perdis has his own schools, his own cosmetics line, and now, his own reality show: Get Your Face On.
The program, filmed at Perdis’ flagship L.A. store, follows 12 make-up
artists as they vie to become his protégé. The one-hour, 10-episode
show debuted Dec. 8 on the TLC network and is airing every weekday
morning through Dec. 19. We asked Perdis to tell us more.
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