Quite elegant, if I must say so myself.
Then, a few months back, I saw him like this:
... and subsequently burst out laughing with disbelief! Holeee cow, lookit those eyebrows!! Right... so I didn't mean to laugh, but it looked so absurd in comparison to what I was used to. The Spock that I had become accustomed to seeing was cool and cultured and looked like he took care of his appearance. The earlier one looked like he was in need of a good tweezing, and really didn't give a damn about it. And look at that ragged fringe! Good night! Someone take care of that boy.
So then, I became curious about his eyebrow evolution. I get the part about wanting him to look alien and of course abnormal eyebrows would do it (along with the ears). Why then change the eyebrows? The character looks quite different already. I wonder if Fred Phillips thought it was too much and toned it down. I do remember reading somewhere that the network suits thought that Spock looked too demonic and that he would scare kids and make the rural folks uneasy. Geez, aren't you glad we're not living in that social time anymore? So was that the reason why the eyebrows went from being so severely slanted as in: OMG what's that over there in the corner!!! to only slightly slanted as in: Hmmm... faaaaaaacinating. *chuckles* We know that Spock's personality certainly took that route, so I guess, why not his brows. ;)
(I LOVE behind the scenes stuff! Isn't he adorable there? It looks like he's getting made up for Amok Time. I can see the executioner in the background. )
Here's a really neat article on the make-up artist, Fred Phillips that I *just* stumbled upon not five minutes ago.
Fred Phillips
Frederick Beauregard Phillips was the right man for the right job at the right time. It was a Monday morning on a summer day in 1966 at Desilu Studios in Hollywood. Fred Phillips, makeup artist for the new Star Trek series, sat in his one-room makeup department, sipping coffee. As was his usual procedure, he began his day by looking over several new story outlines for future episodes, which had been placed in his mail tray sometime over the weekend.
Fred smiled and murmured to himself, “Solow, Coon, Roddenberry, and Justman are working over time again.” Suddenly, Fred lowered his coffee cup and reread a few lines from two of the outlines. He quickly grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil and wrote down several words: “Klingon—Romulan—alien races—conceptualize them—design them—make them.” And knowing the Star Trek production world, he added: “fast”.
But for the man who in 1927, with a flour and water paste, applied eyelashes one by one to the stars of Cecil B. DeMille’s film King of Kings; for the man who in 1931 made up Frederic March for the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; for the man who in 1967 turned actors into primates for The Plantes of the Apes; and for the man who made up the stars of over one hundred films, it was just another day at the office.
The Vulcan Way
Fred Phillips had designed Spock’s famous pointed ears for the original pilot episode, “The Cage”. Fourteen years later, during the production of The Motion Picture, Phillips cast his 2000th Spock ear.
According to Star Trek Associate Producer Bob Justman, “Fred Phillips had taken a cast of Leonard’s ears from which he had molds made that incorporated the kind of pointed tips that Roddenberry wanted. The theory was that, once the molds were made, duplicate ears could be cranked out when needed and glued onto Leonard’s ears. Easier said than done. Once a pair of them had been painstakingly attached and colored to match the rest of Spock’s yellowish complexion, that was it for that pair. And when they were removed (a painful and time consuming process for Leonard, since they were attached with spirit glue and could be removed only with the use of strong solvent), they couldn’t be saved for use the next time. New day, new ears. And the rubber being used wasn’t dependable. The makeup lab had to cast pair after pair of ears until a good set was made. Later, when the series was filmed, Charles Schramm of the MGM makeup department would use an improved latex formula and crank out ears on an assembly-line basis.”
The next stage was the creation of Spock’s characteristic Vulcan eyebrows. This required Phillips to shave the outside halves of Nimoy’s actual eyebrows during each makeup session. Phillips filled in the shape of the new eyebrows with an eyebrow pencil, then painted over those lines with spirit gum. The spirit gum was used to attach short lengths of yak belly hair, which Phillips cut from long stands, blending the small tufts into what remained of Nimoy’s own eyebrows. The final stage of the process involved applying base makeup and adding shading to ensure that shadow contours would be seen even under the bright lights of the shooting stage.
As the series began production, the use of Spock’s pointed ears was actually cause of great controversy between the Star Trek production team and the television network. “In 1965, the NBC Sales Department was concerned,” recalls Herb Solow, Desilu Executive in chrage of Star Trek at the time. “It was as if they believed that, after Satan had been cast out the the Garden of Eden, he was reincarnated as actor Leonard Nimoy and cast into Star Trek as Science Officer Spock, a pointed-eared, arched-eyebrowed “satanic” Vulcan alien. Though it was well before the rise of 1970s Christian fundamentalism, NBC feared its advertisers and local stations would be targets of a religious backlash protesting this “devil incarnate.”
“It took several weeks for us to learn the extent to which NBC Sales had gone to disguise Spock’s “satanic” pointed ears,” says Solow. “NBC had sent a very attractive Star Trek sales brochure to its station affiliates and advertisers. Close scrutiny showed, however, that an artist working for the NBC Sales Department had airbrushed Spock’s pointy ears round in all the photographs.”
In order to placate the network, which was strongly advocating the use of regular ears and eyebrows on the Spock character—a move that would have seriously undermined the concept that an alien was serving onboard the Enterprise; the Star Trek production team decided to “tell NBC what they wanted to hear” in agreeing to greatly reduce Spock’s visibility in the show for the first thirteen weeks, while actually proceeding without limitations on the use of the Vulcan first officer.
“The first four episodes to air featured Mister Spock in varying degrees,” according to Solow. “But by the time the fifth show was ready to air, “Spockmania” had erupted, and NBC’s anti-Spock campaign came to a grinding halt. Desilu’s mailroom was bulging with huge sacks of fan mail, most of which was addressed to Mister Spock.”
The Motion Picture
In addition to Vulcans, Phillips also designed a large cast of aliens for Star Trek’s first screen outing. Perhaps his most memorable creation for the episode was the “green girl” played by Susan Oliver. We present the following anecdote as related by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry in The Making of Star Trek about how this creation came to be.
For the first six months, Roddenberry was called “Crazy Gene.” People used to call each other on the phone and say, “Have you heard what Crazy Gene wants to do now?”
[Roddenberry] Well, it was all so new and strange to them. Like you call some unsuspecting production man on the phone, and he says, “Hello,” and you say, “What does it cost to paint a girl green?” You get a long silence!
The “green woman” (a character Gene wanted to use in the pilot) alone created a number of recurring problems.
Knowing that the green-skinned alien woman was coming up in the pilot, he decided to shoot some test footage to get the right shade of green on film. He brought in an actress, had Fred Phillips, the newly hired makeup artist, apply green makeup to her face, and then shot some test footage. Now, Fred Phillips is an exceptionally fine makeup artist, and recognized as a top pro in the business. He did a thorough job with the makeup and was quite satisfied with the results.
Imagine everyone’s surprise, upon viewing the developed film the next day, to find the actress’s face just as normally pink-skinned as ever! There was no trace of green.
Gene’s orders to Fred Phillips: “Paint her greener!” The following day the test film again showed her as pink-skinned as ever. Even Fred was dumbfounded. Recalling the incident, he says, “We did this three days in a row. We had her so green you couldn’t believe it, and she kept coming back pink! Finally we figured out what was happening. The technician over at the film lab would receive the film every day and run it through the development solution. As the image formed on the film, he kept saying to himself, “My God, this woman is green!” And so he kept correcting the film developing process in order to turn her back to normal skin color again!”
The accomplished actress Susan Oliver later played the part of the alien woman in the pilot and was almost totally covered with green body makeup. During filming she became very tired, and a doctor was called in to give her a vitamin B shot. The doctor arrived, but no one bothered to tell him what his patient looked like. He went over to Susan’s dressing room, knocked, the door swung wide, and suddenly he was confronted with an all-green woman! He was so flustered that it took him almost five minutes just to find a spot to administer the shot.
Phillips had not yet finished with Star Trek following the cancellation of the series. He would leave the freelance world behind and return to Star Trek to be in charge of the makeup on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He was asked to repeat his makeup role for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Due to his failing eyesight and his problems with depth perception, Phillips was forced to turn down the offer. It was the major disappointment of his life. Shortly thereafter, Fred Phillips retired from active participation in the film and television industries. On August 20, 1983, he received the lifetime achievement award for makeup from the Society of Operating Cameramen. He died on March 21, 1993.
N. Ottens
30 July 2005
Last updated: 2 November 2008
Sources for this article include:
• Solow, H.F. and R.H. Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (1996)
• Solow, H.F. and Y. Fern, The Star Trek Sketchbook (1997)
• Whitfield, S.E., with G. Roddenberry, The Making of Star Trek (1968)
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