Old-age makeups: The Lost Moment (makeup)
The movie
A wonderfully gothic adaptation of The Aspen Papers.
An unscrupulous New York publisher is in Venice pursuing the lost love letters of an early nineteenth-century poet, Jeffrey Ashton, who disappeared mysteriously.
Using a false name and pretending to be a writer he rents a room from the very old Juliana Borderau (Agnes Moorehead) – once Ashton’s lover, now an recluse. Running the household is Juliana's severe – and unhinged – niece, Tina, who mistrusts him from themoment she sets eyes on him. He soon discovers he has entered their lives as well as their home.
The makeup
Bud Westmore is credited with the makeup on Agnes Moorehead (but see Dick Smith’s comments below): I think his Yvonne de Carlo makeup is a better example of a one-piece facial appliance makeup but that may just be because the ageing simply looks better there because it is less extreme.
Dick Smith emailed me the following comments on this makeup:
Bud Westmore got the credit for Agnes Moorehead’s 110 year old makeup in The Lost Moment but actually George Bau, Perc Westmore’s lab man, was told by Perc to make the appliances so that baby brother, Bud, would look good in his new job as makeup head of Universal. He [Bau] sculpted and prepared all the appliances but had a fight with Bud and did not make the hand appliances, so Bub had to improvise them out of cotton and spirit gum! That makeup fascinated me when I was new to makeup but I was puzzled by the primitive hand makeup until I learned the real story from Bau many years later. Bud followed the practice of posing for photos with other artists’ work and getting the screen credit