Dick Smith and Maurice Seiderman with the original life mask bust of Orson Welles created by Maurice Seiderman for "Citizen Kane" 1941.
Thanks to luck, exhaustive determination, and kindness I have fulfilled a promise that I made to Dick Smith 33 years ago.
After Maurice passed in 1989 I was able to find that his brother Nathan was still alive and in the Los Angeles area, after many phone calls we were planning to get together.
Before our meeting could happen I received an urgent call from my father asking if I'd come home because my mother's cancer reappeared after a long remission.
Many of my life plans were put on hold including hopefully locating some of Maurice's casts and hopefully even the cast of Orson.
Dick Smith and I would chat from time to time and we often talked about Maurice and his work so in 1996 I gifted Dick my 50th anniversary edition of Citizen Kane with many extras included.
Upon Dick's official retirement he gifted me a make-up brush that Maurice had used on Citizen Kane, I was overwhelmed by this generosity.
I will always be a firm believer in paying it forward.
Thank you Marcia and a big thanks to Mel, Avi and to Andy, now Orson and Maurice are here with me and we're looking for our next adventures.
“When Kane came out in script form, Orson told all of us about the picture and said that the most important aspect was the makeup,” Seiderman recalled.
At the time, Seiderman worked for RKO Studios as an apprentice, and apprentices didn’t have the privilege of doing much.
Seiderman was an exception to this, and Welles knew that better than most. After taking a particular liking to him, Welles handed the responsibility of making up all of the main characters to Seiderman.
Considering the epic scale of this movie, this was no small task and Seiderman embraced the job with great enthusiasm.
A major theme of Citizen Kane is the transformation process of aging using make-up which was then masterfully photographed by Gregg Toland.
The lengths to which Seiderman and Welles sacrificed to make this magic happen was both impressive and very inovative for its time.
Maurice Seiderman's wide-ranging work included such later Welles films as The Magnificent Ambersons and Touch of Evil, the Val Lewton horror films at RKO,
and even the infamous 1955 Bela Lugosi/Ed Wood collaboration Bride of the Monster, as well as work for the Broadway stage. Yet Citizen Kane is Maurice Seiderman's true legacy.
Don't let fear or insecurity stop you from trying, believe in yourself, do what you love and please be kind to yourself and to others.
May 2024 be one of your best years ever! -wf
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31 дек 2023
