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Boris Karloff (Frankenstein) 1931
Jack Pierce created several famous make-up jobs for Universal in the '30s and '40s, but by far the most iconic is the flat-headed, bolt-necked Frankenstein's Monster. It took Boris Karloff, however, to inhabit the make-up, acting his way out from behind the greasepaint and mortician's wax to deliver a nuanced portrait of a childlike creature, prone to rage but also capable of great tenderness. You need only compare Karloff's monster to the later versions attempted by Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi to see the extent of his achievement. The clumsily lurching caricature of popular misconception owes everything to those performances, and nothing at all to Karloff's tragically bewildered victim.
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