Walter Law — A Make-Up That Grew (1916) 🇺🇸

When Walter Law read the script for The Unwelcome Mother, he discovered that he would have to play the part of a burly sailor, who had not known the luxury of a smooth face since boyhood. Law was an adept in make-up, but whiskers were rather out of the line of work he had been doing.

by A. B. Bernd

Law visited a make-up dealer. When he emerged, he carried large bundles of crêpe hair and spirit-gum. He locked his door, arranged his materials before a mirror, and proceeded to turn himself into a whiskers laboratory.

First, Mr. Law tried a scattered fringe of iron gray, arranged in rather promiscuous fashion along the under edge of the jaw. A glance in the mirror proved that this was inartistic and unnatural.

Another effort was wasted when the actor discovered that a long, flowing beard was too hot an appendage to carry about in July. Then experiment followed experiment — in side-whiskers, in imperials, in mustache draped Kaiser-fashion, in every way imaginable. All were futile.

There was only one thing to do, and he did it. He grew a beard. The pleas of a distracted wife went for naught. All the determination in two hundred and twenty-five pounds was devoted to that beard. Within two weeks of seclusion he raised the best crop of whiskers this side of Russia.

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Photo: © Tarr, N. Y.

Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, November 1916