Making Up the Star: Makeup, Femininity, Race and Ageing in Hollywood

This book examines the integral role that makeup plays in the construction and promotion of female stardom, focusing on the transitional Hollywood period, between 1950 and 1970, a time of great change in Hollywood with the advent of television, the break-up of the studios and the break-down of the production code. Cathy Lomax’s compelling study features in-depth case studies of stars Vivien Leigh, Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Dorothy Dandridge and Joan Crawford alongside archival images of make-up promotional material and the make up used by stars and their fans to interrogate the role of makeup in defining and adjusting the appearance of race, beauty, ageing, naturalness, and sexual appeal in the star image. Makeup is a vital technical material in film and photography; correcting skin-tones for different film stocks and making features visible under bright lights. But it is also a component of a film’s mise-en-scene, intrinsically linked to the visual allure of cinema and helps to shape and refine the female star image, both on- and off-screen. Lomax’s case studies show how makeup was used to create female figures such as the femme fatale played by Marilyn Monroe in Niagara (1953); how in various roles Natalie Wood’s makeup was used to suggest a youthful, natural and openly sexual young woman, or, when as a white actress she was cast in ’ethnic’ roles, to create an impression of a Hispanic, Native American or Black identity; how Dorothy Dandridge’s light skin challenged codes around inter-racial relationships, with the result that her skin was darkened for love scenes with Black actors, and how the transition to colour impacted Joan Crawford’s star persona as she aged, and how ideas about the grotesque nature of female ageing were represented in the 1960s cycle of ’hag horror’ movies such as 1962’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Drawing on film studies, feminist debates on masquerade theory, celebrity studies and fashion and cultural studies, alongside information from biographies, fan magazines, archives, and practical experience from her own work as a makeup artist, Lomax reveals the vital and under-examined role that makeup plays in the display of femininity on film, and how this is exemplified through the construction of individuated stardom. By making visible a material, that because of its connection with feminine adornment has been overlooked or disregarded, this book highlights undervalued labour, and foregrounds the female agency that was articulated by the design and application of makeup.

Cathy Lomax is an independent scholar based in the UK. She received a PhD in Film Studies from Queen Mary University of London, UK. She is an established artist, winner of the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2016, and she has also worked as a makeup artist. Her chapter ’Dorothy Dandridge the Invisible Star’ is published in Stars, Fan Magazines and Audiences (2023).