cover image Makeup Man: Making Up the Stars from ‘Rocky’ to ‘Star Trek’

Makeup Man: Making Up the Stars from ‘Rocky’ to ‘Star Trek’

Michael Westmore, with Jake Page. Rowman & Littlefield, $29.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-63076-190-5

Readers will want to take a giant step back in time with Academy Award–winner Westmore’s amiable and intimate look at his family, a Hollywood makeup dynasty for four generations, and the stars they’ve been making look good since 1917. His own career began in 1961 with a Universal Studios apprenticeship, all the time being “watched like a hawk” by family elders. Readers of a certain age will lap up stories about Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee’s budding romance, Desi Arnaz’s (emergency) horsehair mustache, and Ernest Borgnine’s doomed marriage to Ethel Merman. As the book progresses, younger readers will recognize more names and productions, including Harrison Ford in Blade Runner and Sylvester Stallone (whose fight scene injuries Westmore created) in Rocky. Westmore dishes occasionally but usually has a nice word to say about his clients. He even shares Elizabeth Taylor’s chili recipe. Later sections concentrate on Westmore’s decades-long association with the Star Trek series. Tighter editing might have eliminated the book’s “Snippets,” a miscellaneous closing collection of reminiscences, but most of them are just as entertaining as the book proper. [em](Mar.) [/em]