Makeup and Misery: Adventures in the Soap Factory

The author, an active member of Local 798, the Makeup Artists local of IATSE, was at the May 25 AUD meeting, "Union Reformers, Meet the Press," where he told his story and left us a copy of his book. In a few words on page 275, he writes how he helped form a caucus in Local 798, whose 1,200 members are scattered about in 26 states, and how AUD helped them get rid of a suspect union leadership. "AUD guided us through the options of reform open to us under federal labor standards." It's nice to know that Local 798 remembers AUD, but that's only a passing fragment in this fascinating story.

If you think that top notch makeup artists are defined by jars of cold cream, powder puffs, lipstick, and eyelash tweezers, read this book and think again. Actually they are artists, sculptors, painters, disguise experts, and imaginative creators of illusions. Bryn's main subject is working for soap operas where the makeup artists have to work fast and cheap. On demand, they turn an actor into Uncle Sam and an actress into the Statue of Liberty. How he did it and for whom is the biggest part of this story.

Then there is the human element. Very human! Forget about the big stars for a moment. The world of entertainment, that is, the entertainment industry, the business of entertainment, is one in which actor, actresses, cinematographers, lighting specialists, sound experts, and whoever are all maneuvering for a place based on who you know, and who owes favors and does what and to whom. Bryn has hundreds of pages of this stuff. When you read it, you must wonder how unions manage to stay alive and do their job in that kind of atmosphere.