The Monster Maker: Jack Pierce's Tribute at Universal Studios Hollywood

September 12, 2025

On this episode, we will be continuing our exploration of Universal Studios Hollywood. In our previous episode about this park, Setting the Scene: The Iconic Details of Universal Studios Hollywood's Entrance, we told you some details about the iconic globe and arched entryway, the Director's Cut Fountain, and a little bit about Alfred Hitchcock and the bust that you can find of him at the park's entrance. And a quick update, since our recording, we have learned that the globe found in Hollywood today was originally installed in Florida, where it was in front of that park when it opened in 1990, but moved to Hollywood sometime between 1995 and 1996, shortly before work started on CityWalk in Orlando. But yeah, on this episode, we will be taking a few more steps into the park, covering some more of the details you will find, and telling you about a person from Universal Pictures' history with a subtle dedication found in this Hollywood section of the park.

Now, back in 1964, when the Universal City Studio Tours first opened, it was a very different experience compared with what it is today. You weren't going to Universal Studios, the theme park, you were going to the tour, which at the time was considered a proof of concept by the management at Universal. They weren't sure if the idea was a good business plan or not, so they didn't even advertise it that first year.

But, it did well enough, and the following year the tram tour was updated to load from an area referred to as the "Upper Lot", and they added more things for people to do before and after the tour, including a western stunt show, and they marked that upper lot area on park maps as Studio Entertainment Center, Visitor's Village, Visitors Entertainment Center, and for long a while it was just Entertainment Center, but again, it's now just the Upper Lot.

Anyway, you would enter the property, and on your right was the loading area of the tram tour, followed by this small entertainment area, which would eventually include a few shows, a playground, and some refreshments for purchase.

Eventually, a restaurant was built, and though the building wouldn't show up on park maps until around 1980, the Victoria Station Restaurant had its grand opening on May 1st, 1977. According to the book "Prime Rib & Boxcars: Whatever Happened to Victoria Station," Alfred Hitchcock flipped a railroad switch as a sort of ribbon-cutting for the official opening of this Universal City location. When it first opened, you could access the restaurant from outside of the "Entertainment Center," so you didn't need a ticket to get into the restaurant. We found a park map online from 1978 that has a bubble marked with the number 26 floating above some trees near the park entrance, with the description linked to the name Victoria Station Restaurant, and its description reads, "This spectacular new dining tradition is an authentic recreation of the famed London landmark! Located at the Tour entrance." Now, if you listened to our podcast about Independence Hall at Knott's Berry Farm, you'll know that in the late 1970s, theme park publicity departments liked saying things were authentic recreations, because, well, there was no internet and they weren't concerned about people pulling up photos to fact check them. But really, we have no idea what they're talking about here, this restaurant did not look anything like the train station in London. But anyway, the restaurant was actually one in a chain of Victoria Station restaurants, which started with a location in San Francisco, and at its peak included roughly 100 locations in the United States and Canada. They unfortunately filed chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1986, ceased operations as a company in 1992, with a few locations that continued to operate under independent owners, which included this Universal Studios location.

Meanwhile, the park's entrance started to transform around 1996, the same year the globe and archway were added as the new entrance icons of the park. A new studio store was added next to Victoria Station, and a guest relations building was added to the right of the entrance, which is where you will find that Alfred Hitchcock bust we talked about on the previous episode.

Victoria Station Restaurant was closed in 1997 and was converted into Marvel Mania, a restaurant co-owned by Planet Hollywood that was themed to Marvel comic book characters, but that was only in the park in 1998 and 1999. In 2000, a section of the building became an eatery named Frank N' Stein, with a sign depicting Frankenstein's Monster holding a hot dog in one hand, and a glass of beer in the other, while the other side became a short-lived Chicken Run walkthrough attraction, based on the film by that name. The eatery stayed around until 2006, when it became Hollywood Photoland, but in 2001, the walkthrough attraction side was turned into a year-round walkthrough haunt-style attraction named The Mummy Returns: Chamber of Doom, before being converted into Van Helsing: Fortress Dracula from 2004 to 2007, at which point it became Universal's House of Horrors from 2007 to 2014. After it closed in 2014, the building was demolished, along with the Hollywood Photoland booth, as well as The Blues Brothers R&B Venue. In 2016, The Walking Dead, another haunt-style attraction, opened in the new building at the former location, but with guests entering from the other side of the building, across from where the Palace Deli & Market and City Snack Shop are today. But, also at that time, some new storefronts were put into the park, and this is where the part of today's episode about what is in the parks these days actually begins.

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When you get about a third of the way down the Hollywood section of the park, there is a location on the left that is kind of a photo-op, sometimes there's a car, but it can really be anything, and to the right is an entrance to the Universal Studio Store that is designed to look like a building from the early Universal City Studios from 1915. You can visit whereinthepark.com/podcast to find the blog entry for this episode for a side-by-side comparison.

Just past that facade, there is another facade, but for a blue-ish building with a blue and orange checkerboard tile ornamentation above the top floor. A glass door on the ground floor of this "building" reads: "Jack Pierce / Makeup Studio." The area in front of this door is often set up for a photo-op with a Marilyn Monroe character, but to be clear, as far as we can find, Jack Pierce never worked with Marilyn Monroe. Also, an interesting note, Marilyn Monroe never actually appeared in a film created by Universal Pictures. But yeah, Marilyn is famous enough, and continues to be an icon for Hollywood from the 1950s. We'll assume you're familiar with her, so we won't go into too detail here.

But, with a direct connection to early Universal Studios, the name on the door belongs to a man named Jack Pierce. He is famous for his work during the Golden Age of horror movies, which involved working on make-up. He was born in either Valdetsyou, Laconia, or Porto Heli, Greece, depending on who is report it, with the name Janus Piccoulas (or Yiannis Pikoulas, depending on who is reporting it, apparently Greek to English is difficult to translate), again, depending on where you look, but everyone agrees that he was born on May 5th, 1889.

He moved to Chicago in his teens and then to Los Angeles to follow his professional passion, to be a baseball player. Apparently, he had done okay in semi-pro leagues, but when he arrived in Los Angeles, he was told that he was too short to play. Soon after, in the early 1910s, he Americanized his name, and instead got a job as a projectionist for Harry Culver, the guy who founded Culver City in Los Angeles. Later, he became a theater chain manager. Pierce would also work random jobs at nearby studios, which included working for Carl Laemmle, head of Universal Pictures. His jobs there included camera loader, assistant to the director, bit player, and even stuntman. By 1915, he was employed regularly at Universal City Studios, which at the time was producing silent short films.

It was his attempts at working as an actor that lead him to creating his own style of doing makeup, because he was aware that he lacked the look and stature of a typical movie star, so he tried to use makeup to transform himself. The first reference we could find in regards to Pierce working on someone else's makeup was the 1926 Fox silent film named The Monkey Talks, where he transformed actor Jacques Lernier into... well, a talking monkey. This project is reportedly what caught Carl Laemmle's attention, and he gave Pierce a full-time position at Universal in the makeup department shortly thereafter.

His first project for Universal was working on a film named "The Man Who Laughs," which was supposed to star Lon Chaney, but he backed out, so Pierce did the makeup for a German actor named Conrad Veidt instead. It's reported that comic book artist Bob Kane was inspired by the makeup job on this film to create Batman's archenemy, The Joker. It wasn't long after this project that Pierce was promoted to being the head of the makeup department.

His first big film was 1931's Dracula. The star, Bela Lugosi, refused to let anyone apply his make-up, though. He had always done his own make-up during his Broadway run as Dracula in 1927, and felt the same thing should happen in Universal's film version. Because of this, Jack Pierce designed the green greasepaint that the character would use in the black-and-white film, but other than that he mostly worked on the characters of Mina and the Count's brides.

Following the success of Dracula, Jack Pierce was then put to work on Frankenstein. It took four months to figure out how to do Boris Karloff's makeup to turn him into Frankenstein's Monster in the 1931 film. Pierce eventually decided on the trademark square and flat head and came up with the idea of adding bolts to the monster's neck, which were supposed to indicate where the monster was hooked up to Dr. Frankenstein's machine. The original version had blue-green make-up by Max Factor named "sky grey" to make him look gray and pale in the black-and-white movie. Pierce also put metal poles in the legs of Karloff's pants to make him look stiff as he moved. It took over three hours every day to prepare Karloff for Pierce's design; they would start at 5:30 A.M.

In 1932, Pierce turned Boris Karloff into The Mummy, applying cotton and spirit gum to his face, and grease paint, fuller's earth, and beauty clay, rubbing into his hair to make him to make look like he had been decaying underground.

For 1941's The Wolf Man, Pierce turned Lon Chaney Junior's character Larry Talbot into the wolf man by gradually applying a snout and yak hair between shots. For this movie, it would take six hours every day to apply the makeup, but the transformation scene took 22 hours, with Jack Pierce and effects artist John Fulton removing bits of makeup in twenty-one installments.

He would go on to do makeup and hair for many other Universal films, including 1931's Dracula's Daughter, 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, 1936's Show Boat, 1943's Phantom of the Opera, 1944's Son of Dracula, and 1945's House of Dracula.

After a merger with International Pictures in 1945, though, many of Universal's department heads were replaced, including Jack Pierce. Another makeup artist named Bud Westmore took his place. After being fired from Universal, he worked the remainder of his career in B-pictures and a few television shows. The last job he had was on the TV Show Mister Ed, that show from the 1960s about a talking horse, where he worked as the makeup department head from 1961 to 1964. He died in 1968 from uremia, which is apparently caused by kidney failure, and at the time, he was almost bankrupt and was mostly forgotten by the public, with only a handful of people attending his funeral. There was an interview he did in 1966 for a short-lived magazine named Monster Mania, where they explained that he created all of the looks of these famous monsters for Universal from 1931 to 1943, but he was paid for the work he did, and didn't receive any residuals afterward.

Since then, many prominent makeup artists of today have gone on the record about the way they were influenced by his work, and makeup and special effects themed shows in the Universal theme parks in Hollywood and Orlando have included segments about his contributions. In 2003, he was awarded a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hollywood Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild, and in 2013, the Cinema Makeup School in Los Angeles dedicated a memorial gallery in his honor. And in 2016, this door was added here in Hollywood to show the respect and appreciation that the Universal company of today has for Jack Pierce.

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Connected to this facade is another facade, this one of a beige building that has multiple windows with red awnings, and according to the sign, it's Laemmle Hollywood Apartments. Rooms to let, no actors please. We'll be going behind the details of this building, the Laemmles, and the rest of the street in a future episode in this series about Universal Studios Hollywood.