This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

hyped garbage

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

. . . which may be of interest to film buffs who are "in" to that kind of thing. Among the monikers I recognized and may be able to spell are Natalie Wood, Tony Randall, Doris Day, Martha Ray, Jimmy Durante, Fred Astaire, Clark Gable, Paul Newman, Ann Francis, Herb Hatfield, Arthur O'Connell, and David Niven. Some people might have gotten a kick out of pawing hundreds of famous faces, but I assume that by the time that this short was released, such goings on were pretty much "old hat" to Mr. Tuttle. There are some step-by-step "how-tos" included here that may be of historical interest to folks wanting to make a career of rubbing elbows with Hollywood types (but will NOT be totally comprehensible to those who have failed a high school art class, such as myself). At any rate, since most of the people referred to during THE KING OF THE DUPLICATORS have passed away long since, what more harm can this do?

Brief (12-minutes) demonstration of how MGM creates masks for character changes in movies. Make-up maestro Bill Tuttle goes through stages of the process in straightforward fashion. There's no romance of the movies here, instead it's pretty much a technical exercise. As a result, I have a new appreciation of what an actor must sit through as the wax coating is applied. I hope they're paid extra for this. I would have liked some film clips showing how the appliance looks in the movie itself. But the narrative remains firmly within the make-up room. Narrator Wayne Thomas also remains firmly on topic. Overall, it's an interesting glimpse of the dream factory in action.

Modestly interesting short shows briefly how William Tuttle, chief make-up artist at MGM for some thirty years, goes about preparing plaster masks for stars who assume character roles and need special make-up to complete their physical image.Along his wall we can spot masks of famous personalities he worked on, including Paul Newman, Clark Gable, Jimmy Durante, Doris Day and others. For this segment, we see him working on an unknown player who has his whole face smeared with make-up goo before the sculptured mask can be made.Tuttle seems like a very amiable man but it's too bad some of his more famous subjects weren't shown going through the process which looks more than mildly discomforting.

King of the Duplicators, The (1968) *** (out of 4) Documentary short takes a look at the work of MGM's make up man William Tuttle who worked on hundreds of films including The Wizard of Oz, Father of the Bride, North by Northwest, Young Frankenstein Singin' in the Rain and many others. This ten-minute film takes a look at his use of latex and older uses of molding actor's faces. We really don't get to learn too much but the film remains mildly interesting just seeing the legend do a little work. We get to see some plasters of stars like Clark Gable, Paul Newman, Doris Day and even Jimmy Durante. The film does suffer from poor production values and some really bad editing but fans of make up will certainly want to check this out.