On Sunday, February 16, Ron Chaney accepted Jack Pierce's lifetime achievement award on behalf of his grandfather Lon Chaney, Jr. and great-grandfather Lon Chaney. The ceremony took place in Beverly Hills, California as part of the 4th annual Hollywood Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Awards.

For Pierce’s lifetime achievement award, several of the team who created the Jack Pierce tribute and official Jack Pierce DVD were on hand in character. Perry Shields played makeup artist Jack Pierce; Matt Thompson was the Frankenstein Monster; Sheila Marie was the Bride; Ken DeShan was the Mummy.

Costumes had been built and the makeups had been designed and sculpted three years earlier for the live stage show “The Man Behind the Monsters.” Rob Burman did makeup and his wife Jennifer McManus was responsible for costumes. This time, Rob’s brother Barney did makeup for Jack Pierce; Brent Armstrong and Andy Schoneberg created the Mummy; Barry Koper did the Frankenstein Monster; and Michele Burke created the Bride.

What was very special about this event was that Donelle Dadigan’s Hollywood History Museum in Hollywood served as the makeup location. Her building used to be the famous Max Factor studio, where Jack Pierce himself designed many of his early makeup movies, including Dracula and Frankenstein!

After Chaney made his speech – which was televised by the E! ENTERTAINMENT STYLE network, Béla Lugosi, Jr. followed with a speech about his dad. Not pictured in the photos was Sara Karloff who spoke from her table about her dad Boris. All of the participants gave them a standing ovation when they were announced! The Hollywood press was at the event, and Pierce was mentioned in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.

This endeavor initiated in 1998, when I realized there had never been a fully realized project about Jack Pierce. To the rare uninitiated monster fan, Pierce was the makeup genius who started at Universal in the 1910s, doing everything from stunt work to assistant directing before becoming a full-time makeup artist in the 1920s. After successes such as The Monkey Talks, Pierce became Universal's head of makeup in 1928. He scored a major success turning Conrad Veidt into "The Man Who Laughs" that year, but the 1930s would bring him into legendary status.

After working on "Dracula," in succession, Pierce created the title characters for "Frankenstein," "The Mummy," "The Werewolf of London," "The Bride of Frankenstein," "The Wolf Man," and "Phantom of the Opera," in addition to working on all of the sequels to those films through "House of Dracula" in 1945. The studio then dismissed him after giving them 30 years and never signing a contract.

To undertake a Pierce project that would properly reflect this great body of work, I chose to at first present most of these films onstage through a combination of partial set pieces and accurate character re-creations. To do so, much like the efforts in realizing my earlier tributes to "Planet of the Apes" and "The Wizard of Oz," I had to recruit the best possible people in Hollywood to work on the creative aspects of the show.

It took over 100 people and two years to bring the show to fruition, and we are now all proud of it being a DVD release that can be enjoyed by the general public. While not widely released, it can be purchased on the official Jack Pierce website (www.jackpierce.com).