STUDIO CITY, CA — John Chambers (1922-2001) is one of the most revered makeup artists in Hollywood history. His career began humbly with a stint in the US Army during World War II, when he served as a dental technician. After the war, he returned to his Chicagoland home and began building prosthetic limbs and facial prosthetics — ears, noses, and the like — for fellow veterans at the VA hospital in Hines, Illinois.
His life changed after he served an apprenticeship under another Hollywood makeup legend, Ben Nye, at 20th Century Fox. And it was at Fox where Chambers would earn an Academy Award for his groundbreaking makeup in 1968’s Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall. Chambers even worked for the CIA in the 1970s, creating disguises for operatives. Actor John Goodman portrayed Chambers in Ben Affleck’s Academy Award-winning Argo in 2012.
Van Eaton Galleries is bringing 21 Chambers-related items to market as key lots in its Journey Through Disney Parks & Pop Culture sale scheduled for Saturday, September 21. The 685-lot sale is now open for bidding at LiveAuctioneers.
Desilu enlisted John Chambers to create the pointed ears for Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek, which had its original run on television from 1966 to 1969. Nimoy first met Chambers on April 17, 1966, when Desilu’s head of makeup, Fred Phillips, brought him to Chambers’ studio to create passable pointed ears. Chambers sculpted the ears in dental wax, a material designed to soften at body temperature to shape, and the original sculpts were preserved in a safe for decades. The lot includes the John Chambers Studio invoice for the June 1st ear molds and first set of new tips, and the Desilu Studios paperwork to match. Van Eaton has estimated the lot at $12,000-$15,000.
The sale also includes 11 Planet of the Apes-related items, including a number of master ‘heads’ from which Chambers would create latex masks for second-tier performers. (Stars wore facial appliances that were much more realistic in filmed close-up shots.) This orangutan first-master head would have yielded masks for backup actors serving under ‘boss’ orangutan Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans). Chambers cast it in foam to make a toolstone mold for creating full-head latex appliances.
And it wouldn’t be a Van Eaton sale without Disneyana. This Peter Pan’s Flight sign is from Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, the larger, reimagined Orlando, Florida sibling of the original at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. The sign dates to the 1980s or 1990s and allows park personnel to adjust it to let patrons know the estimated wait time to board the ride. Van Eaton estimates it at $10,000-$15,000.
