Biography

William Tuttle was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1911. At the age of 15 he was forced to leave school in order to earn a living so he could support his mother and younger brother, Thomas Tuttle. His music background got him work with comedy teams and a burlesque orchestra and, finally, his own band.

At age 18 he moved to Hollywood, California. He eventually ended up working at Fox studios. He became an apprentice to Jack Dawn, head of makeup at Twentieth-Century Pictures. Seven months later Twentieth Century closed down for the summer in 1934 and Bill went to MGM to continue his apprenticeship.

Fox hired Bill as a makeup artist after seeing the work he had done at MGM. He worked on three films for Fox before returning to MGM, and made it his home for 35 years. For eight years he worked as an assistant to Jack Dawn (by then head makeup artist at MGM) and, after Jack retired, he became the head of the department for over 20 years.

William Tuttle and Charles H. Schram both worked on The Time Machine (1960). Bill had taken a trip to the San Diego Zoo and got the idea to use the fur of an East African species of monkey for the fur of the Morlocks. He won an honorary Oscar in April 1965 for his work on George Pal's 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964). He has taught at the USC film school and created his own line of cosmetics, Custom Color Cosmetics.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous

He was the very first makeup artist to ever receive an Oscar. He earned an honorary award for his work on 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964). Sixteen years later, Rick Baker received the first award in the category of Best Makeup for An American Werewolf in London (1981).

Survived by his wife of 40 years and daughter (Teresa); a son, John, predeceased him.

Older brother of Thomas Tuttle.

It was Tuttle's idea of fastening the monster's head to his neck with a zipper in the film Young Frankenstein, as Mel Brooks did not want to use the iconic bolts and have copyright issues with the original Frankenstein.

Mel Brooks called Tuttle a master.

The crew [of Mark of the Vampire (1935)] and I didn't like to work for director Tod Browning. We would try to escape being assigned to one of his productions because he would overwork us until we were ready to drop from exhaustion...he was ruthless. He was determined to get everything he could on film. If the crew didn't do something right, Browning would grumble: 'Mr. Chaney would have done it better.' He was hard to please. I remember he gave the special effects men a hard time because they weren't working the mechanical bats properly. Though he didn't drive his actors as hard, he gave Lionel Barrymore a difficult time during a scene. Lugosi's performance, however, satisfied Browning.