page_title: John Chambers (make-up artist)
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: John Chambers (make-up artist) / Career
caption_attribution_description: Photos of Roddy McDowall's makeup work for the television series Planet of the Apes.
context_page_description: John Chambers was an American make-up artist and prosthetic makeup expert in both television and film. He received an Academy Honorary Award from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1968. He is best known for creating the pointed ears of Spock in the television series Star Trek, and for his groundbreaking prosthetic make-up work on the Planet of the Apes film franchise.
  Chambers was awarded CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit for his involvement in the Canadian Caper, in which six American hostages escaped during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The incident was the basis of the film Argo, which won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Picture, and in which Chambers was played by John Goodman.
context_section_description: Chambers trained as a commercial artist and started his career designing jewelry and carpets. Following service as a U.S. Army dental technician during World War II, Chambers found employment repairing faces and making prosthetic limbs for wounded veterans at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Hines, Illinois. He also trained under Ben Nye, then head of make-up at 20th Century Fox.
  In 1953, Chambers joined the NBC television network as a make-up artist for live shows. After working on his first film Around the World in Eighty Days in 1956, he then joined Universal Pictures. He attracted attention for his work on the film The List of Adrian Messenger, in which the audience had to guess which celebrities were concealed under Chambers' makeup; the actors' identities were not revealed until the end of the film. Chambers also worked on The Munsters and The Outer Limits TV series.
  Chambers became known worldwide for his work on the Planet of the Apes film franchise, which began with the eponymous 1968 film. During its production, he held training sessions at the 20th Century Fox studios to mentor the other 78 artists working on the film. He won an honorary Oscar at the 41st Academy Awards in 1969 for his work on film, long before the Academy Award for Best Makeup was established in 1981. He was the first motion picture makeup artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
  Chambers worked on the pilot episode of Mission Impossible and created the pointed ears worn by Leonard Nimoy's Spock in the original Star Trek television series. He also created Lee Marvin's prosthetic nose for his Academy Award-winning role in Cat Ballou (1965), and a prosthetic chest for Richard Harris in A Man Called Horse (1970), where he was hung on pins for a native American initiation ceremony. Some of his character creations, including Cornelius and Dr. Zaius from the Planet of the Apes series, are on display at The Science Fiction Museum in Seattle. Chambers served as president of the Society of Makeup Artists as well.
caption: Prosthetic makeup design for Roddy McDowell in Planet of the Apes TV series (1974)
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