While this week’s Throwback Thursday find could easy translate as a torture device (The Jackal, anyone?), this ‘micrometer’ is actually a Hollywood-favoured beauty tool from 1934. I have never come across such a device in all my years as a make-up artist, so I will leave the explanation to the clipping itself…
It reads:
“Recently perfected by Max Factor, one of Hollywood’s most famous beauty experts, a new instrument, designed to aid makeup men, accurately registers actors’ facial measurements and discloses which features should be reduced or enhanced in the makeup process.
Flaws almost invisible to the ordinary eye become glaring distortions when thrown upon the screen in highly magnified images; but Factor’s “beauty micrometer” reveals the defects.
The device, remotely resembling a baseball mask, fits over the head and face with flexible metal strips which conform closely to the various features. The strips are held in place by set screws, allowing for 325 possible adjustments. If, for instance, the subject’s nose is slightly crooked – so slightly, in fact, that it escapes ordinary observation – the flaw is promptly detected by the instrument and corrective makeup is applied by an experienced operator.”
