The Day I Made Verne Langdon Cry

The day I made Verne Langdon cry was towards the end of my term at the Ringling Clown College. I had been struggling with the makeup class Verne taught. He was a knowledgeable and dedicated makeup artist who inspired my fellow classmates to create stunning yet breezy clown faces.

My attempts at clown makeup were, by comparison, grotesque -- not to say frightening. My efforts at applying greasepaint looked like fingerpainting. When I tried a hobo makeup I looked like a refugee from a coal scuttle. My auguste makeup showed the consequences of a childhood spent coloring outside the lines. And when I spread on the classic whiteface, I gave a pretty good impression of Bela Lugosi in “Dracula Versus Eczema.”

Verne, who created the makeup for the original “Planet of the Apes”, and who lived in a house in Beverly Hills that was an exact replica of the Seven Dwarves cottage in Disney’s “Snow White,” was very patient and long suffering with my fumbling fingers as he tried to guide me towards a clown makeup that would not scare off too many circus patrons. But even he had his limits.

On the day of which I speak I decided that I wanted to pay homage to Oliver Hardy by emulating his curl bangs and toothbrush mustache in whiteface. The resulting facial carnage was ghastly. Rather than remove the abomination quickly and start over, I decided to brazen it out; powdering my face to set the makeup until Langdon came down to my end of a long row of picnic tables.. We were located under the south bleachers of the winter quarters rehearsal barn, which opened to the outside with some folding doors to give us maximum use of the natural sunlight.  

When he saw my face he gasped and sat down. Cupping his face in his hands, we all heard him groan “Ye gods and little fishes, what has Torkildson wrought now?” When he looked up, his face a mask of pain, there were rivulets of moisture trickling down his tanned and robust cheeks. Vern was considered an artist of note by Hollywood. His obituary ran to five pages in Fangoria Magazine. Some of his work is on display at several museums throughout the world. Yet in me, an obscure dunce from the icy, lefse-haunted wilderness of Minnesota, he had met his match.

After that episode he left me to my own devices. I continued to struggle to find the right combination of colors and lines that would produce a memorable clown face. But nothing seemed right, and my clumsy efforts continued to distort and defy all the rules of theatrical makeup. I finally decided that a simple whiteface makeup suited my me best, and it was nearly impossible to screw up as long as I kept it very simple. So after I slathered on the Stein’s Clown White, I penciled my eyebrows black, put a red dot on my nose, and colored my lower lip red. That was it. It was more mime than Ringling, but Langdon could look at it without shuddering.

Came the big night of our graduation show, when the rehearsal barn was filled with circus management and most of the inhabitants of Venice, Florida, to watch us strut our stuff. This one-time performance of old clown routines and a few new wrinkles thought up by the bolder students would determine who got a contract with Ringling and who was just given a handshake and sent on their way to eke out a drab existence somewhere else.

Needless to say, I was nervous that evening as I applied my makeup. Keep it simple, Tork, I kept telling myself. But some evil imp got into me as I put the finishing touches on my face. I decided that a demure teardrop under my right eye would set things off rather nicely. I dipped my brush in the small saucer of lampblack by my side and began tracing. But my unsteady hand betrayed me; the intended shape became an irregular blob; the more I tried to fix it the more unmanageable it became -- until it began to look like a birthmark, not a teardrop.

There was no time to clean it off and start over -- the show started in five minutes. I did my best to smooth out the shape until it looked something like the black eye people wore in Tareyton cigarette commercials. Thinking I had really blown it, I trooped out with the rest of the students for the opening number . . .

And found my clown trademark. It was unique; it was attention-getting; and it didn’t scare children. Irvin Feld said he liked the little black eye when he handed me my one year contract to sign. And Verne Langdon forgave me, saying at the aftershow party “You pulled it off, Torkildson! Now for godsake stop trying to improvise and stick with that face.”

Which I did for the next thirty years.