June 29, 2025 and fifty-two years ago on this day in 1973, actor Cecil Holland, who portrayed Colonel Vivier in the first authorized film based on a book by Edgar Rice Burrough, “The Lad and the Lion,” died. “The Lad and the Lion,” a silent film and one sadly lost, is about a young boy abandoned on a derelict ship with a lion. ERB wrote the pulp magazine version of the story in 1914 and revised and lengthened in 1938. “The Life of Pi” was written from 1999 to 2000 and published in 2001. Just saying. You don’t even have to use a decimal point to do the math.
Publishing details about the book, information about the film, and an electronic version of the novel are available at: https://www.erbzine.com/mag7/0760.html
The film featured Vivian Reed, Will Machin, and Lafe Mckee. It was produced by the Selig Polyscope Company and directed by Alfred E. Green. The release of the film coincided with the publication of the story in All-Story Weekly, perhaps one of the first multimedia tie-ins in history.
Cecil Claude Holland was born in Gravesend-On-Thames in the UK and moved to San Francisco in the early 1900s. He helped with the city’s reconstruction after the famous fire.
Holland, who fought for the United States during WW1, later became an expert at applying make-up, and eventually left acting to do make-up full time. He was the first head of make-up for MGM.
He was known as “The Man of 1000 Faces,” a title inherited by Lon Chaney Sr. Chaney wrote the introduction to Cecil’s book, “The Art of Make-Up for Stage & Screen.”
The fictional 100 word drabble for today, “Don’t Bite the Hand That Makes You Pretty,” was inspired by Cecil’s career.
Lon Chaney said, “Cecil, does it bother you that people are calling me the man of a thousand faces.”
“No, Lon. It’s all yours. A makeup artist is a great gig, Steady work and good pay.”
“You make everyone into the best version of themselves.”
“Not really, Lon. I make people look like the best version of themselves. Beauty’s only skin deep and makeup is only an illusion. It doesn’t change who a person is.”
“Like Joan Crawford?”
“Yep. I told her that makeup won’t make her pretty inside unless she eats it. She beat me with a coat hanger.”
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