In some ways, it isn’t hard to determine why Norman Jewison’s big-screen adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof was a hit. From the time sound was introduced to the cinema, musicals were one of Hollywood’s most popular and enduring genres. But while most musicals of the 1930s and 1940s were frothy entertainments, the fifties saw an increase in musicals that tackled more serious material. And the record-breaking initial Broadway run of Fiddler on the Roof made a film version inevitable, and its status as the top-grossing movie of 1971 was practically pre-ordained.

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You may not know who Jack P. Pierce was, but if you've seen or even heard about the Famous Monsters of Filmland that made millions of dollars for Universal Studios in the 1930s, you know his work.  Pierce, a Greek immigrant who ended up in Hollywood more or less by accident, was the head of the makeup department at Universal Studios from 1928 until 1947, and crafted, on conjunction with stars like Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, some of the most memorable creatures in cinema history. In the days before CGI or even most photographic effects as we know them today, Pierce worked with theatrical equipment, padding, chemicals toxic by today's standards, and inventive use of costumes to create the visual hook of characters like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Ygor, Frankenstein,  the Wolf Man, and the Mummy.

When Universal merged with International after WWII, Pierce fell on ill fortune, and, after several decades working on television and for low-budget big-screen productions, he died in 1968, little-remembered outside of the people who had the good fortune to work with him.  Still, anyone who played such an integral part in defining one of Hollywood's most famous and fertile periods wasn't going to stay forgotten for long.  A DVD documentary about him was recently released focusing on his horror work; the motion picture industry's Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Union has named their lifetime acheivement award for him; and his hands, which crafted so many terrifyingly familiar faces, are featured on an American postage stamp, transforming Boris Karloff into Frankenstein's monster.

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Ben Chapman has died, at the age of 79. The name probably means nothing to you, unless you were a member of his family or keep all your back issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland carefully sealed in protective Mylar bags. But for some of us, it's like hearing that the Blob died. Chapman played the title role in The Creature from the Black Lagoon back in 1954; more accurately, he played half the role, the half that took place above water. (The rest of the part was played, or rather swum, by Ricou Browning, who would later direct the underwater action sequences in the James Bond movie Thunderball and other aquatic potboilers.) The movie, which was directed by Jack Arnold (The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Mouse That Roared) and originally issued in 3-D, dealt with a team of scientists who are exploring what is supposed to be the Amazon and who encounter the titular creature, who mistakenly thinks that the heroine, played by Julia Adams, has been lured to his lagoon after seeing his picture at Match.com. It is sometimes called a classic, which is stretching things, but there's no question that a generation that was beginning to discover the classic Universal horror movie monsters on television and that was eager to have ghouls that it could call it own really took the frog-faced boy to their bosom. With his rubber-eggplant head and fixed expression, which gave it a passing resemblance to Lon Chaney, Sr.'s Phantom of the Opera, but with gills, he was an instant camp icon, one of the most endearingly pitiful monsters of his day.

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