The ghastly prosthetics that transformed Danny Devito into The Penguin for Batman Returns came from the mind of legendary makeup effects artist Stan Winston.
The idea was to create a character straight out of Gothic horror to suit director Tim Burton’s Gothic visual style.
Winston might be the big name behind The Penguin’s design, but other artists made critical contributions to the design. The final look the artists created turned one of Batman’s more comedic villains into someone truly memorable and horrific.
Here’s how they did it.
Designing the Penguin
Key SWS concept artist, Mark “Crash” McCreery, drew the initial concept design of The Penguin. He exaggerated De Vito’s nose, altered his neck and hairline, and added a monocle to complete the transformation.
From there, John Rosengrant and Shane Mahan, the co-founders of Legacy Effects, experimented with numerous nose shapes which were applied to a lifecast made of DeVito.
Sculpting Penguin’s Looks
Winston took Rosengrant and Mahan’s designs and sculpted Penguin in clay. He admits that Penguin’s pointy nose was inspired by crow characters he created for The Whiz. These characters used whole forehead and brow prosthetics. Similar prosthetics would be used for DeVito’s make-up. In makeup, each prosthetic is known as an “appliance.”
The building of the final makeup was overseen by Rosengrant and Mahan.
A test was conducted to see if DeVito could be expressive through the prosthetics. When that was successful, Shane Mahan took the Penguin facial features and refined them into DeVito’s lifecast with more emphasis on DeVito’s facial structure.
“You study the pore structure and character of his own face and transfer it as much as possible in this new character,” said Mahan. “So that a lot of Danny is being projected forward It’s almost like taking his face and distorting it naturally out..”
“The appliances that were designed for Danny as Oswald Cobblepot were pretty simple actually,” added Key Make-up artist, Ve Neill. “It was a very thin brow piece and a nose connected to it. I think it had an upper lip as well so that he could have a lot of expression because we didn’t want to lose the expression in his eyes because that’s very important for a character.”
Applying the Makeup
Ve Neill applied the makeup as she had on another of Tim Burton’s films, Edward Scissorhands. But even with the help of a professional, the application is not always comfortable for the actor.
“Ve Neill would stand next to me with a clear beaker of liquid that had to be cold because it was glue. It couldn’t be warmed and I knew that. And she would stand there with her brush just waiting. And I would have tea. And then there would be this moment when I put the tea down and she would start. And that first cold brush of glue all around my nose.”
The eyebrows were glued down. Then Neill would make sure the nose was well situated. “If it wasn’t in exactly the right place, his mouth would be off; or it wouldn’t cover his mouth totally; or something would be crooked; or the eyebrows would be crooked; or something,” she said.
The edge of the appliance had to be blended into the actor’s skin to look seamless. It can be difficult because an appliance is opaque and skin is translucent. So a makeup artist has to paint the translucency into the appliance.
False Teeth, and Shaved Heads
DeVito was fitted with upper and lower false teeth. Neill mixed up a concoction of mouthwash, and red and green food coloring “which kind of comes up like a really yucky greeny-black color. We kind of decided that it was some sort of bile.”
In addition, DeVito’s head was shaved, and a hairpiece was added by hair supervisor, Yolanda Toussieng. His hairline ended up being much further back. To the hair was added grease which makes it spindly and greasy.
DeVito also wore big, black gloves most of the time. When The Penguin’s flippers were exposed, DeVito wore specially-designed flesh-colored latex appliances.
“Danny wore these appliances on his hands which was actually kind of a glove without a thumb…,” said Neill. “They had little finger nails on ’em and he had his thumb so he could hold onto things. And they were foam latex so they were very pliable.”
The physical transformation helped transform DeVito into character even when he was on set. “I was not talking to Danny DeVito [between takes]. The Penguin was there and he was scary,” said Stan Winston.
“No one would talk to Danny on the set because he scared everybody,” added Tim Burton. “I don’t know if that was his usual way of working, but there was a point where he just clicked into it and was completely this character who was totally antisocial, who had been out of the loop a little too long. Danny was 100 percent into the transformation. With the makeup and all, it was a complete creation.”