Tag Archives: costume

In the early 1940s, LIFE magazine reported that a woman named Mrs. Mark Bullis of Washington, D.C., had adopted a squirrel – later dubbed Tommy Tucker – after “his mother died and left him in a tree” in the Bullis’ back yard:

“Mrs. Bullis’ main interest in Tommy,” LIFE continued, “is in dressing him up in 30 specially made costumes. Tommy has a coat and hat for going to market, a silk pleated dress for company, a Red Cross uniform for visiting the hospital.”
And so it begins … a series of at-once touching and creepy photographs by LIFE’s Nina Leen, chronicling the quiet adventures and sartorial splendor of Tommy Tucker the squirrel. “Tommy never seems to complain,” LIFE concluded, “although sometimes he bites Mrs. Bullis. Mrs. Bullis never complains about being bitten.” In truth, who would listen to her, anyway, if she did?

Yes Tommy does look stuffed, doesn’t he?

retronaut

(Hat tip: Ronan Lyons)


Back in pre-CGI 1979, the Alien xenomorph (in the few scenes where its entire figure appeared in shot) was played by 6’10” Nigerian actor Bolaji Badejo.

Here he is, during production in a corridor of the Nostromo, practising creepy xeno-moves (agreed during a meeting with HR Giger) wearing a mocked-up alien head.

The actual articulating special effects helmet, as Badejo explained to Cinefantastique magazine in 1979, was the only downside of playing the part:

[The special-effects helmet] was all manual, remote controlled […] There’s still a space in it for my head. I had it on just to make sure nothing goes wrong with the posture of the head or how tall it is in comparison to the other sequences. They must have had about 2000 tubes of K-Y Jelly […] just to get the effect of that slime coming out of his mouth. A lot of it was spread around on the face. I could barely see what was going on around me, except when I was in a stationary position, while they were filming. Then there were a few holes I could look through.

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