Today we will take a closer look at Halloween, from the 50's and Onward. As stated in the previous part, PVC really was a turning point for Halloween in the Western World. PVC-or Polyvinyl Chloride, is really essentially a type of plastic. Now PVC was discovered in the late 19th century, however it really wasn't found as being useful until the 2oth century. There were a few PVC masks around the turn of the century, but not really that popular.
Ben Cooper would change that. Ben Cooper was born in New York around the turn of the 20th century. Though his father worked in business, Ben found himself leaning towards the arts. He would eventually find work on Broadway making costumes and props for various productions. It was during this time that he found the use of PVC, and useing presses with the warm plastic, he could stamp out would would become a Halloween staple. Matched up with a plastic smock, Ben Cooper eventually founded Ben Cooper Inc, and would end up putting affordable halloween costumes on the store racks. Earlier models were restrained to princesses and witches for girls, montsters for boys. But as time went on, so did the variety; the 50's and 60's saw television into Americas homes, and girls found themselves able to be anything from Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke to Morticia Addams of the Addams family. Boys became televison cowboys, Batman, or any number of monsters. With the feature films now booming, Horror monsters, Wizard of Oz, and any number of film characters came to the store racks. When the US space program started putting people into space, boys and girls could be astronauts.
Collegeville has a murky history at best. We know they were founded around the same time as Ben Cooper, in Collegeville Pennsylvania. They were acquired by Rubie's Costume company, paired with Imagineering costumes. They too used PVC masks. Their smocks tended to look like an actual character outfit, vs Ben Cooper which often had the name of the character splashed across it with no real sense of "realism"
Moving on into the 80's and forward, Cesar, a French costume and party supply company, started entering the mask business. However, instead of using PVC, they used a different compound of Vinyl, a more rubber-type substance. They were able to create full head masks, often with rooted hair, giving more realism. While Ben Cooper and Collegeville had the odd political figure, like Jackie and John F Kennedy (many of which had to be destroyed after Kennedy's assination in 1963)-Cesar would become prominent for its political masks, particularly US presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr and Junior, and more recently Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. First Ladies also were getting likenesses-Barbara and Laura Bush, Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, and Michelle Obama. Even other significant faces were portrayed: Condelizza Rice, Sect of State, Sarah Palin, Vice President Candidate-as well as Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher. These masks were geared to an older audience, and political masks are often a predictor of an election win at election time.
Vinyl and Latex masks require more work than their PVC siblings. Creating a head out of clay or similar material, the head is wrapped in plaster bandages/covered in plaster. The mold, when hardened, is removed as two pieces, a front and back piece. The mold hardens, then is re-attached and liquid vinyl/latex (and more currently silicone)is poured into the mold just enough to cover and thicken. When it hardens, the mask can be pulled out and painted, and haired rooted if necessary.
So, we can see just as an overview that halloween masks have changed quite dramatically in a century. In our next part, we will start a look towards Mardi Gras-and how it has risen in North America from a small celebration of Lent into a full blown party of it's own right.
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