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It never cesaes to amaze me how little people know about the film business that have never worked in it.

First off, Jack Pierce did receive press in various magazines, newspapers with his makeups, and not just horror.  I have an article that ran ran in several Sunday newspaper magazines of Jack transforming my dad into a criminal type with makeup.  The one copy I have ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1938.  I also have a photo of Jack making up Teresa Wright, when she was at Universal doing Hitchcock's SHADOW OF A DOUBT, which was run in several papers.

In most press pieces, it was the dept. head who was shown doing the makeup, whether it was Perc Westmore at Warners, Jack Dawn (& later Bill Tuttle) at MGM, Clay Campbell at Columbia, Ben Nye at Fox or Jack Pierce at Universal.  Even Bob Mark at Republic got som press with THE CATMAN OF PARIS film.  Dept. Heads ran the dept., created the look for certain main characters in films, and would often apply it in the A.M., then letting the key makeup artist go to the set & handle it the rest of the day.  He also dealt with daily production meetings, figuring out how many extra makeup & hair people they'd need on various shows, budgets, etc.

To say Pierce was a forgotten man is simply ridiculous and ill-informed.  Jack was working AFTER he left Universal.  Did he run a dept.?  No.  But he was working, as was Cecil Holland after he left MGM in the early 1930s.  Anyone who was working in the business KNEW who the hell Jack Pierce was.  True, his star did rise again (in the public view) with the release of the Universal films to TV and such, but that was (and is) to a limited audience.  The main point is that Jack was a WORKING MAKEUP ARTIST right up until his retirement after MISTER ED.

As far as Bill Warren's comment that most studio workers did not know the names of dept. heads at other studios is simply inaccurate.  This was, and still is, a relatively small business and we ALL know people, even on shows we do not work.

The Oscar category for makeup was discussed, and came near fruition in the early 1950s with the help of Wendell Corey, but politics killed it.
 
For Bill to claim that because there wasn't a makeup category for the Oscar "indicates that even to studio workers, makeup was long regarded as a relatively minor function of moviemaking" is simply ignorant of the craft & the business as a whole. 

ANYONE who spends a day -- let alone being on a set of a movie or TV show in its entirety -- soon learns how important makeup and hair is to a production.  His comment, quite honestly, is extremely shallow in knowledge or depth.

Try making a film without having the actors with their makeup.  Ever see Faye Dunaway, Angelina, Leonardo or numeorus others without makeup?