Herman Buchman

Herman Buchman, makeup artist, author, educator, lecturer and World War II veteran, was born May 20, 1920. "Bucky," as he was nicknamed, attended school in New York City and completed a course in beauty culture at Paul's Hairdressing Academy of New York in December 1939. He received a B. S. degree from Empire State College of the State University of New York (SUNY) in 1975 and was awarded a Ph. D. from the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities in Ohio in 1977. Originally aspiring to become a painter, he was drawn to the art of makeup as a means of rising out of the poverty of the Great Depression. In 1941, he moved to California to try to break into the film industry. He was unsuccessful and returned to New York. He was drafted and served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the 294th Combat Engineer Battalion, as part of the D-Day invasion. After the war, he came back to New York and became a charter member of Local 798-Makeup and Hair Stylists-of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). He later served in various capacities for Local 798.

Herman Buchman was makeup director on numerous Broadway productions, such as The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, for which he transformed the African-American actor Canada Lee into a white character. Other Broadway productions include Finian's Rainbow, Jenny Kissed Me, The Bird Cage, Crime and Punishment, Silk Stockings, and Galileo. His film credits include The Joe Louis Story, Patterns, Twelve A…