2 Issue One, Two Thousand and Twenty-Four of Dentistry is adjacent to the USC School of Dramatic Arts. The Last Picture Show (1971), Star Wars (1977), Indiana Jones (1981), and many more movies stand upon USC’s shoulders. In Marathon Man (1976) Dustin Hoffman received felonious Nazi dental treatment from Laurence Oliver in USC’s Rutherford Hall after dental students were displaced for a day or two. (Figure 2). On a happier note, Shirley Temple never smiled with awkward mixed dentition in the 1930s and 1940s as she was growing up in Hollywood movies secondary to Dr. Charles Pinkus’ innovative removable USC prostheses. (Figures 3 and 4). My own mother was not only my office manager for over 20 years, but was an accomplished actress before I was born. After high school productions, she enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse College for Theater Arts (“The Star Factory”)3 for advanced studies. (Figure 5). Pasadena Playhouse was where many Hollywood actors were trained, and mom knew a number of them either as fellow students or instructors. I never saw mom act but do remember she received Christmas cards from Hollywood types, and she was regularly asked to be in various live productions when I was in elementary school. (Figure 6). Mom could certainly sing and dance well. She volunteered to successfully coordinate our Walter F. Dexter Jr. High School dance class, earning the eighth graders’ high praise as “such a cool mom.” It took me years to realize what an accomplished and talented communicator she really was. When we were little, occasionally mom would take us to a special event in Hollywood, like the pre-release gala for The Great Race (1965). In 1963, we saw the play Guys and Dolls at FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Continues Figure 3. Shirley Temple Before and After Dr. Pinkus’ Hollywood Veneers. Melodyland, across Harbor Boulevard from Disneyland. I noticed that Bat Masterson was “really” Wyatt Earp, from the popular television series at that time. Mom asked if I wanted to meet him, and the next thing I knew, I was shaking hands with Hugh O’Brien backstage. Dad, a hydraulic engineer, knew some in the same crowd. I recall he and I had dinner with Joel McCrea one evening after dad spotted him in a restaurant in Bridgeport, California. Joel McCrea portrayed dentist William Taggert Green Morton for the 1944 historical drama The Great Moment, Hollywood’s erroneous celebration of the “100th anniversary of Morton’s use of ether as an anesthetic.” In actuality, 1944 was the 100th anniversary of the discovery of anesthesia by Horace Wells whose preferred agent was N2O. 4 Wells of course was acknowledged as the first to Figure 4. Shirley Temple never displayed mixed dentition on screen.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTY1NDIzOQ==