Don Post masks were ubiquitous during the Monster Craze of the 1960's, but their popularity never really waned as they were one of the most coveted of monster collectibles. Sold widely, and especially ever-present in the back pages of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and other monster magazines, they were more expensive than a lot of Monster Kids could afford, but that didn't stop them from being wildly popular, and later even becoming legendary.
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| Don Post with his beloved monster masks. |
Founded in 1938, Don Post Studios was in business until September, 2012. That's over 70 years, folks!
By 1965, DPS was riding high after acquiring the licensing from Universal Studios to produce masks of their classic monsters. Co-owner, Verne Langdon took one of each of the masks and re-did the color and hair to make them more "photogenic". He had J. Barry Herron take a shot of each one (Herron ended up in a career as cinematographer and Director of Cinematography) and had 11" x 17" color posters printed up.
When Jim Matthews, publisher of MODERN MONSTERS visited DPS, he noticed the posters hanging up and asked if he could sell them in his magazine. Langdon had another idea -- he wanted to make a calendar out of the images. The trouble was, there were only 10 masks!
The solution was somewhat easy: the gorilla head from an ape costume based on the great makeup impersonator, Charlie Gemora and sold by DPS was used for one of the months. Langdon visited Universal and they allowed him to cast the original mold of the Metaluna Mutant from THIS ISLAND EARTH and he turned that into the 12th calendar mask.
Jim Matthews printed the 1966 calendars with his own money through his company, Prestige Publications, and sold them for a buck apiece in MODERN MONSTERS. Their were two versions of the cover; one was of the Frankenstein Monster and the other was The Wolf Man.
After the end of 1966, retailers go the idea of cutting off the calendar tabs and selling the two-sided photo pages as "art prints", which is how I got mine.
Now, here they are, from my personal collection, in the order of the month that they appeared on the calendar.