He charged Desilu Studios just $25 for a pair of rubber ears that went on an actor named Leonard Nimoy for a then unknown television show named "Star Trek." But that is just a small part of the long life of Oscar-award winning makeup artist John Chambers.



Ain't It Cool News is reporting that Chambers died last Saturday. No further details on his age, location or cause of death were immediately available.



Chambers got his first job in entertainment in 1953 doing makeup for live television shows at NBC. By 1963, Chambers was working for Universal Studios under makeup lab department head Bud Westmore and created the prosthetic makeup for "The List of Adrian Messenger" as well as character creation for television's "The Munsters."



By the mid-1960s, Chambers left Universal to open his own makeup shop which he ran from a converted garage at his Burbank home, bringing in customers like "I, Spy," "Mission Impossible," "Night Gallery," "Lost In Space," and "The Outer Limits."



It was while Chambers was working on "I, Spy" that he received a call from Ben Nye, head of makeup at 20th Century Fox, to talk about a new movie the studio was doing called "Planet of the Apes." His work on the ground-breaking prosthetics later earned him an honorary Oscar.