Teeth and Glory

By Dr Bertrand R. Stuart DDS
LET us rise from our recumbent position on the dentist’s countered recliner for a moment and look at teeth, not in the direct illumination of the dental examining light, but in the warm glow of contemporary society’s preoccupation with appearance, self-improvement, and self-deception. Here, beyond the clinical surroundings, dentition has become full circle. Focus has returned to glorification of the tooth. Their totemic power suggests vigor and vitality has been restored. Here there are not signs of a crumbling infrastructure, of moral and social decay, but again symbols of power and glamour, and mouth itself, the ultimate consumer accessory.
As a body part, the mouth is one of the progenitors of the self-improvement movement. The public was spending vast sums on crowns (in lay terms, “caps”) and braces before anyone ever heard of abdominal flexors, health clubs, or liposuction.
The modern era of tooth veneration was born of post-war prosperity and optimism. The free world had much to smile about, and everyone wanted a smile as bright, straight, and uniform as a row of identical suburban homes. As swords were beaten into dental drills, dentists became agents of assimilation. Even as the fight against tooth decay escalated, waged by a public energized by toothpaste commercials and sublimated Cold War fears, dentistry devoted more attention to cosmetic concerns.
But an ambivalence was at work, one whose antecedents we have seen in antiquity. Even with pain banished, the patient’s relationship with the dentist remained unsettled, a confused blend of gratitude and antipathy. Let us examine the rich historical residue of these conflicting emotions.
Hollywood can claim title as the uncrowned capital of cosmetic dentistry, thanks to the demands of the film industry. Stars required perfect teeth and dentists were essential for realizing the illusion Hollywood strove to create. Even the child star Shirley Temple had her teeth capped to enhance her photogenicity. Years later she described how she lost two of her front caps after sneezing, shutting down production on a film until the caps could be replaced.
Perhaps the film community resented this dental dependency. How else to explain the legacy of unsightly film that Hollywood left on dental work, or its habit of denigrating dentist onscreen? Have you seen the scary movie called “The Dentist?”
Film directors could make a little claim for originality in this department. Visual artists had turned their attention on dental practice centuries before Hollywood’s heyday, often portraying its practitioners in a less flattering light. When art turned its attention to dentistry, typically it was a dentist, not the artist, who suffered. Today these paintings serve as historical records documenting how proto-dentists conducted their trade. We can only hope future historians don’t empty Hollywood films, or the work of early photographers, in the same manner.
As the art and science of photography developed in the mid-nineteenth century, the lens of the new invention was turned on the dental parlour. Staged comic scenes were especially popular, portraying dentists in the most sadistic and incompetent light. They were pictured, for example, using heavy tools and brutal methods to perform dental procedures on terrorized patients. Others were shown employing bizarre gadgets in scenes satirizing the day’s obsession with electrical therapy devices recommended for toothaches and other maladies. The photos were often created in stereo views made for enjoyment as home entertainment, much like today’s entertainment.
Dentists were also the frequent butt of vaudeville comedy. In the early days of moving pictures, these comic routines were often recreated for film. The popularity of films doomed vaudeville and also brought down the curtain on the live street performances and travelling dental and medicine shows of the late nineteenth century. But the new medium proved more than capable of taking up where vaudeville comedians left off.
The earliest film in which dentistry played at least a supporting role was 1902’s At Last! That Awful Tooth, directed by George Albert Smith. Apparently the film was little more than a deadpan examination of the title subject, prefiguring the directorial style that would earn Andy Warhol acclaim with films such as Empire State and Sleep over half a century later.
Early screen goddess Mary Pickford appeared in The Fair Dentist in 1911. A still from the film, showing the eighteen year old star extracting a tooth, is all that remains of the production, and this scene may have actually been lifted from a forgotten Pickford flick of the era. A decade later, Pickford extracted her own tooth in Little Lord Fauntleboy (1921), using the old tooth tied-to-the-door-knob routine.
Meanwhile, respectable dentists sought to use the new medium to elevate their profession. By 1913, the Mouth Hygiene Association had produced an eighteen minute silent film, Toothache. Directed by Dr. W.G. Eversole, the one-reel movie was produced in Indianapolis by the Motionscope Company on a budget of about $500 and distributed to dentist and dental organizations in twenty states and some nine foreign countries. Your Mouth: A Standardized Educational Motion Picture of the Care and Use of the Human Mouth was released nationally in 1922. The one-reeler was created with the input of over 100 specialists by dentist-director Edwin. N. Kent.