Ed Cubberly had never heard of Anthony Hopkins when he got a call from Kathleen Gerlach, the assistant costume designer on a film he knew nothing about. The year was 1989 and it would be two years before the film version of ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ would become a critical and commercial sensation.
Cubberly, then a full-time nurse living in Bayonne, New Jersey, had a side business making masks for NHL goalies from 1988 to 2000. Mike Richter, Frank Pietrangelo and Mark Fitzpatrick were among the players wearing his products.
So how did he become involved in helping create one of the greatest cinematic villains of all time?
At some point in the late 1980s, Cubberly left a calling card with Gerry Cosby & Co. Sporting Goods in Manhattan. Not long after, members of the “The Silence of the Lambs” props department went to the store in search of a mask. They walked away with Cubberly’s contact information.
Gerlach contacted Cubberly about making a mask – not for hockey, but for what would become a classic scene in the film. And so began Cubberly’s only foray into film and his connection with Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, which the American Film Institute considers the number 1 movie villain of all time.
“My 15 minutes of fame,” Cubberly says now. “I think it went well.”
Midway through “Silence of the Lambs,” Lecter speaks to a senator while strapped to a stretcher. He’s a serial killer infamous for eating his victims, but he’s also a brilliant psychiatrist with information that could help catch another serial killer, Buffalo Bill. While speaking to the senator, whose daughter has been kidnapped by Buffalo Bill, he wears a straitjacket and a fiberglass mask that covers his nose and the lower half of his face.
There is an opening above its mouth, covered by three metal bars – a measure against a possible cannibalistic outburst.
That was Cubberly’s final product: the most famous mask he ever made, with all due respect to the Statue of Liberty mask worn by New York Rangers goaltender Mike Richter in the 1994 Stanley Cup Final.
“It looked kind of devious and scary,” says Cubberly, now 67. “It fit the scene perfectly.”
When he enlisted Cubberly’s help, Gerlach gave him a description of the scene. Cubberly came up with the concept in just a few minutes, using a Sharpie to draw the design on a photo of one of his old masks. He interpreted Gerlach’s instructions as instructions to give Lecter a muzzle, which led to the mouth covering. He also added a few holes over the nostrils.
Cubberly was in contact with Gerlach and future Academy Award-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood throughout the process. At one point they asked what he thought about the color of the mask. Cubberly suggested keeping the greenish-brown hue of the fiberglass. It would look like something that could have been made in prison, he told them. Director Jonathan Demme thought it was a great idea, Cubberly recalls.
“I was just trying to get out of painting,” he says, chuckling.
Cubberly never met Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his performance. The film’s crew sent him a plaster mold of the actor’s face, which he still has. Cubberly sculpted clay over the mold and then built the fiberglass mask over the clay. The process took only a few days.
The costume department had Hopkins try out different types of masks before filming. One looked like a beekeeper’s mask. Others were more cage-like. Cubberly’s design proved to be the most effective.
“It looked nothing like the other masks,” he says.
The scene is also unique – and tense. Dramatic string music plays as Lecter is wheeled forward, and Hopkins makes piercing eye contact with the senator as he plays the entire conversation with her.
Cubberly doesn’t watch many movies, but he and his wife went to see “The Silence of the Lambs” when it came out in theaters. He wasn’t sure when his mask would appear. As soon as that happened, he jumped from his seat and let out a cheer.
The other customers hissed for him to sit down.
“I made that mask for the movie!” he told them.
No one in the theater believed him. Why would they think the mask came from New Jersey?
Cubberly, who now lives in Frenchtown, New Jersey, received $400 in payment for the mask. He also retains the copyright to the design. That has earned him some extra money over the years. He has signed contracts with Halloween costume companies allowing them to reproduce the mask.
Billy Crystal wore the original while hosting the Oscars in 1992 and joked that he looked like the goalie for the Screen Actors Guild hockey team.
Cubberly has not seen the original in person since he shipped it from New Jersey to Pittsburgh, where most of the film was shot.
“It’s a question I get regularly,” he says. “I have no idea where it is.”
However, he does have a gift from the man who wore it. After making the mask, he asked the film crew if he could get something signed by Hopkins. They granted the request and sent him a photo of Hopkins wearing the mask. He leaves the photo framed and hanging on the wall.
“To Eddie,” Hopkins scribbled at the bottom of the photo, “all good wishes – and be very careful on dark nights, Eddie, for I will wait and watch.”
Hopkins signed the photo twice: once with his own name and once with the name of the character who helped give Cubberly his iconic look: Dr. Lecter.
(Top photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)