FACE LIFTING OPERATION

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3303, 30 May 1931, Page 6

FACE LIFTING OPERATION

Women anxious to regain their lost youth crowded by hundreds into a Pennsylvania hotel recently to watch a face-lifting operation. The patient was Mrs Martha Petelle, a veteran film actress, who has been promised a return to her former " mother " roles if a few wrinkles are removed (says the correspondent of the Daily Mail at New York). For the moment one side of Mrs Petelle's face is youthful, and the other is old, for only half the operation could be performed at a single sitting. Dr J. Howard Crum, the plastic surgeon, performed the operation. He made two incisions above the ear and neck, pulled the skin straight, and smoothed away the signs of age. An audience of 1500 watched the operation, which Dr Crum had intended to perform behind a screen, until the insistent demand of those present changed his plans and enabled them to watch the first facial surgery ever performed, it is said, in public. Mrs Petelle, under a local anaesthetic, talked during the operation with her daughter, while Dr Crum chatted with the audience. An orchestra played jazz tunes, film cameras took records—and five women fainted.