Sure Gary... the Lone Ranger obviously used clever disguises to impersonate people as you point out, but the kind of total facial transformation that was accomplished by the (admittedly improbable) concept of a high-tech "latex mask" was simply beyond the limited capacity of 19th century stage makeup to achieve.  I should make clear too that I'm not talkng about reconstructive facial surgery to make a person a double of someone else; there's obviously a number of TV episodes which used that plot device during the 1950s and 60s.

It goes without saying that we're talking about the use of this concept in realistic television dramas, even if it's a somewhat tongue-in-cheek one like The Man From U.N.C.L.EThe Wild, Wild West, although an adventure drama, is also a more quirky, western/alternate history/science-fiction concept--a 1960s version of steampunk. 

I'm thinking that the writer of that U.N.C.L.E episode probably picked up the idea from the pre-title sequence of the 1963 film From Russia With Love.
  


Last Edited By: alizarin1 May 10 10 10:45 PM. Edited 2 times.