Bud Westmore was born Hamilton Adolph, but changed his first names to George Hamilton both in tribute to his father and after the rise of Hitler made Adolph an unpopular name in the US. After free-lancing in the 40s (including work at "Poverty Row" studio PRC on the classic noir "Detour" 1945), Westmore joined Universal. He became one of the best known of the Westmores partly because of his work creating monsters for horror films, long a staple genre of Universal's output. Westmore's credits in screen terror included "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948), "The Strange Door" (1951), "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954), "The Mole People" (1956), "Curse of the Undead" (1959), and the Universal-TV sitcom spoof, "The Munsters" (1964-66). A challenge he met with distinction was recreating silent horror star Lon Chaney's makeup for the biopic "The Man of a Thousand Faces" (1957).
The majority of Westmore's credits, though, were in other genres, and included "A Double Life" (1947), "Imitation of Life" (1959), "Father Goose" (1964), and "Airport" (1970). Late in life he also did many TV-movies such as "The Outsider" (1967), "Night Gallery" (1969), and "I Love a Mystery" (1973).