Chinface

A chinface, sometimes referred to as a chinikin, chinhead, chinman, or chinmonster is a performance, usually of a comical nature, involving someone's chin. By drawing or attaching eyes, it gives the impression of a distorted face when viewed upside down.

Origins

Physicist Robert W. Wood claimed that he invented this illusion (which he did not name) while a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1891–92:Lying on the floor one evening and watching the inverted face of one of the graduate students who was talking while standing up, I was intrigued by the ludicrous expressions of the talking mouth when viewed upside down. In my imagination I pictured eyes and nose on the chin to complete a small face engaged in animated conversation. It was screamingly funny, and I at once got out my water colors and painted the eyes and nose in the proper position with respect to the mouth, laid a mirror flat on a table, seated myself before it, and covered the upper part of my face with a black veil, transparent enough to see through. By holding a mirror in my hand well out in front of me, I could see the reflected image of the little face right side up in the large mirror, and I recited Jabberwocky with many grimaces to observe the effect. It was a great success, and had been exhibited on many occasions to small but enthusiastic audiences seated in front of the mirror.Later Wood came up with a way to project the image onto a cloth dummy. He said that [Florence] Ziegfeld talked to him about using it (presumably for his Follies).

In the early 1950s ventriloquist Paul Winchell created a chin face character named Oswald. [1]

Popular culture

In 1964, Bob Denver performed a chin face in the beach party film, For Those Who Think Young.