Manteca Hall of Fame inductee Glen Eisner is once again in the running for an Emmy Award. “The American Horror Story: Hotel,” for which the Manteca High graduate worked as a makeup artist and prosthetic designer, has been nominated for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup for a Series, Limited Series, Movie or Special 2016 Emmy award. Hotel is the fifth season of the FX horror anthology television series which premiered on Oct. 7, 2015 and concluded on Jan. 13, 2016.
American television host, comedian and writer Jimmy Kimmel will return as host of the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards when the winners will be announced. The program will be aired live coast-to-coast on Sunday, Sept. 18, on ABC starting at 4 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time and will be held at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
Emmy winners are chosen by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Eisner is part of the nominated artist crew for “The American Horror Story: Hotel” by FX Networks, 20th Century Fox TV, FX Productions. They include his fellow makeup artist and prosthetic designer James MacKinnon, department head and assistant department makeup artist Eryn Krueger Mekash and Mike Mekash, respectively; and, special makeup artists Bradley A. Palmer and Bard Mixon.
Eisner, the son of the late Byron Eisner and his wife Nila of Manteca, is no stranger to the prestigious primetime Emmy awards. Since the 1990s, his work has been recognized in several nominations and wins. Among them, “The Monkey King,” 2014 special makeup effects: sculptor; “Star Trek Into Darknes (makeup sculptor — uncredited); “Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (creature effects sculptor); “Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave” and “Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (both in 2005 as sculptor for Optic Nerve Studios, Inc.), “The Legend of Zorro” (as makeup sculptor), “Starship Troopers” 1997 (sculptor for Kevin Yagher Productions, Inc.), and “The Nutty Professor 1996 (special makeup efforts artist).
Nila Eisner said her son has been nominated for an Emmy Award so many times that she “can’t keep up” with the actual number. Still, she said of this latest milestone achieved by her son, “I’m all puffed up.”
She recalled that the Emmy winner and nominee manifested his artistic talents even before he was old enough to go to school. She remembered him using the back of discarded forms that her late husband brought home from work and would draw on the backs of them. He used so many of those papers that it would have been a financial dent for the family if they had bought the papers, Nila Eisner said with a laugh. Her late husband worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an executive officer for the State of California.
Glen is the younger of the Eisners’ two sons. Older son, the late Eric Eisner, was also an artist and Manteca Hall of Famer, as well as a teacher whose claim to fame was appearing in an episode of David Letterman’s Late Night Show where he performed his rare talent of playing the piano with his back to the instrument. The youngest of the Eisner siblings, Karen Kookson, is an ESL teachers’ coach and lives in Escalon.
Eric Eisner and his wife, Holly, who is also an artist and teaches art for kids, live in Whittier, a city in Los Angeles County.