ALL SCI-FI Forum Index ALL SCI-FI
The place to “find your people”.
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    ALL SCI-FI Forum Index -> Sci-Fi Movies and Serials from 1950 to 1969
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
kolchak
Senior Crewman


Joined: 02 Sep 2018
Posts: 15
Location: Merryland

PostPosted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 8:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I really like this pic


_________________
"God is not worried about the 21st Century. He knew it was coming." T.Shawyer
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Robert (Butch) Day
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 19 Sep 2014
Posts: 1437
Location: Arlington, WA USA

PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 5:56 pm    Post subject: R.I.P., Beautiful Swimmer Reply with quote

Julie Adams, an actress best known for playing the damsel in distress in the 1954 monster movie Creature From the Black Lagoon, died Sunday at age 92, according to her official website.

Guillermo del Toro, whose 2017 Oscar winner The Shape of Water was inspired by the Universal cult classic, paid tribute to Adams online. “I mourn Julie Adams passing. It hurts in a place deep in me, where monsters swim.”

During her long career in Hollywood, Adams starred opposite Rock Hudson in 1953’s Lawless Breed, Van Helfin in 1953’s Wings of the Hawk Elvis Presley in Tickle Me, and Dennis Hopper in 1971’s The Last Movie.

Her most recent film credit was a voiceover in Roman Polanski’s 2011 drama Carnage.

The Iowa native also had a long career in television, notably playing the Cabot Cove real estate agent Eve Simpson opposite Angela Lansbury in the long-running mystery Murder, She Wrote in the 1980s and early ’90s.

She also appeared on shows like Perry Mason, Quincy and the short-lived early ’70s series The Jimmy Stewart Show as Stewart’s wife.

But she will be best remembered for her role in Creature From the Black Lagoon”, a horror movie update on The Beauty and the Beast that she was at first reluctant to do despite being under contract at Universal.

“I think the best thing about the picture is that we do feel for the creature,” she said in a 2013 interview with Horror Society. “We feel for him and his predicament.”

Del Toro and other fans were quick to way in with tributes to Adams.

_________________
Common Sense ISN'T Common
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17016
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Mon Feb 04, 2019 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________________

A fine tribute to a great lady, Butch. We're all grateful. Here's an excerpt from my post called Legendary Leading Ladies of 1950s Science Fiction!
________________________________________





JULIE ADAMS - Definitely one of the most attractive heroines in the science fiction movies of the 1950s, she was the object of many adolescent fantasies that had nothing to do with high adventure in the Amazon jungle. Publicity pictures promoting The Creature from the Black Lagoon showed Miss Adams in a swim suit, looking remarkably like those wonderful pin-ups from the late 1940's.

She also appears in "The Underwater City" in 1962.





_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bogmeister
Galactic Fleet Vice Admiral (site admin)


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 574

PostPosted: Tue Mar 26, 2019 2:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

______________

_______ Creature from the Black Lagoon (trailer)


__________


I've never been a great fan of this one, even though it's among the most popular and famous of the fifties creature features. I wasn't sure what it was since first watching it as a kid — eventually I realized that I didn't like the studio set feel of this film for the bulk of the central act.

It was supposed to take place in the Amazon somewhere, but most of the scenes just projected this 'smallness' to the locale. Besides that, I just found much of it to be dull. This may have something to do with the fact that much of it, by necessity, takes place underwater. There are a lot of underwater swimming scenes and it's all just quite slow — and these also have the feel of a Hollywood tank, not a wild river or lagoon.



The film begins, for some reason, with one of those preambles about how the Earth was formed, in the biblical sense. It doesn't really fit the plot of the film, even though the main lead (Richard Carlson) waxes poetic about how life in the Amazon remains the same as it was in ancient times, including mythical stuff about rats the size of sheep.

The plot is jump-started by the finding of a claw-like fossil. An expedition financed by Richard Denning heads out to the spot. Their short trip is juxtaposed with shots of a live claw-like arm coming out of the water, posing a sinister threat. Indeed, some creature then kills a couple of natives already at the location.

Though the members of the expedition (including Julia Adams as Carlson's girlfriend and Whit Bissell) are alarmed in finding their dead employees, they proceed further as if this happens all the time.



As already inferred, others have a much higher opinion of this effort than I do:


Quote:
Creature followed many monster movie patterns before they became clichés, including telltale warning signs (in this case tracks and bubbles), and a grotesque beast in love with a beautiful woman.

I wonder if there is a purposeful Frankenstein reference in the how the creature shambles on land with outstretched hands.

The ship functions like a sort of haunted house, with a trapped group of humans getting picked off one by one. I was reminded of Alien from the claustrophobic haunted-house atmosphere, the reptilian beast whom we often see only in dark glimpses, and the infighting among the crew.

There are many mesmerizing underwater sequences, some calm, some with action . But I also love the idea of the Black Lagoon — dark waters, mysterious, with some hidden menace lurking somewhere underneath. There is something primal in this idea of the Lurker Below.

Goldweber, David Elroy (2012-06-14). Claws & Saucers: Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy Film: A Complete Guide: 1902-1982 (Kindle Locations 15083-15095). David E. Goldweber. Kindle Edition
.

There were 2 sequels: Revenge of the Creature (55) and The Creature Walks Among Us (56).

BoG's Score: 5.5 out of 10

_________ Creature from the Black Lagoon CLIP


__________



BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus


Last edited by Bogmeister on Mon May 20, 2019 2:23 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Eadie
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 1695

PostPosted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 10:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

"I have my prom date!" (Shades of Back To The Future to the tune of The Little Mermaid's Under the Sea!)


_________________
____________
Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Eadie
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 1695

PostPosted: Sat Apr 04, 2020 7:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Colorized publicity shot of Julie Adams:


_________________
____________
Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Phantom
Solar Explorer


Joined: 06 Sep 2015
Posts: 67

PostPosted: Mon Apr 06, 2020 6:00 pm    Post subject: Creature Feature Reply with quote

I have to agree with Bog on this one. It has never been a favorite of mine. Apart from the iconic monster and Julie in that famous swimsuit, the movie never catches fire. Even the supposed killing of the monster lacks energy.

It may be that, like the universal mummy series, the Creature on land is just too slow moving. I can picture Carlson racing through the jungle at breakneck speed while the Gillman lumbers behind. Carlson stops to take a breath, turns and there is the crustacean looming over him.

The same can be said for Revenge of the Creature. By the way, did anyone ever question how a freshwater monster is able to function in the ocean? Duel gills?

The Creature Walks Among Us, no one's favorite, is the most intriguing of the three, especially in these ecologically sensitive times. Granted, there is too much soap opera padding between the characters, but the mutilation of one of nature's most amazing animals, even if to save its life, is tragic and the final scene on the beach as he stares at the water that will now kill him is a memorably haunting conclusion.

I saw movies two and three in a theater prior to catching the original, which I finally got to see during a movie night in a church basement in the late fifties.

_________________
What Is Essential Is Invisible
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
The Spike
Astral Engineer


Joined: 23 Sep 2014
Posts: 266
Location: Birmingham. Great Britain.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2020 7:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Brent Gair wrote:
For those who have a pair of red/cyan anaglyph glasses, here's a 3D pic of my Aurora Creature model.


When I was a wee boy I had one that glowed in the dark, also Frankenstein, Wolfman and Dracula.

Did you guys have them in The States? It wasn't the whole body that glowed, just the head and hands I think (long long time ago...)

_________________
The quality of mercy is not strnen.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
The Spike
Astral Engineer


Joined: 23 Sep 2014
Posts: 266
Location: Birmingham. Great Britain.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2020 8:04 pm    Post subject: Lagoon Loon! Reply with quote

We didn't come here to fight monsters, we're not equipped for it.

Out of Universal Pictures, Creature from the Black Lagoon is directed by Jack Arnold, and stars Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell. The eponymous creature was played by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning for the underwater scenes. The cinematography is by William E. Snyder and the score is composed by a trio of men, Henry Mancini, Hans J. Salter & Herman Stein. The story sees a scientific expedition at the top end of the Amazon encounter a Devonian Period amphibious creature. As the creature starts to defend its turf by attacking members of the expedition, in fighting begins to take a hold as the men argue about the best course of action to take. Should it be killed, or should it be captured for scientific research? Either way they need to act fast as the creature has taken a fancy to Kay, the sole female member of the expedition group.

One of the better creature features that surfaced in the 1950s, Creature from the Black Lagoon was one of the film's made as part of the 3D craze that filtered out of Hollywood in 53 & 54. However, unlike many of those film's that were made in the format over those two years, this one has rightly managed to break away from its gimmicky beginnings to become regarded as a genre classic. There are many reasons why it is still well regarded and taken in appreciatively by newcomers.

The story of course is nothing new, the old "beauty & the beast" theme can be traced back to the daddy himself, "King Kong". But much like Kong, Arnold's movie thrives within the endearing story by getting the audience to sympathise with the titular creature. He is after all only defending his territory, he was happy wallowing down in the depths, remaining undiscovered for many a moon. That he is fascinated by the considerable beauty of Kay Lawrence (Adams sexy and gorgeous), is no crime either. The amount of sympathy garnered for "Gill-Man" is helped enormously by the illogical actions of the humans; who in turn go diving and swimming where legend has it men get eaten! This coupled with their bickering about pro science or trophy hunting makes it easy to side with the amphibious one.

It also helps that the film is pretty brisk and only runs for 80 minutes, there's no sags or pointless filler. Too many similar film's of its ilk labour until the monster shows up and all hell then breaks loose. But under Arnold's (It Came From Outer Space/The Incredible Shrinking Man) astute direction, atmosphere and unease is built up by ominous talk and sightings of the Black Lagoon-and only initial glimpses of the creature's scaly webbed claw; accompanied by the attention grabbing theme music. And when the creature finally reveals itself it doesn't disappoint for its an impressive creation. A half-man/half-fish creature covered in scales, resplendent with gills and with cold, dark featureless eyes. It also has great characteristics with a distinctive swimming style in the water, and a lumbering Frankenstein thing going on when on the land. A definitive monster that would be merchandised for ever after.

There's also technical accomplishments away from the creature itself, notably with the memorable underwater photography by Snyder, who uses a portable camera to flow with the swimming sequences, while his shadow and light work down in the depths is memorably mood enhancing. The three tiered score is also one of the best to feature in a "B" movie schlocker, three different composers, three different emotional strands; nice. Then there's of course the definitive sequence, the sexy underwater flirting as "Gill-Man" swims below the shapely form of Kay, beguiled by her, it's love at first sight. He's not the only one beguiled, we all are, as was Steven Spileberg, who would homage the more dramatic part of the sequence in his opening for Jaws 21 years later. Whilst last but not least it should be mentioned that there are little asides to ecological issues in the piece, something Arnold was want to do. Two sequels would follow, Arnold would return for "Revenge Of The Creature" in 1955 and then the John Sherwood directed "The Creature Walks Among Us" would round off the trilogy in 1956.

It's the original that still holds up today. 8/10

_________________
The quality of mercy is not strnen.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Eadie
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 1695

PostPosted: Sat Apr 25, 2020 12:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote


_________________
____________
Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17016
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Thinking Outside the "Plot"!
________________________________

~ A Question for the Members: The problem I have with this beloved movie is the obvious fact that one lone creature from a past age simply can't exist. This movie's premise is completely illogical. Rolling Eyes

Where's The Momma and the Papa from the Black Lagoon? Confused

Where's The Extended Family From the Black Lagoon?

Is this movie actually about The Orphaned Creature from the Black Lagoon? Laughing

~ My Theory: The kindest thing I can say about this overrated 1950s sci-fi movie is that it could have been a nice set-up for a sequel which featured a large aquatic community of Black Lagoon Creatures in a huge Amazonian lake . . . and they weren't real pleased by the way their long-lost "prodigal son" was treated by mankind. Shocked

(I just tossed this out to encourage a discussion. I hope we get one.)

_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Gord Green
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 06 Oct 2014
Posts: 2940
Location: Buffalo, NY

PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 10:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The REALLY great sequel was the 2009 musical version! Yes! I said MUSICAL!



Creature From the Black Lagoon: The Musical was a live performance show formerly located at the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park in Los Angeles, California. It debuted on July 1, 2009,



The show began with a clip from The Today Show with Matt Lauer, talking about the Creature. The premise was that Universal made the film based on a real creature, and a new team of explorers were on a second expedition to investigate, the principals being Kay, Mark & David (all characters which also appeared in the original film).

Aboard the Rita, the Captain (which in this version, is an Amazonian woman - a voo-doo Shirley Bassey) leads the cast in the opening number, “Black Lagoon".



Kay vents her romantic frustrations with her fiancé in the second song, “Slay Me". The song recreates the famous "swimming sequence" from the original movie, in which Kay swims while the Creature observes her below, tantalized.



The next song is “Prime Evil", in which everyone sings about the Creature. To the dismay of the cast, the Creature climbs onto the boat and joins the song.





The Creature kidnaps Kay and takes her back to his lair, which bears a resemblance to an underwater grotto bachelor pad. This is where the Creature and Kay bond during their duet, "Strange New Hunger".



Mark and David, Kay's fellow scientists, rush in to save Kay. The Creature tells her his name....Gill! He gets shot with a tainted speargun, with results that soon become clear.



Back aboard the Rita, the scientists hear massive footsteps. It turns out the spear that pierced Gill had fallen into a supply of "human growth hormone" and the Creature, now 25 feet high, appears.



Kay sings an encore of “Strange New Hunger", rising to the level of the Gill's face on a vine. Before he can stop himself, the Creature eats her...and the Captain sums up the unpredictability of love with an encore of "Black Lagoon".

Video documentary on this magnum opus here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-aEH7y6wwo

AND you can see and hear the whole thing here!!!

part one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArP7RN7Bf0E

part two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTqOoW_pCKM




_________________
There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17016
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 11:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

What an awesome post, and what an incredible idea for a musical. I can't wait to watch it on YouTube.

And I'm so glad that Julie Adams got to pose with the creature in that last jpeg. Cool

_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Gord Green
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 06 Oct 2014
Posts: 2940
Location: Buffalo, NY

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 2:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Lady from the Black Lagoon.
by Mallory O'Meara





I watched a C-Span video of O'Meara talking about her book and was intrieged enough to get a copy from Amazon.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon has reemerged from the deep, deep waters of history.



First captured on film in 1954, the elusive Creature — and Milicent Patrick, the woman who designed him — are now the focus of a new book: The Lady from the Black Lagoon.



Ricou Browning was one of the two actors who got zipped into the creature's costume for the movie (he was the one who swam).



"At first it was a little awkward," he says. "But I got used to it and got to where I could swim in it very easily."
Browning, now 89 years old, doesn't know for sure who designed that costume. But he remembers meeting Milicent Patrick on set: once when she measured him for leotards, and once when he was in costume.



"She was painting something on my chest with a paintbrush," Browning says. "She said, 'I'm giving it a touch-up.' I said, 'Well OK, but you better let it dry, I'm going in the water.' And that was the last I saw of her."
More than 60 years later, Milicent Patrick reappears, with her Creature, as a tattoo on author Mallory O'Meara's forearm.



"He's embracing her, which I kind of love, because it looks like he's saying, 'Thank you for creating me. Thank you, mom,'" O'Meara says.

O'Meara, 28, is a horror, sci-fi and fantasy film producer. She tracked down the details of Patrick's life for her book, The Lady from the Black Lagoon.

"She's the first woman I ever saw working on a monster movie," O'Meara says. "And she just became my hero because of that."

The story she tells is of an amazing self invented talented woman.

In Hollywood, Milicent Patrick had a few forgettable bit parts. In one Abbott and Costello flick, she was a dark-haired beauty.



In the TV series Ramar of the Jungle, she played the "White Goddess" of an African tribe, welcoming outsiders in stilted English.



(Earlier, in the 1970s, Forrest J Ackerman did an eight-page article documenting Patrick's Black Lagoon creation and her work on other monster films in Famous Monsters Magazine; Ackerman knew Patrick and wished to give her proper credit.)

Patrick was also a skilled visual artist. After attending art school, she became one of the first women animators at the Walt Disney Studios. Her pastel chalk artwork was featured in the 1940 movie Fantasia.

"When you look at the 'Toccata and Fugue' sequence, it really is this abstract impressionistic suggestion of musical tones," says Mindy Johnson, an instructor at the California Institute of the Arts and an expert on the history of women animators.

Johnson says Mildred Rossi — as the artist was known at Disney — also worked on the Fantasia sequence "A Night on Bald Mountain." There's a winged creature named Chernabog perched atop the mountain.



"Walt [Disney] wanted this creature of darkness to be defeated by light," Johnson says. "As the [dawn] bell tolls, you see this blue pastel reflection of the light cross the body of Chernabog. And it's powerful. And it's actually, interestingly her first monster."

Patrick moved to Universal Studios to design special effects makeup and monsters, her most famous being the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

She became the first woman to work in a special effects makeup department and is credited with contributing to the pirate faces in Against All Flags, the makeup of Jack Palance in Sign of the Pagan, the design of the It Came From Outer Space Xenomorphs, Mr. Hyde in Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Metaluna mutant in This Island Earth, and was a mask maker for The Mole People. As a designer and artist she was responsible for some of the best, most iconic creatures of early 50's genre films.



O'Meara says at the time, Universal's publicity department sent Patrick on a promotional tour for the movie, originally billed as The Beauty Who Created the Beast.

"Her boss at the Universal monster shop, a man named Bud Westmore, said, 'No, I don't want it to be The Beauty Who [Created] the Beast — we're going to rebrand it, and it'll be the beauty who lives with the beast,'" O'Meara says.



"He said, 'OK, we'll do this tour, we'll send you all around the country, but you have to tell people I designed it. You cannot take credit for it.' Bud Westmore was so jealous of all of the attention she was getting that he fired her, and she came back to Los Angeles, and she never worked behind the scenes in Hollywood ever again."



Patrick’s design for the creature had for decades been credited to Universal makeup artist Bud Westmore, who fired her rather than have her role in its success become known.



“Milicent’s incredible life should have earned her an honored place in film history,” O’Meara fumes, and with good reason. “But few even recognize her name.” “The Lady From the Black Lagoon” sets out to right that wrong, as O’Meara goes in search of this mostly unknown, if perhaps ultimately unknowable, artist.



To back up this version of history, O'Meara found Universal Studios memos archived at the USC Cinematic Arts Library. Universal declined to comment to NPR about not acknowledging its first female monster designer, but the director of the Westmore Museum did tell us Bud Westmore supervised a woman who created the creature. And as the head of the studio's makeup department, it's his name on the movie's credits, as was the custom.

"Having played so many creatures over so many years, I can tell you that that it takes a village to make a monster," says actor Doug Jones. He played the amphibian man in the Oscar-winning 2017 film The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro's homage to The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Jones says the crews of artists rarely get accolades.

"Designers and creature creators and makeup artists are — you know, it's a tight circle of people," Jones says. "Legacies have been have been passed down from one generation to the next. And so for her name to never have come up until now is a travesty."



Born Mildred Elizabeth Fulvia di Rossi in 1915, the woman — who later became Milicent Patrick — was the middle child of three. When she was 6, her father, Camille Charles Rossi, a structural engineer, was hired to work on William Randolph Hearst’s vast California Central Coast retreat, La Cuesta Encantada, better known as Hearst Castle. Rossi soon became the project’s construction superintendent, reporting to Julia Morgan, California’s first licensed woman architect and the castle’s designer.

Like other children whose parents labored there, Mildred frequently visited this dreamland, with its 2,000-acre private zoo and constantly shifting human menagerie of celebrity guests. But her father seems to have navigated Hearst’s kingdom uneasily, fighting nonstop with Morgan, and was dismissed after a decade. In her diary, Morgan called him “unduly revengeful,” and the superintendent of Hearst’s ranch said that Rossi “seemed to glory in human misery.” He was, perhaps, the first monster in his daughter’s life.

Years later, Milicent spoke with an estate historian about growing up there in style: swimming pools, French pastry chefs, pet leopards and lions. She recalled Hearst as an enormous, frightening man who threw lavish parties with movie stars, and she said she changed her name to Milicent — the same as Hearst's wife (spelled Millicent). Over the years, she would add the last names of her various husbands.

A gifted artist, Mildred received three scholarships to Chouinard Art Institute, which served as an artist/animator incubator for nearby Walt Disney Studios. The school later became CalArts. In early 1939, she was tapped to work for Disney’s storied ink and paint department.

Staffed entirely by women, it was housed in a separate building on the Disney studio campus, where the so-called Ink and Paint Girls reproduced tens of thousands of animators’ drawings onto celluloid, a mind-bogglingly laborious process. As Patricia Zohn wrote in a 2010 Vanity Fair article, “their job was to make what the men did look good … at an average of 8 to 10 cels an hour, 100 girls could only, in theory, turn out less than one minute of screen time by the end of the day.”

At Disney, Mildred worked as a color animator (then considered a special effects technique) on “Fantasia,” contributing to four sequences, including the legendary “Night on Bald Mountain,” where she created gorgeous color pastel animation for the demonic Chernabog — “the most magical Disney character” for O’Meara and generations of monster lovers.

Mildred left Disney in the wake of the 1941 animators’ walkout, a strike that irrevocably changed the way the studio functioned. But Mildred wasn’t among the strikers.
At some point, she had embarked upon an affair with another Disney animator, Paul Fitzpatrick. His pregnant wife found out and killed herself and their unborn child. The tragedy left Mildred and Fitzpatrick free to marry, and also estranged Mildred from her family.

When, after a few years, she and Fitzpatrick divorced, she took on the name Mil Patrick. At some point she refined this to Milicent Patrick. She claimed to be Disney’s first female animator — probably not true, but close enough — and further embroidered her background by saying she was an Italian baroness.

She certainly looked the part, as one can see in a promotional film and photos from her time at Disney — strikingly beautiful, with long black hair and a regal air that not even Ink and Paint’s utilitarian smocks could diminish. She continued to create art, including illustrations for a collection of off-color jokes, but mostly seems to have worked as a model.

Then, in 1947, she met William Hawks, brother of filmmaker Howard Hawks and also a producer. She began to get uncredited bit parts as an extra — water nymph, flashy woman, tavern wench — in mostly forgettable films.



She became involved with actor Frank L. Graham, best known for voicing the lascivious Wolf in Tex Avery’s cartoon short “Red Hot Riding Hood.” A few months into their relationship, in September 1950, Graham committed suicide.

His will contained a note that read, “To Mildred, I leave nothing except the pleasure she will have knowing that now she won’t have to decide whether I am good enough for her or not.” Also, a postscript: “Gee, I wish Mildred had called me back yesterday morning.”

She married again to Syd Beaumont, who died of cancer in 1954.

In 1955, Patrick met Lee Trent, the voice actor for the first three and a half years of the Lone Ranger radio program. After a tumultuous relationship marked by canceled engagements, Patrick married Trent in a Las Vegas chapel wedding in December of 1963.

They filed for divorce in January 1969, but continued to have an on-off relationship for years.

Patrick developed Parkinson's disease in 1988 and later breast cancer. She died on February 24, 1998 at a hospice care center in Roseville, California.

By this point — nearly halfway through O’Meara’s book — readers may be thinking, “Gee, I wish we’d get to the Creature.”

This is the heart of O’Meara’s story, and it’s a good, if infuriating, one. O’Meara writes that, in 1952, while working as an extra on the Universal lot, Patrick met the head of the studio’s makeup department, Bud Westmore.

(I recently came across a 1948 publicity photo online of Patrick holding the monster’s mask from the film from the same year “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” with a handwritten note saying that she helped make the mask and also did its fine detail painting.)



Westmore oversaw makeup for that earlier film, so it’s possible that Patrick met him at that time, and that Westmore was already familiar with her work when, in 1952, she was hired as makeup designer for the B picture that became “Creature From the Black Lagoon.”

Unfortunately, none of her preliminary or finished sketches seemed to survive.

But others familiar with the movie (including Chris Mueller, who sculpted the Gill-man’s mask) state unequivocally that Patrick designed the creature, a graceful, elegant and surprisingly sexy monster whose influence extends to Guillermo del Toro’s 2017 Oscar-winning homage, “The Shape of Water.”

During previews, it became clear that Universal’s new monster flick was going to be a hit, its audience reactions fueled, no doubt, by an underwater pas de deux between the Gill-man and his female, human prey that still retains an erotic charge.

The studio decided to capitalize on Patrick’s involvement and send her on a publicity tour with the tagline, “The Beauty Who Created the Beast.”

Westmore, known to be difficult and controlling with underlings, hit the roof.

O’Meara summarizes memos from the publicity team (they can be read in Tom Weaver’s in-depth “The Creature Chronicles,” one of O’Meara’s sources) detailing their battles with the makeup chief. The upshot: Patrick was sent out with masks of several Universal monsters, including the Creature, and was renamed “The Beauty Who Lives With the Beasts.”

Even this wasn’t enough for Westmore. He struck Patrick’s name from the credits, replaced it with his own and, when she returned from her successful, nearly monthlong tour, had her fired.

At one point, O’Meara rages, “Several [people] expressed doubt that [Patrick’s] story could be more than an article, let alone fill an entire book.” The truth is, much of the book is padding, and it often reads as though it were written for a young audience, with long passages and footnotes explaining who Hearst was, what a scream queen is, and so on.

If Patrick left any diaries, journals, letters or the like, they’re not quoted from here, though O’Meara does speak with others intrigued by her history (including Mindy Johnson, whose 2017 “Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation,” delves deeply into the role of women in the studio’s early years).

But many specific details of her life as a working artist remain scarce and continue to be a frustrating mystery.
O’Meara even visits the artist’s niece, who talks to her for hours about her aunt, and gives the author access to Tupperware containers filled with Patrick’s papers and ephemera.

“The answers to almost all of my questions about Milicent were in these boxes,” O’Meara states, but she shares nothing of what she learns, except in the vaguest terms. She hesitates to reveal the deepest sources of Milicent's lifeforces.

This is one of the books' shortcomings I believe. It's almost that O'Meara hesitates to reveal too much of Milicent's negative attributes. Certainly her romantic failures and poor choices in men can't be overlooked along with the tragic results of those bad choices. Also, how much did Milicent's upbringing and early development in life and strained relationship with her father contribute to her adult life and choices?

We learn that Patrick is “a friendly and warm person,” with “a warm personality,” “well-spoken, friendly and charming.” “Socializing was easy for Milicent,” and Graham’s suicide “caused her to lean harder than ever on her friends.”

There are no interviews with friends, and no citations for quotes, including comments like “[Milicent] loved looking glamorous. It made her happy” or, “How marvelous that she refused to try to fit into the boy’s club [sic], that she was unapologetically herself,” or, later, that she was “beset by loneliness.”

Still, she makes a fascinating portrait of a complex and inscrutable woman.

O’Meara, unsurprisingly, identifies with her subject. Like Patrick and many other women, O’Meara has her own experiences of being harassed, abused and treated contemptuously by men in the film industry. Many pages are devoted to her own experiences and identification with Milicent and her life.



Still, her book could use less of the author’s own rage and occasional fangirl gushing, however well deserved, and more about its subject, a woman whose father was said to “glory in human misery,” who knew firsthand the devastating effect of suicide, and who submitted a memo totting up the damage to her wardrobe for the Universal tour (amounting to nearly $4,000 in today’s money).

“One cocktail dress—completely ruined.
One cocktail dress—beading broken and lost.
One gabardine suit—shrunk and can’t be repaired.
One lace coat—burned, torn, and shrunk—ruined beyond repair.
One afternoon dress—torn but repairable.
One pair of earrings—cut in half by pub. man and stones lost.
One velvet blouse—torn, can be repaired.”

All of which makes one wonder if Patrick was accompanied on tour not just by masks but by the monsters themselves.
“Women are the most important part of horror because, by and large, women are the ones the horror happens to,” O’Meara writes.

“Women have to endure it, fight it, survive it — in the movies and in real life. Horror films help explore these fears and imagine what it would be like to conquer them. Women need to see themselves fighting monsters. That’s part of how we figure out our stories. But we also need to see ourselves behind-the-scenes, creating and writing and directing. We need to tell our stories, too.” This book takes a deeply Femenist tone.

Patrick died in 1998, at age 82, largely forgotten except for a coterie of devoted fans.

O’Meara has seen to it that she won’t be forgotten again. Her book is a fierce and often very funny guide to the distaff side of geekdom and reproduces photos and examples of Patrick’s work, many previously unpublished.

Mildred/Milicent's story is one of a complex driven woman in a man dominated world of artistic creations.
She was both a manipulator and manipulated by that masculine world.

This book is a very personal investigation of a very enigmatic personality filterted through another very feminist point of view.

That alone would be worth the price of admission to the world of this complex, brilliant artist.
Milicent Patrick Rossi Trent went on to life as a society lady in Los Angeles, and continued to sketch portraits. She died at age 82 in 1998.

And now you know her name.


_________________
There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail
Bud Brewster
Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)


Joined: 14 Dec 2013
Posts: 17016
Location: North Carolina

PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 3:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

What an astounding post, Gord!

I've been shamefully lax in my duties here on All Sci-Fi recently, so I deeply appreciate the way members like you and several others have kept the home fires burning! Very Happy

I promise to get right back into the old site-admin saddle during the coming week while I recuperate from minor cancer surgery on my handsome face this Wednesday!

I don't expect any post-surgery problems . . . other than the fact that the doctor told me I couldn't have any beer from Monday until Saturday! Shocked

I think I might need to get a new doctor . . . Sad

_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    ALL SCI-FI Forum Index -> Sci-Fi Movies and Serials from 1950 to 1969 All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next
Page 2 of 3

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group