Read Online The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick eBook Mallory O'Meara
Download As PDF : The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick eBook Mallory O'Meara
The Los Angeles Times Bestseller
A Tor.com Most Anticipated Book of 2019
A PureWow “Book We Can’t Wait to Read in 2019”
A Bustle Nonfiction Book Coming Out In 2019 To Start Getting Excited About
The Lady from the Black Lagoon uncovers the life and work of Milicent Patrick—one of Disney’s first female animators and the only woman in history to create one of Hollywood’s classic movie monsters
As a teenager, Mallory O’Meara was thrilled to discover that one of her favorite movies, Creature from the Black Lagoon, featured a monster designed by a woman, Milicent Patrick. But for someone who should have been hailed as a pioneer in the genre, there was little information available. For, as O’Meara soon discovered, Patrick’s contribution had been claimed by a jealous male colleague, her career had been cut short and she soon after had disappeared from film history. No one even knew if she was still alive.
As a young woman working in the horror film industry, O’Meara set out to right the wrong, and in the process discovered the full, fascinating story of an ambitious, artistic woman ahead of her time. Patrick’s contribution to special effects proved to be just the latest chapter in a remarkable, unconventional life, from her youth growing up in the shadow of Hearst Castle, to her career as one of Disney’s first female animators. And at last, O’Meara discovered what really had happened to Patrick after The Creature’s success, and where she went.
A true-life detective story and a celebration of a forgotten feminist trailblazer, Mallory O’Meara’s The Lady from the Black Lagoon establishes Patrick in her rightful place in film history while calling out a Hollywood culture where little has changed since.
Read Online The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick eBook Mallory O'Meara
"In the 1950s, a young artist and background performer of various film roles designed what is easily the most visually arresting of the Universal horror movie monsters. Employed in the special effects shop at Universal Studios, Milicent Patrick created the Gill Man for the 1954 film, Creature from the Black Lagoon. While her creation would become one of the most recognizable and iconic movie monsters in cinema, Patrick would unfortunately become lost to history as her supervisor’s jealousy, rampant sexism in the film industry, and a total lack of proper crediting of filmmaker’s roles in 1950s, all worked together to obscure and all but eliminate her legacy.
Thankfully, film producer, author, Milicent Patrick fan, and Creature from the Black Lagoon obsessive, Mallory O’Meara has stepped in to unearth Patrick’s forgotten history and set the record straight with her wonderful The Lady from the Black Lagoon. Given the unfortunate state of obscurity Patrick fell into, O’Meara certainly had her work cut out for her. Luckily, she’s a dogged investigator and was able to piece together Patrick’s puzzling history through a whole lot of archival research, industry contacts, and interviews. Over the course of her writing, O’Meara notes the various confluences that have randomly, surprisingly, and unknowingly linked her to Patrick over the course of her life. There’s a certain sense of destiny at work in these moments that are quite charming and really make you root for O’Meara’s efforts to uncover and reveal Milicent’s buried history.
The Lady from the Black Lagoon is meticulously assembled and presents a candid and honest representation of O’Meara’s personal hero without being slavish or overly fannish. And make no mistake, O’Meara is most certainly a fan, one who even sports a tattoo on her arm of Patrick and the Creature. She is wholly devoted, though, to teaching us about Patrick’s life, warts and all. I knew hardly anything at all about Milicent Patrick going into this book, but it’s safe to say I’m certainly a fan now, too.
Patrick is a vitally important figure in film history, and not just because of what she’s created, but what she could represent for future generations of women in the arts. Patrick is the first and only woman to have ever designed an iconic movie monster. Think about that. In almost 65 years of cinema, there has not been another notable creature designed by a woman. And over those same 65 years, men and history have sought to completely eliminate Patrick’s role in designing the Creature, giving sole credit to her manager, Bud Westmore, who ran the special effects shop at which she was employed.
Throughout the course of The Lady from the Black Lagoon, O’Meara writes with firey passion at the injustices perpetrated upon Milicent Patrick. She’s angry, and rightfully so. Hell, I’m mad right now just thinking about all the various issues raised over the course of this book’s 300-plus pages. And if you have any kind of a conscious or sense of fairness, this book will justifiably tick you off, too.
While uncovering the history of Patrick’s legacy is clearly a passion project for O’Meara, The Lady’s focus is not limited solely to the special effects artist. O’Meara’s research places Patrick within the context of her time, but the author smartly compares those issues of 1950s sexism and male domination over Hollywood to the present day, within the scope of the #MeToo era. It’s sad and disgusting just how little has changed in six decades, and how fully sexist, male elitism still thrives within Tinseltown. O’Meara doesn’t bother hiding her anger and these injustices, and more power to her. She, too, has been objectified countless times, as has every other woman working in Hollywood. At one point she relates a personal story of, as a producer for Dark Dunes Productions, having cast a male actor to voice a character for one of their films. Upon meeting O’Meara and seeing her green-dyed hair, he immediately volunteers to help dye her pubic hair. Incidents like these are not rare in Hollywood, and O’Meara reports that every single woman she knows in the film industry has many, many, many stories like hers.
The toxic environment that defined the 1950s era of filmmaking is alive and well in present day, and 65 years later, O’Meara has found far too many similarities between her own experiences and those that utterly destroyed Patrick’s career. As O’Meara writes in her introduction, “It’s not just her story. It’s mine, too.†Sadly, it’s the story of every woman in Hollywood then and now, present-day, right now, right this minute. The jealous claims to fame that Bud Westmore latched on to and used to ruin Patrick’s career and her future in special effects are hardly a thing of the past. In 2017 and 2018 we saw, first-hand, women finally speaking out, publicly and openly, about the sexist state of their industry, the decades of abuse they’ve had to endure from repulsive figures like Harvey Weinstein. It’s a serious issue that demands exploration and rectification, as well a reclamation for the histories of women that were ruined solely to appease or protect powerful men.
How many other women have played vital roles behind the scenes in Hollywood, only to have their contributions covered up or credited to their male counterparts? How many women around the world have been denied representation, denied even the idea that they, too, could create horror icons or work in the special effects industry? The fact that all of the most well-known special effects artists are men “didn’t seem strange to me,†O’Meara writes. “It was status quo. … I had never seen myself reflected in the world of horror filmmaking. The possibility of it never crossed my mind.†When she began writing The Lady from the Black Lagoon in 2016, 96% of that year’s films were directed by men, only a four percent difference from the 100% of male directed films of 1954 when Creature from the Black Lagoon was released. “It’s harder for women to get into Hollywood than it is for us to get to space,†she writes, nothing that sixty women have been to space between 1983 to now, but that only one woman, Kathryn Bigelow, has ever won an Oscar for Best Director in 2010. Their roles in front of the camera are little better, with the vast majority of speaking roles going to men, with the film leads being men, with the action heroes being men, with the monsters being men, and the artists creating the monsters being men. Characters like Ellen Ripley and Buffy Summers are not the norm; they are outliers and few and far between at that. When women are able to break through the male domination of Hollywood, they are routinely questioned on how they landed any given job, with the automatic assumption being that they slept with their boss rather than worked hard and were actually talented. No, even then, the automatic default for a woman in Hollywood is to be reduced to nothing more than a sex object. It’s repulsive and infuriating.
The Lady from the Black Lagoon is a necessary read and a vital contribution to our society’s (sadly) on-going discussion on issues of representation and equality. It’s a much deserved biography of an important, and overlooked, woman and her contributions, but it’s also a hell of a lot more than just an accounting of Milicent Patrick’s history. O’Meara takes note of the historical injustices that beset Patrick and explicitly shows us how little we’ve progressed societally and with women in film, and by tackling these issues of rampant sexism in cinema, she’s raised the bar in terms of awareness and combating these issues with her outspokenness. Speaking as a man, if there are any male readers out there bemoaning all this, my only advice to you is to simply shut the hell up and listen, because you should be learning from these women and their experiences and working hard at being better.
[Note: I received an advance copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]"
Product details
|
Tags : The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick - edition by Mallory O'Meara. Download it once and read it on your device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick.,ebook,Mallory O'Meara,The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick,Hanover Square Press,10055444,115026X,20190301,707220,Animators;United States;Biography.,BIOGRAPHY AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment Performing Arts,BIOGRAPHY AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women,BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY,Biographies,Biography,Biography Autobiography/Women,Biography/Autobiography,Biography; Artist; cinema; Fantasy; feminism; Feminist; film; Girl Power; girls; Hollywood; Horror; monsters; narrative; nonfiction; pop culture; sci fi; Science Fiction; sexism; women; animator; Disney; Creature from the Black Lagoon; Gillman; empowerment,California,Costume designers;United States;Biography.,GENERAL,General Adult,Non-Fiction,PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Genres / Horror,PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Genres / Science Fiction Fantasy,Patrick, Milicent,Performing Arts/Film - Genres - Horror,Performing Arts/Film - Genres - Science Fiction Fantasy,United States,WOMEN - 20TH CENTURY HISTORY,WOMEN IN MOTION PICTURE,Women animators - United States,Women in the motion picture industry - United States - History,Women in the motion picture industry;United States;History.,biography;Artist;cinema;Fantasy;Feminism;Feminist;film;Girl Power;girls;Hollywood;Horror;monsters;narrative;nonfiction;Pop Culture;sci fi;Science Fiction;sexism;women;animator;Disney;Creature from the Black Lagoon;Gillman;empowerment,BIOGRAPHY AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment Performing Arts,BIOGRAPHY AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women,Biography Autobiography/Women,PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Genres / Horror,PERFORMING ARTS / Film / Genres / Science Fiction Fantasy,Performing Arts/Film - Genres - Horror,Performing Arts/Film - Genres - Science Fiction Fantasy
The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick eBook Mallory O'Meara Reviews :
The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick eBook Mallory O'Meara Reviews
- I work in the film industry. And, yes, I've seen first-hand the kind of discrimination against woman that Mallory O'Meara reveals in "The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick."
Women are slighted, overlooked, under valued and under compensated every day and not just in the film industry. Even today this kind of discrimination is rampant in many industries, so Mallory O'Meara does well to devote her book to this issue. The book is even more of a spotlight because O'Meara highlights the work and career of Milicent Patrick. Patrick was a wonderfully creative makeup artist, special effects designer and animator. She was the first female animator at Walt Disney Studios and the creator of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And she was totally disregarded, never received the credit due to her and has largely been forgotten by history.
My problem with the book is that the subject material is much too close to O'Meara. This causes rage and anger to infect her writing. She has every reason to feel strongly as she has been victimized in many of the same ways as the subject of her book. However, a writer needs a degree of detachment to effectively deal with a subject--especially one as fragrant as the treatment of Patrick and, yes, even O'Meara herself. This turns the book into a more of a vendetta than a exposure of a wrong that continues to be done.
Hollywood is laden with discrimination. As an older actor, I see it every day. It needs exposed, it needs refuted and it needs to be corrected. I'm just not sure that "The Lady from the Black Lagoon Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick" will accomplish that noble purpose. - In the 1950s, a young artist and background performer of various film roles designed what is easily the most visually arresting of the Universal horror movie monsters. Employed in the special effects shop at Universal Studios, Milicent Patrick created the Gill Man for the 1954 film, Creature from the Black Lagoon. While her creation would become one of the most recognizable and iconic movie monsters in cinema, Patrick would unfortunately become lost to history as her supervisor’s jealousy, rampant sexism in the film industry, and a total lack of proper crediting of filmmaker’s roles in 1950s, all worked together to obscure and all but eliminate her legacy.
Thankfully, film producer, author, Milicent Patrick fan, and Creature from the Black Lagoon obsessive, Mallory O’Meara has stepped in to unearth Patrick’s forgotten history and set the record straight with her wonderful The Lady from the Black Lagoon. Given the unfortunate state of obscurity Patrick fell into, O’Meara certainly had her work cut out for her. Luckily, she’s a dogged investigator and was able to piece together Patrick’s puzzling history through a whole lot of archival research, industry contacts, and interviews. Over the course of her writing, O’Meara notes the various confluences that have randomly, surprisingly, and unknowingly linked her to Patrick over the course of her life. There’s a certain sense of destiny at work in these moments that are quite charming and really make you root for O’Meara’s efforts to uncover and reveal Milicent’s buried history.
The Lady from the Black Lagoon is meticulously assembled and presents a candid and honest representation of O’Meara’s personal hero without being slavish or overly fannish. And make no mistake, O’Meara is most certainly a fan, one who even sports a tattoo on her arm of Patrick and the Creature. She is wholly devoted, though, to teaching us about Patrick’s life, warts and all. I knew hardly anything at all about Milicent Patrick going into this book, but it’s safe to say I’m certainly a fan now, too.
Patrick is a vitally important figure in film history, and not just because of what she’s created, but what she could represent for future generations of women in the arts. Patrick is the first and only woman to have ever designed an iconic movie monster. Think about that. In almost 65 years of cinema, there has not been another notable creature designed by a woman. And over those same 65 years, men and history have sought to completely eliminate Patrick’s role in designing the Creature, giving sole credit to her manager, Bud Westmore, who ran the special effects shop at which she was employed.
Throughout the course of The Lady from the Black Lagoon, O’Meara writes with firey passion at the injustices perpetrated upon Milicent Patrick. She’s angry, and rightfully so. Hell, I’m mad right now just thinking about all the various issues raised over the course of this book’s 300-plus pages. And if you have any kind of a conscious or sense of fairness, this book will justifiably tick you off, too.
While uncovering the history of Patrick’s legacy is clearly a passion project for O’Meara, The Lady’s focus is not limited solely to the special effects artist. O’Meara’s research places Patrick within the context of her time, but the author smartly compares those issues of 1950s sexism and male domination over Hollywood to the present day, within the scope of the #MeToo era. It’s sad and disgusting just how little has changed in six decades, and how fully sexist, male elitism still thrives within Tinseltown. O’Meara doesn’t bother hiding her anger and these injustices, and more power to her. She, too, has been objectified countless times, as has every other woman working in Hollywood. At one point she relates a personal story of, as a producer for Dark Dunes Productions, having cast a male actor to voice a character for one of their films. Upon meeting O’Meara and seeing her green-dyed hair, he immediately volunteers to help dye her pubic hair. Incidents like these are not rare in Hollywood, and O’Meara reports that every single woman she knows in the film industry has many, many, many stories like hers.
The toxic environment that defined the 1950s era of filmmaking is alive and well in present day, and 65 years later, O’Meara has found far too many similarities between her own experiences and those that utterly destroyed Patrick’s career. As O’Meara writes in her introduction, “It’s not just her story. It’s mine, too.†Sadly, it’s the story of every woman in Hollywood then and now, present-day, right now, right this minute. The jealous claims to fame that Bud Westmore latched on to and used to ruin Patrick’s career and her future in special effects are hardly a thing of the past. In 2017 and 2018 we saw, first-hand, women finally speaking out, publicly and openly, about the sexist state of their industry, the decades of abuse they’ve had to endure from repulsive figures like Harvey Weinstein. It’s a serious issue that demands exploration and rectification, as well a reclamation for the histories of women that were ruined solely to appease or protect powerful men.
How many other women have played vital roles behind the scenes in Hollywood, only to have their contributions covered up or credited to their male counterparts? How many women around the world have been denied representation, denied even the idea that they, too, could create horror icons or work in the special effects industry? The fact that all of the most well-known special effects artists are men “didn’t seem strange to me,†O’Meara writes. “It was status quo. … I had never seen myself reflected in the world of horror filmmaking. The possibility of it never crossed my mind.†When she began writing The Lady from the Black Lagoon in 2016, 96% of that year’s films were directed by men, only a four percent difference from the 100% of male directed films of 1954 when Creature from the Black Lagoon was released. “It’s harder for women to get into Hollywood than it is for us to get to space,†she writes, nothing that sixty women have been to space between 1983 to now, but that only one woman, Kathryn Bigelow, has ever won an Oscar for Best Director in 2010. Their roles in front of the camera are little better, with the vast majority of speaking roles going to men, with the film leads being men, with the action heroes being men, with the monsters being men, and the artists creating the monsters being men. Characters like Ellen Ripley and Buffy Summers are not the norm; they are outliers and few and far between at that. When women are able to break through the male domination of Hollywood, they are routinely questioned on how they landed any given job, with the automatic assumption being that they slept with their boss rather than worked hard and were actually talented. No, even then, the automatic default for a woman in Hollywood is to be reduced to nothing more than a sex object. It’s repulsive and infuriating.
The Lady from the Black Lagoon is a necessary read and a vital contribution to our society’s (sadly) on-going discussion on issues of representation and equality. It’s a much deserved biography of an important, and overlooked, woman and her contributions, but it’s also a hell of a lot more than just an accounting of Milicent Patrick’s history. O’Meara takes note of the historical injustices that beset Patrick and explicitly shows us how little we’ve progressed societally and with women in film, and by tackling these issues of rampant sexism in cinema, she’s raised the bar in terms of awareness and combating these issues with her outspokenness. Speaking as a man, if there are any male readers out there bemoaning all this, my only advice to you is to simply shut the hell up and listen, because you should be learning from these women and their experiences and working hard at being better.
[Note I received an advance copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.] - I give O'Meara a lot of credit for tackling this subject. It's clear from the details of her search that finding good, correct information about Millicent Patrick was not easy. O'Meara has collected a tremendous amount of evidence for her biography, and her portrait of Patrick is vibrant and enjoyable.
Having spent a lot of time reading academically, I was initially put off by the conversational tone and glib notes that O'Meara peppers throughout her writing. However, after considering that the target audience for the book is probably horror hobbyists, those who are far removed from the classic horror she's writing about and encounter it only as artifacts of the past - I think it may be merited. It certainly makes it easy to read. It's not a dry and highly annotated scholarly work and does not set itself out as such.
There's also a potent combination of O'Meara's own experiences with the older content. Including modern instances of discrimination, unpleasant or unprofessional behavior and harassment was a bold choice given how often such claims are minimized and dismissed by people who have a vested interest in continuing the status quo. The examples serve to make the harassment and objectification that Patrick experienced feel more fresh and relevant, so ultimately I think they do more good than harm.
Over all this was an enjoyable ride. What it lacked - and it desperately needs - is photos. I'm not sure whether they will be included in the final release of the book but I hope that they will. I had to read with my phone in hand. Thankfully Patrick has become somewhat of a cause célèbre over the last year or two, and many blogs and articles cite her work on the Creature and other projects, including photos of her at work, or the famous press tour photos of her posing with props.
