Unfortunately, it’s still not all that widely known that it was Milicent Patrick who designed the iconic Gill-Man for Universal’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, a contribution that was largely downplayed at the time. After all, makeup artist Bud Westmore desired to erase Patrick from the history books, often taking sole credit for designing the creature.
Finally, Milicent Patrick’s story will be told in Mallory O’Meara’s upcoming book The Lady from the Black Lagoon, previewed by Bustle this week.
The site details the upcoming book, “O’Meara, a woman who also works in Hollywood as a writer and producer for Dark Dunes Productions in Los Angeles, knows exactly how things like this happen, because she lives this reality daily. In the book, she intersperses her own experiences in Hollywood with the story of Milicent for an expansive examination of how women in cinema are undermined, uncredited, harassed, and ultimately, forgotten.”
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick will be released on March 5, 2019.
