Creature from the Black Lagoon
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:21:02
Adams made other sci-fi movies, like The
Underwater City, with William Lundigan,

:21:07
and Psychic Killer with Jim Hutton,
:21:09
directed by her former husband,
actor-director Ray Danton.

:21:12
She was in one of Elvis Presley's movies,
the haunted-house comedy Tickle Me.

:21:20
If you get confused when Richard Carlson
and Richard Denning go underwater,

:21:24
and can't tell which is which, notice
Carlson has two tanks on his back

:21:27
and Denning just one. They did that on
purpose so people could tell 'em apart.

:21:32
All the underwater scenes
were shot in Florida by a second unit

:21:35
that was working at the same time
Arnold was shooting at Universal.

:21:39
No actors could be there -
they were busy at Universal.

:21:42
So any time the camera is underwater,
those scenes were shot in Florida

:21:46
and none of the people you see
in those shots are the actual actors.

:21:49
They hired two college students
to double for Carlson and Denning:

:21:52
A girl named Ginger Stanley
doubled for Adams,

:21:55
and Ricou Browning, who I'll talk about
more later, played the gill-man.

:21:59
Today it's easy to overlook
what an accomplishment

:22:01
Creature's underwater
photography was in 1953.

:22:04
Keep in mind that 3-D was a new process
then with a lot of bugs to iron out,

:22:09
and here's Universal trying to figure out
a way to take a 3-D camera underwater.

:22:13
I think that's impressive enough,
but on top of that,

:22:16
it had to be a portable
motion-picture underwater camera,

:22:19
which was practically unheard-of then.
:22:21
This was 1953, when virtually every
underwater scene in any movie to date

:22:25
had been photographed by stationary
cameras or through glass tanks.

:22:29
Universal shot some test footage
with this underwater camera

:22:32
and showed it to Life magazine,
who were very impressed.

:22:35
Maybe it gave someone
at Universal the idea

:22:37
that a Life photographer, Peter Stackpole,
:22:40
be asked to take a three-week
leave of absence from work,

:22:43
go to Florida, and photograph
the underwater scenes for the movie.

:22:46
Peter Stackpole was one of the
four original photographers for Life

:22:50
and one of their top photographers, taking
lots of photos of film stars in Hollywood.

:22:54
He was also enthusiastic
about underwater photography,

:22:57
he was an expert swimmer and he had
cameras equipped for underwater filming.


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