Creature from the Black Lagoon
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:38:01
a movie that's notorious,
A, for not being very good,

:38:03
and B, for having been shot on location
in Utah near an atomic test site.

:38:07
A frighteningly high number of the cast
and crew were later stricken by cancer.

:38:11
Welbourne's no longer with us.
Maybe that had something to do with it.

:38:14
But he'd be over 100 years old today, and
maybe that's something to do with it, too.

:38:27
Carlson developing the photograph here
makes me think of the Figueroa story,

:38:31
Figueroa saying that he had once seen
a photo of the real Amazon monster,

:38:35
and that he could get a print of it
if Orson Welles didn't believe him.

:38:39
Ben Chapman will be appearing
as the creature in a minute or so.

:38:42
Ben Chapman is a Tahitian,
born in Oakland, California,

:38:45
while his parents were
on a trip to the United States.

:38:48
He was raised in Tahiti,
relocated to the US in 1940,

:38:51
and went to school
in the Bay Area of San Francisco.

:38:54
He was a Tahitian dancer in clubs
before he landed his first movie job,

:38:57
in an MGM musical with a Tahitian
setting called Pagan Love Song.

:39:01
He was a dancer in it, but he
got along so well with the director

:39:04
that he also got an additional little
part as Rita Moreno's boyfriend.

:39:08
He had other small parts before the
Korean War sidetracked his career.

:39:12
Upon his return from Korea, he was
hired as a stock player at Universal.

:39:16
Creature was his best movie role,
:39:18
even if all you ever see
is the inside of his mouth,

:39:21
but he kept plugging away for years,
acting on TV and Jungle Jim movies.

:39:25
Eventually, he moved to Hawaii
and got a job with a realty company,

:39:28
but his business card
had artwork of the creature on it.

:39:39
Chapman plays the gill-man
in the scenes shot at Universal.

:39:42
He says Arnold insisted he walk like this.
:39:44
The creature glides in water, so Arnold
wanted him to glide on land, to shuffle.

:39:49
In fact, they sometimes put lead,
maybe as much as 10lb of it,

:39:52
in his creature boots, a reminder
not to lift his feet when he walked.

:39:57
I had a strange talk with Henry Escalante,
the actor who just got attacked.


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