Facts About 'Creature From the Black Lagoon'

Video Transcript

"The Gillman, otherwise known as "The Creature from the Black Lagoon". Now, in the late forties, Orson Welles was actually responsible for this film. It happened one night when he invited William Alon, one of the members of his company of players to join him for dinner with the Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figarola. At that dinner, Figarola regaled them with tales of South America and a legendary beast that was half man and half creature. Years later in nineteen fifty-six when Alon with was Universal, he remembered that story and created the very first "Creature from the Black Lagoon". And I should point out that we had two actors playing the creature. One, Rico Browning, did the underwater scenes because he was a superb swimmer. The other, Ben Chapman did the surface, or on land scenes. And the aquatic scenes were basically shot down at Florida but the surface scenes were shot right at Universal. Should point out we had Richard Carlson and Richard Denning as the male stars, and the leading lady was Julia Adams. Shortly after that movie she changed her name from Julia to Julie. I don't know if that's much of a change. She was originally born Betty Adams. But a superb film. And there were two sequels, "Revenge of the Creature", and "The Creature Walks Among Us" in which he was surgically altered so he could no longer go into the water. In the end he did go into the water, and drowned, and there were no further sequels unfortunately. By the way this is called a Soaky. It used to be filled with liquid soap. I understand on Ebay now it might be worth a hundred dollars. But I can't stand to part with it."