The Lady from the Black Lagoon

This week, rather than reviewing a movie, I’d like to talk about a book. The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O’Meara is just out in hardback from Hanover Square Press. A really pleasurable work of non-fiction, the book operates on a variety of levels. First and foremost, it is the story of Millicent Patrick, a woman who, among other things, grew up on the grounds of William Randolph Hearst’s fabled California castle, was one of the first female animators at Disney and worked on Fantasia, acted in dozens of tv shows and movies, and was an accomplished artist and designer. Most notably, Patrick designed the iconic Gill Man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the last truly great monster movie from Universal Studio’s golden era of horror. The book also explores author Mallory O’Meara’s efforts to uncover Millicent’s forgotten story, tracking down leads everywhere from Disney Studios to library archives to the genealogy records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The book is also an exploration of sexism and abuse in Hollywood and how those nefarious forces have led to the professional silencing and vanishings of many women in the film industry, including Millicent Patrick. 

 

The crux of the book is that as a young, talented artist, Patrick transitioned from Disney to Universal when she got a gig as a designer in the makeup workshop of Bud Westmore, a well-connected makeup designer who was more known for his jealous credit-grabbing than for actual designs. Among other projects, Millicent got a prime spot working on designs for The Creature from the Black Lagoon and she created the look that inspires every humanoid water monster you’re ever going to see (including and especially  the creature from Oscar-winning The Shape of Water.) The studio liked her work and liked the fact that Patrick was a strikingly beautiful woman, and so they decided to send her on a publicity tour prior to the opening of the film. Millicent happily traveled all over with sketches and masks to promote the movie and had a ball doing it. But back in Hollywood, her boss Bud Westmore was boiling with jealous rage. He arranged to have her fired before she ever even made it back into town and the proceeded to claim sole credit for every design aspect of the famous creature. He essentially made it so Millicent Patrick would never work as a designer in Hollywood again, despite her obvious talent and clearly bankable success. 

 O’Meara takes on the very difficult task of finding Millicent’s story, despite much of it happening half a century ago in a time when women were rarely credited for anything and the fact that Patrick went by a variety of names over the course of her life. She also draws parallels between her experiences as a producer and screenwriter in Hollywood, a town still utterly rampant with harassment, sexism, and abuse. Her point of view in the book is clearly feminist, if by feminism you mean expecting fair and equal treatment and not taking advantage of people simply because of their gender. O’Meara’s persona in the book is smart, vulnerable, passionate, and fiery. Her personal connections to Millicent add a lot of emotional heft to the book, and when she comes to a crucial breakthrough in finding someone who was close to Patrick toward the end of the book, it makes for a moving, satisfying development.

The Lady from the Black Lagoon is exactly the kind of research writing I recommend to my students. It’s driven by intense curiosity; is grounded in honest, sometimes frustrating research; and shows readers why the topic matters in the first place. Millicent Patrick, despite the brevity of her career, made a huge impact in Hollywood and then thanks to both individual and institutional sexism, she vanished. O’Meara’s smart, readable, and important book brings her back. I, for one, am immensely glad it does.

Avengers: Endgame

I would warn you that this review contains spoilers about Avengers: Endgame, but I feel like if you haven’t seen it yet, you just don’t care. 

 

Avengers: Endgame is a massive act of fan service that bookends a decade of comic movie book nerdery the likes of which the world has never seen. Clocking in at three hours, Endgame is the longest superhero film to date and certainly the most epic in terms of cast, number of cameos, and cosmic implications of the plot. It’s a big movie with dozens of super-powered types and enough Easter eggs to blanket Central Park.

The film begins with a team of superheroes confronting Thanos, the purple faced villain who used the Infinity Gauntlet in the last film to turn half the population of the entire universe to dust. They discover that he can’t undo what he’s done and so Thor promptly lops off his head with an axe and they go home to grieve their losses.

The story then cuts to five years later, and we find the remaining Avengers still responding to threats and still reeling from the absence of those they love. Iron Man is retired, married, and lives with his wife and daughter in the woods. Captain America attends grief support groups. Black Widow runs herself ragged trying to manage all the world-saving because she doesn’t want to stop long enough to think about what she’s been through. Suddenly, Ant Man turns up with a possible answer as to how they might go back in time and alter their present.

The rest of the film is a time travel heist film structured like one of those flashback episodes tv shows used to have where all the characters say, “Hey, remember that time aliens invaded New York?” and then we get a long clip of that old episode. Our present day heroes get to revisit moments from the original Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy and others. It’s a fun but a little on-the-nose way for Marvel to celebrate its very lucrative filmography while giving shout-outs to some favorite moments and still moving Endgame’s story forward. Tony Stark gets to reconcile with his long dead father. Thor gets words of comfort and encouragement from his long dead mother. Black Widow gets to clear the red in her ledger and save her friend, Hawkeye at the same time. 

There’s a lot of tying up loose ends and providing satisfying moments for longtime fans.

In the end, the team reassembles the Infinity Stones and brings back everyone snapped out of existence just in time to confront an earlier version of Thanos and his massive, terrifying armies. The final battle sequence is perhaps the most reminiscent of what those scenes look and feel like in the comics. It’s literally a cast of thousands, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo along with editors Jeffrey Ford and Matthew Schmidt do a good job of managing the chaos into orderly narrative.

The big reveal is that Tony Stark, the superhero whose film began this long, successful chain of movies, gets the Infinity Stones at the crucial moment and uses them to destroy Thanos and his minions, but at the cost of his own life. The film ends with a long dénouement that shows the aftermath both of Iron Man’s death and Captain America’s efforts to get all the Infinity Stones back where they need to be in history. It is both touching and a little indulgent the way the film wraps up. It is a send-off to Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr, whose contracts have now expired, and a set-up for all the Marvel-based programming that will soon be available on Disney’s upcoming streaming service.

Endgame is a lot to digest. It’s clearly made for die-hard fans primarily, but it still creates enough emotional resonance and narrative clarity to make it a good movie, and not just a good comic book movie.