10 Aquatic Facts About “Creature from the Black Lagoon”

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Mark Mancini and Mental_Floss present 10 Aquatic Facts About Creature from the Black Lagoon.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. THE MOVIE’S CONCEPT WAS CONCEIVED AT A CITIZEN KANE DINNER PARTY.
One night during filming of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles invited one of the movie’s actors, William Alland, over for dinner along with a cinematographer named Gabriel Figueroa. While there, Figueroa shared a story he had heard during his travels of a race of amphibious beasts—half man, half reptile—that stalked the Amazon River. More than a decade later, still intrigued by the concept, Alland dramatized it by producing Creature from the Black Lagoon.

4. A FORMER FRANKENSTEIN ACTOR TURNED DOWN THE MAIN ROLE.
When Boris Karloff retired from playing Mary Shelley’s reanimated monster, Glenn Strange took over. From 1944 to 1948, Strange terrified audiences in Universal’s House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. Years later, the studio tapped him to play their web-footed “Gillman” in Creature from the Black Lagoon, but because swimming wasn’t his forte, Strange declined the part.

9. ITS 1955 SEQUEL WAS CLINT EASTWOOD’S FIRST MOVIE.  
Pleased by the box office success of the original film, Universal rushed a sequel production.  Revenge of the Creature premiered in Denver on March 23, 1955. At one point, audiences got to see future star Clint Eastwood portraying a lab assistant. Though his appearance was uncredited, it hardly went unnoticed when the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed  Revenge of the Creature in a 1997 episode:

For Revenge of the Creature, Arnold resumed directing duties and he didn’t care for the young Eastwood’s bit, telling Alland, “I told you I don’t want to do that ******* scene!” Eventually, he relented and the footage stayed in. Eastwood never forgot the experience. As he told The Telegraph, “It was a hell of a way to start your acting career: walk on a set and you know that the director hates the scene. Therefore you know he hates you.”