From The Archives: Ben Chapman, The Original Gill-Man!

(Originally posted on October 2, 2010)

If you've never bothered to look it up, you should know that there have been several famous men down through the ages named Ben Chapman. But I'm not here to tell you about the Ben Chapman who served Oliver Cromwell and later resided at Killua Castle, anymore than I'm going to mention the Ben Chapman who played for no less than eight major league baseball teams and stole more bases than anyone else before him. No, the Ben Chapman I want to talk about did something many would consider less important, but those many are not me. The Ben Chapman I want to tell you about put on a rubber costume and originated the role of one of the most famous monsters in the history of motion pictures. He created memories and helped shape a pop culture icon. In short, he was the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I had previously talked about the role of the Gill-Man in reference to Ricou Browning. Mr. Browning was the only actor to play the creature in more than one film and he was actually in the suit for all three of them. Once more, because it is obviously harder to swim in the suit than to walk in it, many people have felt he had a harder job than the actors who played the Gill-Man on land. But far too often the efforts of Ben Chapman have been overlooked and on the last day of Creature Week we're going to give the man his due!

Mr. Chapman's film career was short. He only appeared in a total of five films, two television shows (in one of which he played the Gill-Man), and three documentaries (all of which were about the Gill-Man).

His television appearance as the Gill-Man is especially worth noting because it not only plays a huge part in Gill-Man lore but it was also one of the actor's major claims to fame. In order to help promote The Creature From The Black Lagoon Universal Studios arranged to have the Gill-Man appear on the Colgate Comedy Hour in a short skit with legendary funny man Lou Costello.

Here's the clip (though let me apologize in advance for the poor quality)

This brief cameo is the very first appearance of the Gill-Man, as it was shown prior to the film's release, and the monster was played by Ben Chapman with Ricou Browning nowhere to be seen.

Ben loved the character! During the filming of the original movie, he used to hide submerged in a small pond on the Universal Studios' lot and rise slowly out of the water as he heard various people approaching. If his contract with Universal had not run out, he probably would have played the monster in all three films. He was very proud of the role and of his part in creating it, and it was that very attitude that sparked the controversy which is the other thing he is probably most known for.

Decades after his participation in the original film. Mr. Chapman began touring the convention circuit and signing autographs. He never did it for the money, he simply enjoyed spending time with fans of the Gill-Man. However, after a time, he began to notice that pictures of the Gill-Man on land were being signed by Ricou Browning. Mr. Chapman responded indignantly to this, claiming that Mr. Browning was taking credit for the role he had created. He said that Ricou had no right to sign a photograph of the Gill-Man unless it was from a scene where he was actually in the suit. Mr. Chapman further added that he would never sign a photograph unless he knew it was of himself in the costume.

Opinions varied on this reaction. Ricou had worked constantly in show business for most of his life, while Ben had moved on to other things. Some people claimed it was jealousy on Mr. Chapman's part while others thought he was being petty. Neither opinion does Mr. Chapman justice.

If you read interviews with Ricou Browning one of the things that you'll discover is that while he is grateful for his part in shaping the Gill-Man's legacy, to him it was just a job. He never took it seriously. If someone handed him a photo and asked him to sign it, he did it because he didn't see how it mattered who was in the suit. He was known as the Gill-Man, someone wanted him to sign a picture of the Gill-Man, so he did.

But to Ben Chapman, the Gill-Man was so much more! It was the role of a lifetime! It was his contribution to film history and monster lore! He took the monster, the part, and the movie seriously from the very beginning and he never lost that spark of reverence.

I had heard Ricou Browning state in an interview that he and Ben Chapman met sometime after the initial controversy and got on pretty well. I haven't found a similar statement from Mr. Chapman, but then I haven't read every interview he ever gave and I have no reason to believe that Mr. Browning would lie, so it appears the story has a happy ending after all.

Ben Chapman loved the Gill-Man, he loved the movie he helped make, and he loved his fans. With so many iconic Hollywood figures who either hated their roles or were ruined by them, its refreshing to find a man in such a position who was so defined by joy and pride for the craft he plied even if he never became a star. In his later years, he even created a website to honor his participation in the film.

On February 21st of 2008, Mr. Chapman died in his Honolulu home. He was born in California but raised primarily in Tahiti, he served his country and was decorated in the Korean War, and he raised a family. None of these details were overlooked in his obituary but none of them were the focus of it either. They talked primarily of his participation in an old film, set in a far off land, where man was pitted against monster and a legend was born in the minds of millions. The article mainly spoke of the Gill-Man and honestly, I think Mr. Chapman would have wanted it that way.

This is the end of Creature Week. It tells of Ben Chapman, but not of his end, for as long as the Gill-Man is remembered, so will he be and in that way he will never truly die.

From The Archives: Getting To Know The Creature From The Black Lagoon

(originally published on September 20, 2010)

Unquestionably one of the best science fiction films of all time and the introduction of one of the most memorable movie monsters to boot. The Gill-Man (the Creature’s actual name) came into this world in a rather bizarre fashion.

While attending a dinner at Orson Welles’ Hollywood home in the early 1940’s, William Alland had a conversation with a Mexican cinematographer named Gabriel Figueroa. Gabriel recounted a tale that he swore was true, of a village along the Amazon river that offered virgin maidens to a half-fish/ half-man that rose from the river once a year. The story stuck with Alland, who decided to build a feature around it. He eventually developed a script called The Sea Monster which would lay dormant for nearly a decade.

Time passed and Alland (then a producer for Universal Pictures) became paired with director Jack Arnold who was having a good deal of success with movies like It Came From Outer Space.

The two decided to tackle The Sea Monster and what came out of the collaboration was one of the best movies of its kind, and the start of a whole genre of fish-man films.

Jack Arnold In His Later Years

One of the most memorable marks the movie left behind wasn’t just the Gill-Man, but the man inside the Gill-Man suit. Ricou Browning was a college student living in Florida. A friend of his managed a wetland area known as Wakulla Springs. As a favor, Ricou agreed to show a group of Hollywood scouts around the springs while they searched out locations for a movie. One of them asked Ricou if he would swim in the spring to give them an idea of how the plant and animal life looked in comparison to a human body. Ricou was happy to do it. He continued to show them around after than and bid them farewell soon after.

A few weeks later, he received a call from Jack Arnold. They were looking for a local diver to wear the Gill-Man suit for the swimming scenes they intended to shoot at Wakulla Springs and he wanted to know if Ricou would like the job. Ricou accepted and the rest is history. He became interested in film, and began working behind the lens, specializing in shooting and later directing under water sequences.
He was involved in films and numerous television shows, and he even created Flipper!

That’s right, they call him Flipper but they’d probably be more accurate in calling him Son of the Creature because without the Gill-Man, it’s unlikely that he would ever have been born.

(I think I should note) that Ricou wasn't the only actor to play the creature. He preformed the swimming scene out in Florida while a second actor played the Gill-Man's land scene in Los Angeles. (But who is this other creature actor? We'll get into that as time goes on.)

The plot of the film is as follows, a group of scientists traveling the Amazon river in a search for fossils come across the Gill-Man, an evolutionary missing link between land mammals and marine life. They attempt to capture the creature, but the Gill-Man has other things on his mind, namely Kay Lawrence played by the lovely Ms. Julie Addams (more on her in the coming days).

 

The Creature attempts to abduct her, but when she is taken beyond his reach aboard the scientists boat, the Gill-Man blocks the only waterway leading in or out of the lagoon, trapping the researchers in his home waters. The movie is tightly written, tense to a fault, and well acted. The human characters do border a hair bit on the cliché, but that’s not entirely out of the ordinary for the time it was made and everything else works so well you’d barely notice, if at all.

In fact, the scenario of the movie itself seems to recall elements of Howard Hawk’s science fiction masterpiece The Thing From Another World.

Both films depict small groups of people with conflicting motives forced to rely on each other while trapped in an isolated area by a monster. The primary difference between the The Thing and The Creature is that Howard Hawk’s alien really is a vicious killer while the Gill-Man is a misunderstood beast with no true malice. He’s acting on his natural impulses and survival instincts. There’s a certain human quality to him that makes him an object of pity rather than fear … though honestly he is good at instilling it when he wants to.
The film would be followed by two direct sequels that we’ll talk more about in the coming days.