:01:00
My name is Tom Weaver. Together
we'll go back to that black lagoon
:01:03
and look behind the scenes at
one of the best monster movies
:01:06
from the second half of the 20th century.
:01:09
In the beginning,
there was William Alland.
:01:12
Alland had the idea for Creature from the
Black Lagoon and produced the picture.
:01:16
Alland was born in Delmar, Delaware,
:01:18
and he began his career
as an actor with a Baltimore troupe.
:01:22
He moved to New York City,
:01:24
arriving there with a few belongings, $25,
and the ambition to work on Broadway.
:01:28
He took acting courses, and he acted
at the Henry Street Settlement House,
:01:32
which is where he met Orson Welles.
:01:34
This was in the '30s.
Welles was on the verge of forming
:01:37
his famous
Mercury Players acting company.
:01:39
Alland worked with the Mercury Players
on stage and on the radio.
:01:42
He was in the cast of the notorious 1938
War of the Worlds CBS radio broadcast,
:01:48
which was so realistic
it caused a panic among listeners,
:01:51
and Welles and Alland nearly went to jail.
They continued to associate for years.
:01:56
Alland acted in some of Welles' movies,
including Citizen Kane.
:02:00
Alland played the reporter who goes
through the whole movie in shadow,
:02:04
trying to find out what Charles Foster
Kane's dying word, "Rosebud", meant.
:02:08
I'll interrupt myself several times as I try
to tell you about the genesis of this movie.
:02:14
So much to say, and only
79 minutes to say it in.
:02:17
We're looking at a shot of Will Rogers
Beach in Santa Monica, west of Universal.
:02:21
William Alland socialised with Welles,
and at some point in the '40s,
:02:24
perhaps while making Citizen Kane, he
was invited for dinner at Welles' home.
:02:28
It was a party, I guess, because Welles'
girlfriend was there, Dolores del Rio,
:02:33
and Alland, and a guy
named Gabriel Figueroa
:02:36
who was a Mexican cinematographer,
eventually quite a famous one.
:02:39
He photographed The Pearl,
he shot a lot of Luis Buñuel's movies,
:02:43
he shot John Ford's The Fugitive
with Dolores del Rio,
:02:45
and he got an Academy Award
nomination for best cinematography
:02:48
for The Night of the Iguana,
1964, for director John Huston.
:02:52
Huston later gave Figueroa
one of his last jobs, maybe the last job.
:02:55
Figueroa photographed Huston's
Under the Volcano in the 1980s,
:02:59
when he, Figueroa, was almost 80.