Creature from the Black Lagoon
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:37:00
but doesn't tell the story the same way.
He said it wasn't that Havens was afraid,

:37:05
it's just that he wasn't capable -
he wasn't trained to go underwater.

:37:08
According to Ricou, "Havens got in an
inner tube and put on a face mask

:37:12
and watched, as much as he could,
what was going on."

:37:15
"He depended a great deal on Scotty,
and Scotty was a sharp character."

:37:19
"And Havens just kind of left it
to him and us to do our thing."

:37:22
"He would watch,
and comment now and then."

:37:26
I asked Ricou, I said "In a perfect world,
:37:28
should the credits say 'Underwater
scenes directed by James Havens'

:37:32
or 'Underwater scenes directed
by Scotty Welbourne'?"

:37:34
And he answered "I would just say
a combination of people."

:37:37
"I would give Havens credit."
:37:40
The guy who filmed the out-of-water
scenes was no slouch -

:37:43
a guy named William Snyder,
who'd been around for years,

:37:46
photographed a lot of pictures and had
three Oscar nominations in the 1940s:

:37:50
Aloma of the South Seas, The Loves
of Carmen and Jolson Sings Again.

:37:54
After Creature he worked a lot
at Walt Disney Studios.

:37:57
He also shot The Conqueror, the
John Wayne Genghis Khan movie,

:38:01
a movie that's notorious,
A, for not being very good,

:38:03
and B, for having been shot on location
in Utah near an atomic test site.

:38:07
A frighteningly high number of the cast
and crew were later stricken by cancer.

:38:11
Welbourne's no longer with us.
Maybe that had something to do with it.

:38:14
But he'd be over 100 years old today, and
maybe that's something to do with it, too.

:38:27
Carlson developing the photograph here
makes me think of the Figueroa story,

:38:31
Figueroa saying that he had once seen
a photo of the real Amazon monster,

:38:35
and that he could get a print of it
if Orson Welles didn't believe him.

:38:39
Ben Chapman will be appearing
as the creature in a minute or so.

:38:42
Ben Chapman is a Tahitian,
born in Oakland, California,

:38:45
while his parents were
on a trip to the United States.

:38:48
He was raised in Tahiti,
relocated to the US in 1940,

:38:51
and went to school
in the Bay Area of San Francisco.

:38:54
He was a Tahitian dancer in clubs
before he landed his first movie job,

:38:57
in an MGM musical with a Tahitian
setting called Pagan Love Song.


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