:39:01
He was a dancer in it, but he
got along so well with the director
:39:04
that he also got an additional little
part as Rita Moreno's boyfriend.
:39:08
He had other small parts before the
Korean War sidetracked his career.
:39:12
Upon his return from Korea, he was
hired as a stock player at Universal.
:39:16
Creature was his best movie role,
:39:18
even if all you ever see
is the inside of his mouth,
:39:21
but he kept plugging away for years,
acting on TV and Jungle Jim movies.
:39:25
Eventually, he moved to Hawaii
and got a job with a realty company,
:39:28
but his business card
had artwork of the creature on it.
:39:39
Chapman plays the gill-man
in the scenes shot at Universal.
:39:42
He says Arnold insisted he walk like this.
:39:44
The creature glides in water, so Arnold
wanted him to glide on land, to shuffle.
:39:49
In fact, they sometimes put lead,
maybe as much as 10lb of it,
:39:52
in his creature boots, a reminder
not to lift his feet when he walked.
:39:57
I had a strange talk with Henry Escalante,
the actor who just got attacked.
:40:01
I called him up, fishing, as it were,
for more Creature stories,
:40:05
and very, very casually, he told me
that he played the creature.
:40:08
He talked about how hot the suit was
and how tough it was to breathe.
:40:11
He told me he had a guy
fanning him all the time.
:40:14
He talked about how
he sweated in the costume
:40:16
and how the perspiration burned
when it got into his eyes.
:40:19
He talked about Jack Arnold. He
could not have sounded more casual.
:40:23
He sounded believable, but there wasn't
one word of truth in anything he said.
:40:27
It was the strangest conversation
I ever had with anybody about a movie.
:40:33
You'll notice these footprints don't
match the way the creature walked.
:40:37
He dragged his feet -
he didn't take those kinds of steps.
:40:40
Vision was a problem for both
Ben Chapman and Ricou Browning.
:40:43
For Chapman, they made
different sets of eyes.
:40:46
It all depended on how far away
from the camera he was. For close-ups,
:40:50
they gave him eyes that filled the whole
eye socket, and he could hardly see.
:40:54
Somebody would point a flashlight
in the direction they wanted him to walk,
:40:58
and Chapman, who could barely see
the light, would head off that way.