Monster in the black lagoon. Have their own pantheon, torefo, one of disneys first animators, actress, illustrator. Every thing about Millicent Patrick was larger than life. The greatest honor of my life so far to tell her story. If youve rid the book you know, read the hard cover version you know there are pictures because millicent lived a visual cinematic life. I have a treat for all of you. Photos never seen before. I have hundreds and hundreds of them i wasnt allowed to pub in because we could not fit 700 photos in the book and would sort of like to take you through telling you about mill sent and why she is a trailblazing artist and one of the most important women weve ever had in the Film Industry and why we dont know her any longer. Id like to take you through her life a little bit with awesome photos. So, see if i can remember how to do this. Yes. Thats delete. Sorry. Heres my girl. So Millicent Patrick began life, grew up in a place call the hearst capital. If cribs was a tv show in the 1920s, Hearst Castle would have been on it and this is what it looks like. The summer home. One of many. A man named rm r William Randolph hearst. Incredible media mogul, one of many amazing homes, Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill used to hang out at the ranch, as they would say. And Millicent Patrick grew up here because her father named camille rossy, superintendent of construction ten years here. This is where she started life. Like i said, everything in millicents life was bigger, more bomb bank than anyone could dream. She grew up here. Her and her siblings hung out. Used to play here. Her dad was getting into fights and trying to figure how to make this thing. So millicent always was a great artist. Amazing pianist when she got into Community College she decided she really wanted to make a go of art. She decided to go to apply for a scholarship to go to an institute. This one here told im allowed to swear. Making sure no children. Someone with a complete badass. In a year after women were allow youed to vote she opened an art school in Southern California about to change the face of art schools. Incredible. Ran the school with an iron fist and artistic flare. I want to share some unseen drawing of millicent. Thats her modeling. Really cool thing about this institute not just it was created by an absolute melbert. Really, really good at working with students and teachers and lecturers trying to get more cool people in for her school. And one day an artist came to her from up and coming movie studio and wanted to make animated films and really wanted to get his artist trained in a special way you because he had a vision for how to change how animated films were made and how they looked. The man called walt disney. Youve probably heard of him. Probably early days in the world of disney. He had no money to train the animate aers but knew they needed to be trained differently. Not a time period to take an animation course at school. You need to train as artists in a special way. Going to all the art schools around Southern California. He asked i cant pay you, really want to bring my students here. They all said no. Except for our lady melbert. You know what . Bring your students on down. Well figure something out. Pipeline formed bethis institute and disney. Literally in a buick, disney would drive students down to here and wait for them while in class. Hang out around the school. How this pipeline got formed, because he got to see the best talent at the institute. That included Millicent Patrick. He started hiring animators and artists from here and while his animators were hanging out learning things there, sometimes instructor would come up and help him work on his film. A close connection there. He met millicent. Looking at her art. Millicents art was very, very special in a way that she was able to really convey a lot of movement in just a few lines. Thats perfect for animation. He said, please, come work for me. He hired her originally to work in place called the ink and paint department. Interested in womens history at disney, suggest you buy a book by Mindy Johnson calmed ink and paint. Early days of disney, a lot of different steps to animation. Dont take a drawing and wave it in front of a camera. A lot of things to do. Animators were all men. People taking those animator drawings and inking them on to clear felt to be shot with a camera and painted, they were 100 women. This was a massive building on the Disney Studio lot staffed 100 by women. In fact, men werent allowed in the building for a multitude of reasons. No. Intraoffice dating discouraged at Disney Studios. Millicent was so talented. Started as a painter, became an anchor and people noted her skill conveying all this movement and became one of the very, very first animators at disney along with martha james and loretta scott. Doing a drawing of something you might know. Pretty cool. You can see, see the style of these, from snow white. First thing mill sent worked on ambitious new film disney wanted to do, even by todays standards. Fil film executer, everyone classic music. This is the early days after animati animation. They wanted to elevate the art form. Thats how fantasia was born and milicent was hired on to be in the special effects tomorrow. This was a different movie. People had never done anything like this before so they needed new ideas of an mississippi stating. Themts a look at pastel in these nshots. How many have seen it . Great film. Totally holds up. But you cant animate with pastel because its chunky and chalky and its going to melt all over the place. Terrible. So he need ed to figure out how to paint in way that looked like pastel. Ta da, the pastel effect. Thats what milicent patrick did. If you learn to look for this soft, pastely effect, milicent and marcia james were hired to do that in the studio. There were a bunch of different sequences they were working on. Before i show you this next slide, sort of a big reveal in the book, so when i was a kid, i read a lot of books and a lot of people now im a huge horror fan and i have been for a long time and people want to know, you look like a nice lady, why are you into all this weird stuff . Besides the fact i look very weird. I tell them when i was a kid, my grandfather show ed me fantasia. Its a fun kids movie. Choo choos, dancing broom, until it got to the night on Bald Mountain sequence and all of a sudden, game changer. It was the first time that art made me feel something that powerful. Even though it was terror, it really affected me and i knew something was different and it was the very, very first time that art affected me in such a way that i thought about it afterwards. I have really bad anxiety. Always have. It was the first time i was afraid of something real. If you have anxiety you know what a vacation that is. And i was hooked. I fell in love. So when i found out that milicent also animated chernabog, my favorite animated monster, it blew my mind and made feel i was on the right path. Also, fun halloween october fact. One of the models was go see. If you rewatch the pill m and see his hand and arm movements, you can see it. I have gotten to see that picture. Couldnt print it in the book, ive tried, but him as chernabog is incredible. This is the first film milicent worked on as an animator. Loretta scott, the blond, she was the first credited female animator. As youll see in the book or you know if youve read it, credits back then in movies were really difficult. With animated films were even more difficult because there are hundreds and hundreds of people who work on animated films and when youre talk iing about who the first female animator is, was that the first person who drew a drawing, who saw a drag of hers on the big screen, a a film that was completed . Such a weird, gray area so i dont ever feel comfortable because its not like a big leaver you pull and it says mill cent was the first woman to do that. The footage comes out of something thats where im going to stand. But loretta was the first woman credited on screen as being an animator for bambi. A lot of amazing female power houses back then in the disney world. There was a lot of turmoil happening at disney. So milicent only worked through for a couple of years before a union strike and her struggle with migraines caused her to quit disney and she never worked with animation ever again. So what she did do is take advantage of those good looks of hers and become a model and she was very, very good at it. She lived in los angeles at this time, which is a great place to get into this industry. A lot of pipelines for taking Beautiful People and putting them in front of various cameras. She was very, very good at it. She had the looks. A very charming person. She loved being in this world and so how she segwayed into modeli modeling. She loved art. One day while she was waiting after a trade show that she had just modelled at, literally waiting on the corner waiting for the bus, a hollywood producer came up to her and i mean, i cant make, a lot of this stuff about milicents story, oh, did you make that up for the book . No, cant make it up. Asked her if she wanted to be in the pictures. She said yes. So she started a lot of work on the universal, columbia, pair mount ba paramount back lots. She stood out in whatever scene she was in because she was very, very beautiful. How she got back into the Film Industry. She was still modeling, which she really loved being in front of the camera. She got her first taste of this while she was still working at disney. How many people have seen or heard of a film call ed the reluctant dragon . Its sort of a big commercial for Disney Studios thats disguised as a movie. Those of comedian during that time as disney and it just shows him. The whole plot of the film is him trying to go to disney to pitch walt disney, god, what a nightmare now. Can you imagine . Youd have to dig a hole underneath Disney Studio lots to get in. Hes trying to find disney. Try iing to pitch them his idea for a film, but as he depose through the studio, you see various clips of short films and you see him on the studio lot. In the background of one of those scenes where a group of animators sketching an elephant is milicent patrick. As she got into the world of background acting and just agenting in general, she fell in love. She loved the life of it. She was a really Big Personality and while she was onset, if you were an actor yourself or made a film, you know theres a lot of down time. The phrase, hurry up and wait was probably invented on a film set. So while she was doing that, she was doing a lot of sketching. Still doing a lot of art. It was still her biggest passion. And one day, she was waiting in the make up chair and one of her favorite things to do was sketch portraits of her costars and she absolutely loved doing it. She had showed all these, it was a Universal Studios fill. And she had all these great sketches. She showed them to the man who ran the make up studio there, bud westmore. If you know, you know, if you dont, you dont. Bud, im always surprised that theres never been a film or a series made about the family. Bud ran the universal make up studio there. Monster shop. I mean beauty make y aliens. Anything to put on a face that was make up. He came from the westmore dynasty of makeup. Think the mob, but with lipstick. This was a true dynasty. His father invented the idea of a makeup department. Back when george came to hollywood from the u. K. , they didnt have that. So all the actors and actresses put on the makeup themselves. Didnt always work because there was no quality control. He barged on to studio sets and said hey, what if i did this, that way, it would look consistent from scene to scene. Oh, that sounds like a good idea. He said ill do it, got hired and started the idea of a makeup department. He had a bunch of sons and all of them went into makeup. It became a dynasty. There was a point in the 40s and 50s where there was a westmore brother heading up every studio makeup wise. You dont want to pi is ss off the westmores. They were from paramount to eagle lion, warner brothers, they all ran the Makeup Studios there. Catching the eye of a westmore was a big deal. He really wanted to hire milicent. The thing about bud and the rest of the westmores, they were beauty people. They had their own book. Have you ever taken a quiz in a magazine, what eyebrow brush should you use for your face shape. If youve ever dispaired because of you have a round face like me, blame them. They had a massive salon on sunset boulevard. House of westmore. Everyone rich and famous went there. So they were not monster people. Not horror people. Not alien people. Not creature people. Bud needed someone who could do more character stuff. He was doing a lot of the add manipulate wo admin work. He needed someone with talents very different from their own. So he saw milicent and said absolutely, im going to hire you. She became the first woman to become hired bay makey a makeup department. She was incredible. She was the first one. This was a very interesting time in hollywood. The mid 50s. Went to being afraid of europe to being afraid of space. We were starting to be afraid of the russians. Nuclear war, the skies. Spaceships and aliens, so all of a sudden, we had this new thing called Science Fiction and all of the classic monster movies that universal had really built as the backbone in the 30s were dracula, wolfman, frankenstein. But all of a sudden, the kids wanted the scifi. That in itself was a new thing because all of a sudden, they had a new audience that they had never had to cater to before. Very terrifies. Still terrifying. Teenagers. They had this Massive Group of teenagers who had pocket money. Who had time. This is when the suburbs were a thing. Milicent went from designing beauty makeups which she had been doing for a while at ew universal and they wanted her to design an alien. So they took this very, very beautiful woman. At this time, she was still doing background work. She was still doing acting. But she was transitioning to doing more and more work on the universal lot. More pay. I dont know if it was more fulfilling, but a lot less waiting around. So they came up with this idea of o a movie they wanted to do called it came from outer space. The treatment was written by an author that i love very much and many might now. Ray bradbury and it was actually very thinly veiled anti mccarthy movie, but wrote treatment for this. You know hes verbose and not always detailed. So he gave milicent essentially this block of text that a had the word nebulous in it and milicent had to design it. But she did. She designed the fail yalien fo. It did well for universal. Their first Science Fiction movie. It became a classic. Still cheesey. Made in as many 1950s scifi movies are. I would describe it as an eyeball left in a bag that has legs but back in the 50s, that was really scary. There were a lot of people frightened by it. She was very creative and innovative with her designs and had come up with all these different ways to figure it out. Came up with this massive page full of design which bud saved and used later. Well get to that much later. It was called, not creature from the black lagoon in the beginning. Had a much stupider name. They went through many names for creature from the black lagoon, but this monster was going to be completely different. Theres a reason why its still wellknown and really iconic. Hes the only universal classic monster thats never been remade and no, you cant count the shape of water because its not universal. Shape of water would not exist without creature from the black lagoon. Hes the only monster that had to go underwater, the only one to be played by two different actors. The only one that was out in daylight. So milicent had to up her game. He had to be complete. Detailed. There was a lot of technical elements to the design. And she nailed it. She really, really did. Its still one of the most famous monsters today. I mean even people who havent seen the movie, they see a picture of creature and they know that is creature from the black lagoon. The reason why i think milicents design has stood the test of time is one, because she had that disney training. With just a few lines, she could convey a lot of movement, emotion. Theres a lot of people now who are used to hightech makeup and cgi and they see the film and they think, man, is that a makeup, articulated mask . No, just one piece of rubber, but because of the way milicent designed it, the two actors were in the suit and moving the head, it looks like a makeup. The other thing i think besides that, that disney training, was her incredible empathy. Milicent designed this monster wanting people to feel for him. So when you look at him, i mean, youre scared by him. Theres a lot of kids who ran out of that theatre, including alice cooper when he was a kid, but you want to understand him. He looks just human like enough. And it is very, if you ever watched a lot of cheesy scifi movies, you are aware. It is very difficult to make a monster like this that doesnt look silly but nobody was laughing at creature, except for bud. He did not like this design. He thought it wasnt going to hold up. He thought it was a ridiculous idea to put a monster like that out in daylight. He thought it was going to be, no pun intended, but a flop. And they still went to the movie. Everybody, the producers loved it. Everyone else thought it was going to be great. People started taking notice. They started doing test screens and didnt have to edit anything. People loved the fill film and loved the creature. That was the big thing. They absolutely loved the creature. Heres bud westmore himself displaying sents design with milicents drawingings and yes, those drawings, those original drawings of creature fans while whale. No one knows what happened to them. I hope theres a collector in the middle of nowhere somewhere that has them and he will fall into a volcano and they will be released into the world, but no one knows where they are. They dont know if they still exist. Unfortunately, i would give my any toes, any amount of toes to even just see them. But this is milicent and bud working in the monster shop. So all of