{"id":2884,"date":"2020-02-17T18:50:12","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T02:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2884"},"modified":"2020-02-17T18:50:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T02:50:13","slug":"review-the-lady-from-the-black-lagoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2884","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Lady From The Black Lagoon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>The Lady From The Black Lagoon<\/em> delivered a powerful blend of ingredients that come together to make a new, delightful tale.  I was expecting a conventional biography of an underappreciated woman whose significant contributions to the movies were predictably underplayed by the various old boys networks.  <em>Lady<\/em> delivers the goods here, with meticulous research of Milicent Patrick&#8217;s career.  Casual fans of monster movies, like me, probably don&#8217;t know her name but almost certainly know the results of her brilliant creation: the creature design and costume from The Creature From The Black Lagoon. The confluence of studio politics, ego mania, and internalized patriarchy erased her indelible mark on the movies and a big part of <em>Lady<\/em> is an attempt to start redressing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Any figure who had been treated so harshly by the people in the industry she was such a big part of would be a worthy topic such a biography.  That Milicent turns out to be a larger-than-life personality is an added delight.  Mallory O&#8217;Meara brings her vividly  to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But wait, it gets even better.  O&#8217;Meara meshes Patrick&#8217;s story with her own story of building a new life in Los Angeles and researching the biography of Patrick.  This plan is as brilliant as it is daring.  It works because O&#8217;Meara composes and expresses her intertwined memoir with power, compassion, and clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Her voice is a distinctive combination of confidence, honesty, and whimsy.  She describes the process of learning the ad hoc methods of historical research as she works through Patrick&#8217;s story.  She links that story with her own career in the same industry and how it mirrors her idol&#8217;s experiences.  She also shares the ways that the experiences of writing the book prompted deep self-reflection and how it changed her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>O&#8217;Meara composes and expresses these competing threads of biography and memoir with moving panache.  She is an excellent writer with a vivid voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A must.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lady From The Black Lagoon delivered a powerful blend of ingredients that come together to make a new, delightful tale. I was expecting a conventional biography of an underappreciated woman whose significant contributions to the movies were predictably underplayed by the various old boys networks. Lady delivers the goods here, with meticulous research of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2884"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2889,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884\/revisions\/2889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}