This year marks the 3rd annual Women in Horror Recognition Month. Every February, horror fans around the world celebrate the feminine side of fear. All month long I will be highlighting various actresses, writers, icons, films, etc. that owe a debt to a woman in horror.
I know what you’re thinking: Who is Milicent Patrick? This lovely lady, pictured at left, starred in more than 20 films and 12 television series. Her real name was Mildred Elizabeth Fulvia di Rossi, and, according to Hollywood legend, was born an Italian baroness.
She is also the person who designed the mutants in This Island Earth, all the masks in Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Mole People from the film of the same name, and created the Xenomorph for It Came from Outer Space. Patrick is most famous for creating the Gill-Man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
A woman designed one of the most famous monsters of all time?
Yes, but most people would never know this, because all of Patrick’s work on these horror films went uncredited. In 1954, Universal released The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D. The studio planned to send Patrick on a promotional tour but make-up department head George Hamilton “Bud” Westmore sent memos to the Universal front office taking exception to the studio’s intention to bill Patrick as “The Beauty Who Created the Beast.” He claimed that the Creature was entirely the product of his own efforts. Westmore later refused to employ her again – after very vocally admonishing Universal studio heads, making a public disgrace of himself – and effectively killed what was a very promising effects career.
Not many people other than diehard horror fans know about Ms. Patrick, but that is mostly due to the fact that she led a very private life. In fact, the Screen Actors Guild currently lists her as missing, since there is no definitive record of her life, her death, or her whereabouts beyond the early 1980’s other than that she married and divorced twice, continuing an on-again/off-again relationship with actor George Tobias for nearly 40 years.
But as uncredited and underappreciated as she was in her lifetime, modern horror fans will forever know Ms. Milicent Patrick as the woman who created an icon and unknowingly became one in the process.
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