The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick

by Mallory O'Meara

When I first heard Milicent’s story, my heart lurched with a terribly familiar ache. Hearing about a career beset by sexism, I could easily put myself in her shoes. I have the same pair—every woman in film has them. They’re standard issue and they’re uncomfortable as hell. Almost every day of my life as a filmmaker, I face the same kind of infuriating, misogynistic bullshit that Milicent faced in 1954. I didn’t have to imagine what it felt like for her because I constantly feel it myself.

At this rate, we’ll be colonizing Mars before we see an equal number of female directors.

Horror is a pressure valve for society’s fears and worries: monsters seeking to control our bodies, villains trying to assail us in the darkness, disease and terror resulting from the consequences of active sexuality, death.

As a woman who watches lots of horror movies, I hate embarking on overnight trips by myself. I know the hills probably aren’t filled with bloodthirsty cannibals, but I don’t like taking chances.

It is surreal to grow up in a literal wonderland, but I imagine it would have been even more surreal to grow up in a wonderland that was not your own.

In other words, get the fuck to work.

There is a history at Disney of the work being done by women not being taken seriously. But by the actual definition of animating—creating successive drawings that give the illusion of movement when shown in sequence—Milicent and Marcia were animating.

We need women to be allowed to be simply good at what they do. We need them on set, in meetings, behind cameras and pens and paintbrushes. We need them to be themselves, to be human: ordinary and flawed. That way, more girls can see them and think “I can do that.” That way, no one can look at them and say “She got that job because she’s beautiful. She just got that gig because she slept with someone.”

Women don’t need an idol to worship.68 We need a beacon to walk toward.

That’s like trying to pick me up by offering me a pap smear. That’s the best you can come up with?

Never, ever underestimate the power of nerds. Nerds of all shapes and sizes make this world go round.

“You make your own luck”

Every “overnight success” story you hear is likely the result of years and years of hard work and tireless dedication to a craft.

Women don’t get to stomp around like Godzilla. Someone will just ask if you’re on your period.

Women don’t get to be colossal monsters. Women don’t get to fuck shit up.

But it didn’t end up being lecherous men that Milicent had to worry about. As they say in slasher films, the call was coming from inside the house.

Ultimately, the important thing to companies isn’t ethics. It’s money and power. For decades, they’ve been happily complicit in this bullshit system as long as money was being made.

At what point are women forgiven for not being supernaturally resilient Amazons who spend all their waking hours fighting injustice?

I do not believe that there are better or worse kinds of happiness and fulfillment.

Since childhood, I’ve been faithful to monsters. I have been saved and absolved by them, because monsters, I believe, are patron saints of our blissful imperfection, and they allow and embody the possibility of failing.