She most noticeably designed the creature from the black lagoon, the pantheon of monsters. It was the last one to be included. Everyone has their own pantheon. You can come fight me later. [laughter] in my opinion, creature was the last one. She was one of disneys first female animators, she was an actress, she was an illustrator. Everything about milicent patrick was larger than life. It has been the greatest honor of my life so far to tell her story. If you read the book, you know there are pictures in there because milicent lived a very visual, cinematic life. I have a treat for all of you. Ive got some photos that have never been seen before. I have hundreds of them i was not allowed by my publisher to put in because we could not fit 700 different photos in the book. So i would like to take you through while telling you about milicent and why she is a trailblazing artist and one of the most important women we have ever had in the Film Industry. I would like to take you through her life a little bit with some awesome photos. Lets see if i can remember how to do it. Here is my girl. Milicent patrick began life in a place called Hearst Castle. If cribs was a tv show back in the 1920s, Hearst Castle would have been on it. This is what it looks like. It was the summer home, just one of many, of a man named William Randolph hearst. He was americas first media mogul. Not only did he have an amazing home, but people like Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill used to go and hang out at the ranch, as they would say. This is where milicent patrick grew up because her father was a man named camille rossi. He was the superintendent of construction here for 10 years. That is where she started life. Everything in milicents life was bigger, more bombastic than anyone could dream. This is where she grew up. This is where she and her siblings hung out. They used to play here while her dad was getting into fights and trying to figure out how to make this thing. Milicent always was a great artist. To make a go of art. She decided to go apply for a scholarship to go to the chouniard institute. I have been told i am allowed to swear. I am making sure there are no children. She was a complete badass. Just a year after women were allowed to vote in this country, she opened an art school in Southern California that was about to change the face of art schools. She ran the school with an iron fist and an artistic flair. I want to share some unseen drawings of milicent. That is her modeling. The really cool thing about the chouniard institute is not just that it was created by nelbert, who was amazing, but the thing nelbert was really good at was working with students and teachers and lecturers, trying to get more cool people in for her school. One day, an artist came to her from an upandcoming movie studio and wanted to make animated films, and he really wanted to get his artist trained in a special way because he had a vision for how to change how animated films were made and how they looks. The man was called walt disney. You have probably heard of him. [laughter] this was the early days in the world of disney, and he did not have money to train all these animators, but he knew they had to be trained differently. You cannot take an animation course at school. You needed to train in a special way. So he went all these art schools across Southern California and he said, i cannot pay you, but i want to bring my students here, and they all said no. Except for our lady nelbert. A pipeline formed between the chouniard institute and disney. Disney would in his buick drive his students down and wait for them while they were in class. He would hang out around the school. That is how the pipeline got formed because he got to see the best talent at the chouniardhe n to two nard two chouniard. He got to see the best talent at the chouniard institute, and that included milicent patrick. So he started hiring animators and artists from chouniard. And was animators were hanging out and learning things there, sometimes as instructors would come up and help him work on his films, he met millicent. Millicentsne l art was special in the way she was able to convey a lot of movement in just a few lines. He hired her originally to work in a place called the ink and paint department. I suggest you buy a book by Mindy Johnson called inc. And paint. A lot of people do not realize that in the early days of disney, there are a lot of different steps to animation. You have a lot of things you have to do. A lot of the animators at that time were all men, but the people taking those animators drawings and inking them into these clear cells or 100 women. Buildinga massive staffed 100 by women. In fact, men were not allowed to go into the building for a multitude of reasons. Enter office dating was really discouraged at disney studios. Cent is where mili started. She started as a painter and then became an anchor and they notice her skill. She became one of the first animators at disney. Heres a drawing of somebody you might know. Pretty cool. Thesen see the style of from snow white. The first thing millicent worked on was an ambitious film disney wanted to do. By todays standards, if you wanted to pitch the film, some executive would say we are not going to do this. They want to do two short films that were sent classical pieces of music. These arewanted the early days of animation still. People still really did not understand it. He wanted to elevate the artform. That is how a movie called fantasia was born. Milicent was hired on to be in the special effects department because this was a totally different type of movie. They needed new ways of animating. What disney wanted was the look of pastel and a lot of these shots. How many people in this audience have seen fantasia . Lots of people. Amazing. Great film. He wanted the look of pastel, but you cannot animate with pastel because it is chunky and chalky. Terrible. He needed to figure out to paint in a way that looked like pastel. This was called the pastel effect. That is what milicent patrick did. If you look for this soft pastel effect, you can see it is used in fantasia a lot. She was hired to do that in the studio. There were a bunch of sequences they were working on. This is sort of a big reveal in the book, but i want to tell you. I watched a kid, lot of movies, read a lot of books, and a lot of people now i am a huge horror fan and have been for a long time. People always want to know, why are you into this weird stuff . Kid,l them, when i was a my grandfather showed me fantasia, and i loved it. It was a fun kids movie. Hippopotamuses and dancing brooms. Until it got to the mountain sequence. All of a sudden game changer. It was the first time art made me feel something that power fall powerful. Even though it was terror, it affected me. It was the first time art affected me in such a way that i thought about it afterwards. I have really bad anxiety. It was the first time i was afraid of something that was not real, which, if you have anxiety, you know what a vacation that is. I fell in love. When i found out that milicent also intimated my favorite animate monster, it blew my mind and made me feel like i was on the right path. Also, fun halloween october fact one of the models for that monster was none other than bella lugosi. You can totally see. As the monster is incredible. This is the first film milicent worked on as an animator. This is a picture of her at disney studios with a woman named loretta scott, the first credited female animator. As you will see in the book, or then in, credit back movies was difficult. In animated films, even more difficult, because there are hundreds of people working on the film at the same time. When you decide who the first female animator is you have to decide it, was that the first person to draw something animated . A film completed . It is such a great area. I never feel comfortable saying that milicent was the first female made her, but she definitely first female animator, but she was definitely one of the first. Until some secret behindthescenes footage comes out, that is where i will stand. Loretta was the first woman credited on screen as an animator for bambi. A lot of amazing female powerhouses back then in the disney world. Speaking of powerhouses, there was a lot of turmoil happening at disney. Milicent only worked there a couple years before a union strike and her own struggle with migraines caused her to quit disney and she never worked in animation again. What she did do is take advantage of her good looks and become a model. She was very good at it. She lived in los angeles at the time, which is a great place if you want to get into this industry. Pipelinesa lot of already in place. And she was very good at it. She has a look. She was a very gregarious person. She loved being in this world. That is sort of how she segued into modeling. The thing is, while she was modeling, she was still working on her art. She still loved being an artist. She was sketch all the time, do portraits for friends. And one day, while she was waiting after a trade she just model that modeled at, a hollywood producer came up to mean a lot of this stuff, did you make this up . No you cannot make this up. He asked her if she wanted to be in the pictures and she said yes. Universald on the columbia paramount backlog as a background actress. That is how she got back into the Film Industry. Even while she was doing this, she was still modeling, but she loved being in front of the camera. She got her first taste of this while she was still working at disney. How many of you have seen a film called the reluctant dragon . It is a big commercial for disney studios designed as a movie. A comedian at that time at disney the whole plot of the film is him trying to go to disney to pitch walt disney, which is a nightmare now. He would have to dig a hole underneath disney to get in. He is trying to find his knee, trying to pitch them his idea for a film, but as he goes through the studio, you see various clips of short films and him moving around on the studio lot. In the background and one of those scenes, there is a group of animators sketching an elephant, is milicent patrick. As she got back into acting, she loved the life of it. She was a big personality. While she was on set, if youre an actor you know this, there is a lot of downtime. The phrase hurry up and wait was probably invented on a film set. While she was doing that, she was doing a lot of sketching. She was still doing a lot of art. It was her biggest passion. One day, she was waiting in the makeup chair. One of her favorite things to do was sketch portraits of her costars. She absolutely loved doing it and she showed it was a Universal Studios film, and she had all these great sketches, and she showed them to the man who ran the Makeup Studio there, a man named bud westmore. If you know, you know. Have always been surprised there has never been a film about the westmore family. Makeup. Did anything you put on a face is makeup. He came from the westmore dynasty of makeup. Think the mob but with lipstick. This was a true dynasty. His father, george westmore, was literally the man who invented the idea of a makeup department. When george came to hollywood from the u. K. , they did not have that. Early black and white film that she came from a theater tradition they came from a theater tradition, so all the actors and actors is put on the makeup themselves. There was no quality control. He barged on the set and said, hey, what if i did this . It would look consistent from scene to scene. He said it, i will do it. He got hired and started the idea of a makeup department. He had a bunch of sons and all of them went into makeup and it became a dynasty. There is a certain point back in the 40s and 50s when there was a westmore brother heading up almost every single major studio makeup department. He did not want to piss off the westmores. Warner bros. , they all ring the Makeup Studios they all ran the Makeup Studios. Westmore really wanted to hire. The westmorest was that they were beauty people. They had their own book called the westmore book of beauty that was have you ever taken a quiz in a magazine that says, what eyebrows should you have for your face shape . They invented that stuff. Have you ever despaired because you have a round face and cannot have the eyebrows i want . Blame them. They had a massive salon on sunset boulevard called the house of westmore. Everyone rich and famous went there. They were not monster people. They were not horror people. They were not alien people. They were not creature people. But really needed somebody onset who could do characters. As the head of a big Makeup Studio, he was not doing a lot of the designing. He was doing a lot of the admin work. He needed someone who creative talents were different from his own. He found milicent milicent and was like, i am to hire you. I am going to hire you. The very first woman to do this. She was so good. She was the very first one. This is a very interesting time in hollywood, this is the mid50s. We went from being afraid of europe to being afraid of space. We were starting to be afraid of the russians, nuclear war, the sky, spaceships, aliens. All of a sudden, we have this new thing called Science Fiction. All of the classic monster were built as a backbone back in the 30s were dracula, wolfman, those kinds of horror. They had never done Science Fiction before. All of a sudden, the kids wanted scifi, so they had to figure how to make a scifi movie. All of a sudden, they had a new audience they never had to cater to before. A very terrifying, still terrifying, audience teenagers. They had this Massive Group of teenagers who had pocket money, who had time. This is when the suburbs were a thing. They wanted to get these kids out of the house. The parents wanted them out of the house. The best ways for them to be was the movies. They wanted to make scifi movies for kids to go see. So they started cooking something up. Milicent went from this in bp makeup went from designing beauty makeup to aliens. They took this beautiful woman and at this time she was still doing background work. She was still doing acting. She was transitioning to doing more and more work on the universal lot. It was more pay. I do not know if it was more fulfilling for her, but it was a lot less waiting around. So they came up with this idea for a movie they wanted to do called it came from outer space. The treatment for it was written by an author who i love very much named ray bradbury. Veileda very thinly antimccarthyism movie. Ray bradbury wrote a treatment for this. If you have ever read bradberry, he is very verbose you know and not always detailed. He gave milicent this block of text that even had the word nebulous in it and milicent had to design it. But she did. She designed the alien for it. The film was made. It did well for universal. It was universals first Science Fiction movie and it became a classic. It is still cheesy, as many 1950s scifi movies are. I would describe it as an eyeball left in a bag that has legs. Back in the 50s, that was really scary. It was really intense. A lot of people were frightened by it. Creativeent was very and innovative with her design. She had come up with all these different ways to figure it out. She came up with this massive page full of designs, which bud westmore used later. We will get to that later. He was like, this is great. I want you to keep doing this monster thing. We have a new movie that we want you to do and this one will be bigger and better and higher budget called you have to read the book but it is not called creature from the black lagoon. This monster that she designed was going to be completely different. Fromeason why the creature the black lagoon is still known and iconic now is he is the only universal classic monster that has never been remade, and you cannot count the shape of water because it is not from universal. He is the only monster that goes underwater. He is the only universal classic monster that was played by two different actors. He was the only one that was out in daylight. So milicent had to up her game. The monster had to be complete, detailed. There were a lot of technical elements. She fucking nailed it. It is still one of the most famous monsters today. Even people who have not seen the movie, they see a picture of creature and know that is the creature from the black lagoon. The reason why i think milicent s design has stood the test of time is because she had that disney training. Just a few lines, with just a few lines, she could convey a lot of movement, a lot of emotion. A lot of people nowadays are used to make up and cgi and see the film and they think, man, is that makeup, is that a mask . No, it is one piece of rubber. Because of the way milicent designed it, when the two actors wherein the suit moving the head, it looks like makeup. Besides that disney training was her incredible empathy. Milicent designed this monster wanting people to feel for him. So when you look at him, you are scared by him. There were a lot of kids who ran out of that theater, including alice cooper. But you want to understand him. He looks just humanlike enough. If you have ever watched a lot of cheesy scifi movies, you are aware. It is very difficult to make a monster like this that does not look silly. But no one was laughing at creature except for bud westmore. He did not like this design. He thought it would not 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 a flop. They still went through with the movie. The producers loved it. Everybody else thought it would be great. Peoplem was shot and started taking notice. They started doing test screenings and they did not have to edit anything. People absolutely loved the film and they loved the creature. That was the big thing. They absolutely loved the creature. Here is bud westmore himself displaying milicents drawings. Those drawings, those original drawings of creature, are the creature from the black lagoon fans white whale. No one knows what happened to them. I am hoping there is a collector that has them and will fall into a volcano and they will be released into the world, but no one knows where these are. We do not know if they still exist. And give any to any i would give any amount of toes to see them. Peers but and milicent working in the monster shop here is bud and milicent working in the monster shop. Herwould march in with heels, pearls, and beautiful dresses, and she was totally cool with being the only woman there. She was unapologetically feminine, unapologetically herself. She loved the work. She loved working with t