url]http://www.economist.com/obituary/displ ... d=10797554[/url]
Beneath it too, sweating like a trooper in a thick body-stocking of foam rubber, was Ben Chapman. Behind the popping-out eyes, his own were moving—save when the lids came down, and he had to be guided down his monstrous paths by a prop-man with a torch. The truly nasty fluttering of the gills was achieved by another man, out of shot, pumping air through a tube into bladders on Mr Chapman's dorsal fin. He moved as he did, slowly and half-gliding while cymbals and screaming trumpets announced his presence, because he had ten pounds of weights in each webbed foot. His career as a strong-limbed Tahitian dancer in the nightclubs of Los Angeles had not entirely cut him out for this.
The Creature's urge to mate was understandable. He was the last survivor of the fish-men, just as Mr Chapman turned out to be the last in a line of sad-monster-players that stretched back through Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, before more heartless and mechanised species arrived in Hollywood.
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For much of the day, however, being so hot, he would lurk in the greenish pool in the back lot at Universal. Out in the middle of the water, he would submerge his imposing frame until only his Gill-Man eyes and nostrils showed above the surface. There he would wait, holding his breath for as long as he could manage. Then—famously just as Rock Hudson was walking past with a group of elderly visitors—he would rise straight up, water streaming down him, lift up his arms, open his fish mouth and ROAR!!!
