Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

The head of the make-up department at the time for Universal, Bud Westmore, worked with a team of people to create and refine the creature make-up; although Bud led the team, the designer of the gill-man was Disney animator, Millicent Patrick, this was a big and progressive step in the American film industry to have a female on the prosthetic make-up team considering men took all roles in the past years, being the designer, artist and developer. 

Millicent’s role was played down dramatically by Bud as he took all credit for the idea of the gill-man. Other people that made up the team of artist, consisted of Chris Mueller Jr. who sculpted the head and Jack Kevan, the creator of the body suit. There’s not a great deal of information about the materials used for the head appliances however foam rubber was developed during the late 30s, around the same time the Wizard of Oz was being created, that film being one of the first to use foam rubber, this innovative mateial was used to create the famous cowardly lions face. (CINEMA SECRETS - Frankenstein's Monster, Jack Pierce, Wizard of Oz, Planet of the Apes, Youtube, 2009) 

Jack Kevan, who had the experience of working with foam rubber on the Wizard of Oz and making prosthetics for amputees during WWII; used foam rubber to create the body of the gill-man. The creature suit was a one piece body stocking with thick foam rubber body parts glued on.

From the way the body suit was constructed, it must of caused Ben Chapman, the actor playing the gill-man, to overheat, this was because it was made as a 1 piece body suit stocking, made from latex foam rubber; although it was light weight, it's not a material where the skin can breath, there for overheating, foam rubber is also an insulator, this means it gains the heat from the body and stores it for longer It’s also said that it was impossible for Chapman to sit for the 14 hour day shoot each day. As the head piece was a full head mask, facial expressions must have been limited to none; there were many disadvantages to the final product. Since foam latex was newly developed, the make up artist may not have been aware of the properties of foam latex, such as, you can't change the appliance once baked etc. The comfort of the mask little to none, could be claustrophobic. its also said the Chapman’s vision was limited an he couldn’t see very well whilst wearing this appliances. In my opinion they needed to develop this as they needed to come up with a solution to the problem of transforming a man into the gill man. The older techniques wouldn't have worked as well because, using collodion for example, would only have sunk his skin and not have been able to hide his human features. As a result of new developing foam latex, they had a means to completely transform the actor, without the uncomfortabilities of older (collodion) materials.