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837 reviews for:
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick
Mallory O'Meara
4.11 AVERAGE
837 reviews for:
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick
Mallory O'Meara
4.11 AVERAGE
This was such a beautifully written book. O'Meara writes with passion and an obvious deep love for her subject. I love how she inserts herself into the story and this book is not only a biography of Milicent Patrick but it chronicles O'Meara's journey of discovery too. She is a part of the story just as much as Milicent is - and I'm here for it.
I listened to the audio book version, and I recommend that one. It's read by the author which really makes the whole experience a very personal journey. Her passion, frustration, heart ache, and joy comes through.
10 stars! Can't wait to read more.
I listened to the audio book version, and I recommend that one. It's read by the author which really makes the whole experience a very personal journey. Her passion, frustration, heart ache, and joy comes through.
10 stars! Can't wait to read more.
There were huge chunks of "The Lady for the Black Lagoon" that were incredibly informative and interesting, but it also felt so meandering and hodgepodge. At the beginning of the book the author bemoans her colleagues who told her that there was likely not enough material to write a book about Millicent Patrick - and on the one hand, I agree, how dare there. Having finished the book, I know that Millicent's life is a fascinating one and also everyone's story deserves to be told. On the other hand, she truly didn't have enough material for the book to have Patrick as the only player, much of the book is really about O'Meara researching Patrick or the impact her creations had on the author. That disparity set the tone for me early on, and every time the book veered away from being about Patrick it really stuck out to me.
informative
slow-paced
Excellent story, I'm a bit of a biased reader (being a Reading Glasses Podcast listener since nearly the beginning) but I really enjoyed learning so much about not only Milicent Patrick but also Hollywood/Disney
A fascinating story of how much hasn't changed in Hollywood, and a picture of an incredible woman's life. Forgotten history relevant to the now and the struggle to give women a place at the table, the drafting board, the camera.
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
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.” Actually, she got hired because she was damn good.
A microhistory I would haven never been privy to if this book hadn’t been published. It took me a bit to adjust to the interchanging sections of Milicent Patrick’s biography and author Mallory O’Meara’s personal research journey, but once I was comfy I really appreciated the parallels. Lots of variety here, from Milicent’s family history, to Disney animation history, to movie monster tidbits - a lot to cover in so many pages! A fast and fascinating read. What I appreciated most was this is quite a human portrait of Milicent - she wasn’t an impossibly unique heroine, but achieved her success on her own terms and is a realistic role model for female-identifying creators everywhere. (Side note: also appreciated the author’s efforts to contextualize Millicent’s success as a white, hetero, cis, able-bodied woman and acknowledge the greater struggle for woman with even more marginalized identities)
Thousands and thousands of women are out there, feeling alone in their creative passions. Thousands more haven’t even entertained the idea of making art because they can’t imagine a place for themselves in that world. Milicent Patrick’s legacy isn’t just a body of influential work. It’s also an invitation.
I didn’t care for this, mostly because the writing style isn’t for me (too fluffy). The sections about the author’s research felt pointless.
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
When I started the book, and realized it was going to be not just a biography of Milicent Patrick, but also a memoir of the author writing the book, I was disappointed, and I thought that it was cheating to fill up a page count. However, I got hooked pretty quickly, and by the end I was so glad this was how the story was told. It’s not a straightforward chronological biography of Milicent Patrick, but it’s interspersed with a feminist memoir of the author moving to LA and researching the book. I loved the way both stories unfolded in parallel. By the time I finished it, I thought of at least five other friends of mine I thought should read the book, if they haven’t already. The audiobook was read by the author, which is great, because she does a podcast and is already good at speaking on the microphone. But I also had the ebook from the library at the same time, which was good because there are photos and drawings.
I want to mention that I am a fan of the podcast Reading Glasses that Mallory and her friend Brea run and have listened to every episode of the show up to this date.
That set aside, I really enjoyed the book. It is not only an excellent biography of a woman who had basically been forgotten by Hollywood and also an very fascinating journey of the process of writing a book where there is very few public records of said individual.
It is also a history of the sexism that still persists in many male-dominated areas of life and how much little has changed since Milicent worked in Hollywood.
If you enjoyed The Shape of Water, you’ll enjoy this book. Highly recommended.
That set aside, I really enjoyed the book. It is not only an excellent biography of a woman who had basically been forgotten by Hollywood and also an very fascinating journey of the process of writing a book where there is very few public records of said individual.
It is also a history of the sexism that still persists in many male-dominated areas of life and how much little has changed since Milicent worked in Hollywood.
If you enjoyed The Shape of Water, you’ll enjoy this book. Highly recommended.