Ricou Browning passed away of natural causes in his Southwest Ranches, Florida home on Monday, February 27th, 2023. He was 93 years old. Best known as the swimming Gill-man in Universal Studios’ Creature From The Black Lagoon and its sequels, Browning had a long and storied career as a performer, director, producer, and creator in films and television, in October of 2015 he shared some stories from his life and career with fans during a Monsterama panel. His beginnings were humble. “I was a lifeguard at Wakulla Springs (near Tallahassee, FL), where we shot the underwater sequences for the film,” Ricou said of how he got the part. The owner of the Wakulla Springs hotel, Newt Perry, asked him to pick up some California visitors at the airport who were coming to scout locations for a film. They happened to be Jack Arnold, the director of Creature From The Black Lagoon, and Scott Wellbourne, the underwater cameraman. “I took them on the river cruise, showed them the alligators, and they loved it. I showed them the main spring, which was about an acre around and eighty feet deep. Scotty Wellbourne asked if I would mind swimming in front of the camera so he could get some perspective of a human being to a fish or grasses and logs, so I did.” A week after the trio returned to California, director Arnold – impressed with what he saw in the test footage – called Browning and offered him the part of the Creature in the underwater sequences (when the monster was out of the water, he was played by Tahitian tall guy Ben Chapman). Browning was flown to California, where he and the Universal Studios makeup team worked on building the monster suit for him, which took a couple of tries to get right. “The suit was like wearing an overcoat underwater, but once I got used to it, it wasn’t too bad.”
Shooting in the Springs took place in October of 1953 during a rare cold snap that kept the cast and crew shivering much of the time, especially those in the water. “The water temperature was seventy-one degrees when we were shooting, and the air temperature was forty-nine, so it was pretty cold,” said Ricou. Between takes, he would sit on the camera platform barge in the middle of the spring, shivering. “The crew took pity on me,” he said, “and each not knowing that the others did, they’d give me a little shot of brandy. After about five or six people giving me little shots of brandy, the Creature didn’t swim very well!”, he laughed. Browning and cameraman Burnette wound up choreographing much of the underwater action when it was discovered that the second unit director hired for the movie was unable to swim, including the graceful pas-de-deux sequence with Kay (played by Julie Adams) and the Creature. The ballet-like sequence was a duet between Browning and Adams’s swimming double Ginger Stanley, who had been a mermaid performer at Weeki Watchee Springs, another Florida water attraction nearby. Stanley passed away in January of this year.
After the success of the first film, a sequel was inevitable. Browning got the call from Jack Arnold to appear in Revenge of The Creature. “He said, ‘Rico we need you! We’re at Marineland Studios in St. Augustine (FL) and we’re shooting the picture’.” Another actor had been hired to play the Gill-man, but couldn’t swim convincingly. He was fitted into the suit made for his predecessor – with a lot of cutting and gluing by the makeup artists – and was soon on the set shooting. In one scene, he is “attacked” by a hungry turtle, hoping to make a snack of the Creature’s foot.
“I looked down and couldn’t see very well, but I figured out the turtle was biting the heel of the suit’s foot,” he said. “It extended behind my foot, and the turtle bit the thing off and took off (swimming). I didn’t have another pair of feet, so they had to chase him down, take it out of his mouth, dry it off, and glue it back on!”
The second film was also a hit with moviegoers, spawning one final sequel, 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us. In the movie, the Creature is injured by capturers and turned into an air-breather by a wealthy mad scientist, keeping underwater sequences to just a few. Asked if he minded being made expendable by the storyline, Ricou smiled and said, “I didn’t care. As long as they paid me!” With his most well-known acting part behind him, Ricou went on to supervise or direct underwater sequences for television’s Sea Hunt, The Aquanauts and films like the James Bond opus Thunderball (a tour de force creation utilizing dozens of divers in an all-out aquatic battle), Around The World Under The Sea, Hello Down There, and many more – including Caddyshack, where he directed the notorious pool sequence featuring an errant Baby Ruth candy bar. He even appeared uncredited as one of Captain Nemo’s divers in the 1954 Walt Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
In 1963, Ricou watched his kids viewing an episode of Lassie and decided that if stories of a boy and his dog were so popular, a film about a boy and his dolphin should be a cinch, and he co-created the format for 1964’s Flipper. The film was indeed a hit and led to a sequel, Flipper’s New Adventure, and eventually a television series on the air from 1964 to 1966. His partner for these productions was Florida film legend Ivan Tors, and Ricou was ultimately made president of Ivan Tors Studios.
After retiring from film production, Browning was surprised to learn of the large following for his Creature character. He appeared at autograph shows and media conventions, meeting and greeting fans alongside co-stars Julie Adams and Ben Chapman. Chapman passed away in 2008, and Adams in 2019. It’s easy to point to influences that the Creature (and by proxy, Browning) has had on popular culture; In The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell see the film in a theatre and discuss it afterward. Uncle Gilbert on The Munsters was an actor wearing the Gill-man’s mask and hands with an overcoat and bowler hat. 1967’s Mad Monster Party featured a cartoony, stop motion Creature. Both Marvel (Man-Thing) and DC (Swamp Thing) comics had characters loosely based on him or designed as an homage to the character. Fred Dekker’s 1987 film The Monster Squad featured an updated version of the Gill-man created by makeup artist Steve Wang. And in the ultimate tribute, Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape Of Water expands upon the romantic undertones of the original film to the tune of the 2017 Academy Award Best Picture winner.
Ricou Browning was an ordinary man who led an extraordinary life, never letting his talents or eventual fame influence his heart or his head. He is survived by his four children, Ricou Browning Jr. (himself an aquatic film production specialist), daughters Renee, Kelly, and Kim, and ten grandchildren.
Special thanks to Peter Lashway, Clay Sayre, Kyle Yaklin, Shane Morton, and Mark Maddox. Watch the full Monsterama panel below.
