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'Creature From The Black Lagoon' Chapman Dies

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By DENNIS MCLELLAN, The Los Angeles Times

Published: February 24, 2008

As an actor, Ben Chapman never landed a star-making role. Far from it. He had small parts in only a few films, including an uncredited bit part in "Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki."

But Chapman nevertheless achieved a degree of movie immortality - and he did it without uttering a word of dialogue or even showing his face.

The 6-foot-5 former Tahitian entertainer and ex-Marine played the title character in "Creature from the Black Lagoon," the 1954 3-D monster movie that developed an enduring cult following.

Chapman, a retired Honolulu real estate salesman, died Thursday of congestive heart failure at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, said his longtime companion, Merrilee Kazarian. He was 79.

For Chapman, playing the so-called Gill Man in "Creature from the Black Lagoon" was the role of a lifetime.

"In the big picture, he achieved a small amount of success as an actor, but for baby-boomer 'monster kids,' he was the bomb," Tom Weaver, author of a 1992 book about the making of "Creature from the Black Lagoon," told the Los Angeles Times on Friday.

Chapman, who was briefly a contract player at Universal in the early '50s, always said landing the creature role was "a matter of being in the right place at the right time."

He was on the studio lot one day, when he was called into a casting director's office.

"They were looking for an imposing creature, and at 6-feet-5, I filled the bill," he told The Palm Beach Post in 2003.

Chapman is survived by his children, Benjamin Franklin Chapman III, Grant Chapman and Elyse Maree Raljevich.

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