HAS THE WORLD FINALLY LOST ITS MARBLES?

Corruption and its close companion, murder, know no bounds -- especially in Mexico, where one's life is as cheap as a Tijuana hooker. Violence from drug cartels have become daily news the last few years, and there are more murders in Mexico than virtually any other developed country in the world (El Salvador tops the list). Political figures, police, even American citizens have been slaughtered at unprecedented levels as the cartels exert their power over the entire country.

Now, you can add crimes against the environment to the list of casualties. Things are getting pretty bad when you have a person who is the conservator of a vital part of the living fabric of the environment apparently thrown into a well because he is in the way of illegal activity (see story below).

I used to dismiss people's claims that the world was going to hell in a hand-basket, but after reading this story and considering a number of other stories in the news of late, I'm inclined to join in. Overall, incidents of crime and lawlessness across the world and in our own country are teeming and there seems to be no relief in sight.

The current Mexican president has maintained a "hugs, not drugs" policy has only made the cartels bolder. Likewise, numerous "hands off" policies in our own country have emboldened lawlessness and criminal behavior where it didn't exist before. Nutjob judges and loony politicians have stood in the way of law and order at an increasing rate and the results are not hard to see. This all adds up to an indication that human monsters are on the loose. I remain guardedly optimistic...

Homero Gómez González, prominent butterfly activist in Mexico, found dead in a well
By Amanda Woods |January 30, 2020 | 8:22am | nypost.com

A man known as Mexico’s most prominent butterfly activist was found dead in a well, and his family fears he may have been a casualty of cartel violence, according to new reports.

Homero Gómez González, a former logger who transformed into one of the most vocal defenders of central Mexico’s monarch butterfly population, disappeared on Jan. 13 — alarming environmental activists throughout the country and the US, The Washington Post reported. Rights groups immediately suspected that angry loggers or criminal groups in the town of Ocampo in Michoacán state — known for its violent gangs — may have targeted González, according to the report.

His body was found floating Wednesday in a well not far from the El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Preserve he managed. His cause of death was not immediately known, and his body showed no obvious signs of trauma, authorities told the paper.

But González’s family told local media an organized crime gang had threatened the conservationist, according to the BBC. His relatives also said they received calls from people claiming to have kidnapped him and demanding ransom, according to The Washington Post.

González was last seen attending a meeting in the village of El Soldado on the afternoon of Jan. 13, and relatives reported his disappearance the next day, the BBC reported.

More than 200 volunteers helped search for González — and entire police forces in Ocampo as well as neighboring Angangueo were detained for questioning last week, according to the report.

González opened his sanctuary in November, an effort to stop illegal logging in the area — a key habitat for monarch butterflies, according to the report. In a Twitter video published shortly before his disappearance, González is shown surrounded by a cloud of butterflies as he encouraged people to visit the sanctuary.

The Mexican government has outlawed logging in the region, allowing the monarchs to flourish — but the move has fueled tensions between local loggers and conservationists.

“It’s been a fight to maintain it,” González told The Washington Post last month. “And it hasn’t been easy.”

UPDATE:


And to further emphasized the point, yet another monarch butterfly conservationist has been found murdered. From The New York Post:

Second butterfly activist Raúl Hernández found dead in Mexico
A butterfly conservationist in Mexico was found dead just days after another prominent activist’s body was discovered in a well — sparking fears that the two deaths are linked.

Raúl Hernández, a tour guide at the largest monarch butterfly sanctuary in Michoacán state, vanished Jan. 27, and his body turned up Sunday on top of a hill in the sanctuary.

Forensic experts said Hernández had a deep wound to his head and his body was covered in bruises.

Authorities are still probing his death — but local conservationists fear it may be linked to the recent death of the sanctuary’s manager, amid conflict between the activists and local illegal loggers.

Homero Gómez González disappeared in the same region Jan. 13, and his body was found two weeks later floating in a well, not far from the El Rosario monarch-butterfly preserve.

Investigators initially said González’s body showed no signs of trauma, but it was later revealed he had suffered a blow to the head before drowning, the BBC reported, citing autopsy results.

Conservationists immediately suspected that angry loggers — or criminal groups tied to them in the town of Ocampo — may have targeted González, who was known as Mexico’s most prominent butterfly activist.

González’s family told local media an organized-crime gang had previously threatened him. His relatives also said they received calls from people claiming to have kidnapped him and demanding ransom, according to The Washington Post.

More than 200 volunteers helped search for González — and entire local police forces in Ocampo and neighboring Angangueo were detained by prosecutors for questioning last week, the BBC reported.

González opened his sanctuary in November in an effort to stop illegal logging in the area — a key habitat for monarch butterflies, according to the report.

The country’s government has outlawed logging in the region, allowing the monarchs to flourish — with millions of the butterflies returning each winter in giant clusters to hillsides in central Mexico, where trees shield them from harsh weather. But protecting their retreats to preserve dwindling populations has created tensions between illicit timber-fellers and conservationists.


“It’s been a fight to maintain it,” González told The Washington Post last month. “And it hasn’t been easy.”

And, on the lighter side (with a liberal dose of satire), this from the BABYLON BEE:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—As President Trump began addressing the nation Tuesday evening, he said, "Good evening" to the camera, drawing an immediate flurry of fact checks from publications all across the country.

The New York Times pointed out that the meaning of the phrase was vague and that Trump could have meant any one of several things by the statement. Finally, they concluded that since Trump stubbornly insists on existing in our plane of reality, the statement that the evening was "good" in any way couldn't possibly be true:

CNN, meanwhile, fact-checked the concept of "good" altogether. "Hold it right there," one anchor said, pausing the broadcast to interject his comments. "What is this hateful, absolute, objective idea of good that Trump's talking about here? Correct me if I'm wrong, Brian, but it seems to me that Trump is advocating for a national religion and the execution of all Muslims with this statement."

"This is a very grave day in America," he added solemnly. "We rate this statement 'Pants on Fire.'"


Fox News rated the statement as a "mixture" of truth and falsehood, since with Trump in the White House, "it's actually a GREAT evening!"

THE SHADOW OVER CIELO DRIVE

Not all anniversaries should be celebrated. Fifty years ago today our world changed. Woodstock was a week away and everything felt groovy. Then, on the night of August 8, a little man with big plans sent a group from his coven of tripped out followers, so stoned that they'd do anything for the manipulative ex-con, to commit murder. "Do something witchy", he is known to have said, and so they did, but the result was more of the devil than witchy.

But the nightmare wasn't over yet. The following night, Manson sent his murderous minions out once again, and this time he came along for the ride. The Leno and Rosemary LaBianca residence in Los Feliz had been "creepy-crawled" a few months before by some of Charlie's girls. They had partied at a house just a couple of doors down. Manson is thought to have chosen this house to enact a copy cat murder in the style of Gary Hinman, so that the incarcerated Bobby Beausoleil, convicted for his murder, would be sprung. It didn't work. Sadly, it did not matter for the LaBianca's, as they were found dead by their son, tied up and stabbed nearly 50 times.

The murders sent shock waves through the community and eventually, the world for its heinous nature. Four months later Manson was picked up at Barker Ranch in Death Valley, originally a suspect in local vandalism. The arresting officers did not know exactly who they had nabbed. Ironically, they found the little man with big plans hiding in the cabinet of a bathroom vanity.

The original house on 10050 Cielo Drive has been since torn down and the site is barely recognizable now. Maybe that's for the best. The face of horror may be obliterated, but the memory will not. "Cielo" means "Heaven", but the people in this house suffered the worst kind of Hell. The LaBianca house on Waverly Drive has just recently been sold.

Manson is (finally) dead, Susan Atkins, who admitted stabbing Tate, but "didn't know why", died in prison in 2009 from brain cancer (a fitting end -- go out on drugs). Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and Charles "Tex" Watson are all still behind bars, and will hopefully remain so, forever polluting our air with their breath. Vincent Bugliosi, who as Los Angeles' Deputy District Attorney prosecuted Manson and his accomplices, died in 2015.

It's hard to say how time will treat these dreadful deeds. The story still fascinates. Director Quentin Tarantino has recently released his film recounting the events at the time, and judging by the other recent news stories, it's likely that these tragic events will be remembered as true crime legend.

[SOURCE: PEOPLE MAGAZINE TRUE CRIME CULTS, December 2018.]

Tourists descend on Charles Manson murder scene after Tarantino flick
By Jon Levine August 3, 2019

The scene of the Manson murders has found new life as a tourist attraction.

With the release of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” a new generation of gawkers has swarmed Cielo Drive, where the notorious Manson killings took place, according to a new report from TMZ.

In 1969, followers of Manson descended on the West LA home, killing five. Among the dead was pregnant actress Sharon Tate and coffee heiress Abigail Folger.

The original home was demolished in 1994. A new residence was later built on the same site with a different address.

While most Cielo Drive residents today aren’t keen to discuss the murders, one man, David Oman, says he has been set upon by unsettled spirits — including the ghost of Sharon Tate — ever since moving in down the block.

“First couple of months I was in the house, there were things I would put on a table, come back a couple of hours later to find that they weren’t there anymore,” he said during a 2013 interview published to his YouTube channel. “And then we would find them in another part of the house I had not been in.”

[SOURCE: NY POST.]


Sharon Tate gal pal slams Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood’
By Christopher Cameron August 1, 2019

Quentin Tarantino is enjoying the best opening weekend of his career on the 50th anniversary of Hollywood’s most brutal murders. His ninth film “Once Upon a Time in . . . Hollywood” raked in $41 million in its first weekend.

But for those who lived through the 1969 Manson Family murders — which claimed the lives of actress Sharon Tate, her unborn child and four others — the all-star film is insult on top of injury, says Ava Roosevelt, a friend of Sharon Tate’s.

“I felt angry. I felt very angry,” says Roosevelt, 71, after seeing the film, which intertwines the tale of fictional washed up actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) with the Manson attacks in typical gory and irreverent Tarantino style.

“Tarantino has abused the memory of my friends,” Roosevelt says. “After the film, my boyfriend asked me how I was doing. I said, ‘Let’s not talk.’ I didn’t really sleep last night.”

Roosevelt — the widow of the late William Roosevelt, grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt — was just a teenager in Warsaw when she first met the director Roman Polanski. She attended his wedding to the actress Sharon Tate in London in January 1968, and when she moved to Los Angeles at the age of 21 to pursue a career as a model, she was brought into the inner circle of the Hollywood stars.

“Sharon and Roman, Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger, and Jay Sebring, we were like family,” says Roosevelt of her friends who were murdered (she dated Sebring for a time). “I never lived at 10050 Cielo Drive [the Polanski residence where the murders occurred] but I was there constantly. Roman was away in London and we thought, ‘What if Sharon has the baby sooner than anticipated!’ We need to be with her.”

During that time Tate became a sort of mentor to Roosevelt, styling her ahead of photo shoots and helping pick out clothes.

“She was so patient putting on my false lashes and mascara,” Roosevelt says. “She didn’t like the dress I was wearing and she gave me this beautiful blue midi-dress. I still have it today.”

But unlike the real Tate, who was “a brilliant and strong actress who took her image very seriously,” Roosevelt believes that Tarantino went out of his way to demean the memory of her friend.

“Sharon Tate as portrayed by Margot Robbie is a mere sex symbol and a ditz,” Roosevelt says. “Would [Tate] ever go to see her own movie to see the reaction of the audience? [a scene from the film]. Never in a million years. She would have never gone to the Playboy mansion and danced around. And what is with the snoring in the movie? Sharon Tate was snoring. The Italian wife of Rick Dalton was snoring. Is it to belittle the women?”

Bruce Lee's daughter upset about his depiction in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'
In Roosevelt’s view, “every female character is portrayed as sluts.” She says that those “who support the #MeToo movement should not support this movie.”

“Despite a nearly $100 million budget, Tarantino failed to capture the era I lived in,” Roosevelt says.

She says Sebring “was a shy, almost unassuming person,” in contrast to his depiction as a “braggadocios, self-centered hair-dresser-of-the-moment.”

“I spent a lot of time at his house, which used to be owned by the actress Jean Harlow,” Roosevelt says. “He was kind, shy and loving. The film is an insult to the memory of my friend.”

Roosevelt, whose new book is “The Racing Heart,” says that it’s important for her to preserve her friends’ reputations because she very nearly died with them. On the night of Aug. 8, 1969, after stopping by the home of singer John Phillips, she began to drive her secondhand Rolls-Royce up to Cielo Drive when she realized her gas tank was nearly empty, forcing her to turn back from Bel Air.

“I spoke to Sharon that afternoon,” she says. “She said, ‘Please come and join us for dinner.’ I’ve managed to live the last 50 years, because my gas gauge showed empty. I sometimes feel very guilty that I am still alive.”

[SOURCE: NY POST.]

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WEIRD, WEIRD WORLD

GIANT TARANTULA HAULS AWAY OPOSSUM!
NOTE: VIDEO REMOVED BECAUSE OF SLOW LOADING VIDEO LINK.

WHEN WILD TURKEYS ATTACK!
NOTE: VIDEO REMOVED BECAUSE OF SLOW LOADING VIDEO LINK.

CHURCH BURNS, BIBLES AND CROSSES INSIDE DON'T

Firefighters in West Virginia surveying the damage from an inferno that had gutted a church over the weekend were astounded when they discovered that a bevy of Bibles and crosses had somehow survived the conflagration unscathed. The remarkable find was reportedly made early Sunday morning after the Coal City Fire Department helped to battle a blaze that had engulfed the Freedom Ministries Church in the community of Greenview.

Upon entering the building, the team of rescue workers was stunned to see that every Bible inside the church had apparently made it through the harrowing ordeal undamaged. Posting pictures of the amazing sight to Facebook, the department noted that the fire had, at one point, been so hot that they were actually forced to pull personnel from the building for their safety. The temperatures were so extreme, they explained, that everything inside should have been reduced to ashes.

However, they marveled "not a single Bible was burned" and also revealed that none of the crosses inside the church fell victim to the blaze either. While skeptical observers may offer a prosaic explanation for the odd nature in which the objects survived the fire, but one can't help but notice that the case in West Virginia is merely the latest in a series of eerily similar events involving religious items surviving massive infernos, including a painting of Jesus at a Massachusetts church, a trio of icons in Serbia, and a number of statues which were found intact after wildfires swept through Tennessee.

[SOURCE: COAST 2 COAST AM.]

TALKING GARGOYLE AT DENVER INTL AIRPORT!

As part of an ongoing celebration of its place in conspiracy theory lore, the Denver International Airport has created an animatronic gargoyle that talks to travelers. The facility has long been the subject of rumors and innuendo suggesting that it housed a secret underground hub for all manner of sinister forces, such as the Illuminati or Reptilian aliens. These tales were largely relegated to the realm of urban legend and fringe researchers until the airport decided to embrace their odd reputation back in 2016 with a temporary art installation about conspiracies connected to the location.

The airport subsequently doubled down on the idea last year when they launched a conspiracy-themed ad campaign about renovations at the site. And, now, they've taken it a step further by replacing their iconic gargoyle statues, which are often cited as a 'clue' that the location has occult underpinnings, with a robotic replica that chats up unsuspecting people nearby.

In an amusing video released by the airport showcasing their new attraction, the "243-year-old" faux statue can be seen surprising travelers as it suddenly comes to life and begins cracking jokes about conspiracy theories or roasting passengers. While those who believe that the facility really does house some kind of clandestine base for nefarious forces may argue that the gargoyle is merely an attempt at discrediting the idea, anything that makes the tediousness of airport travel a little more tolerable is alright by us.



[SOURCE: COAST 2 COAST AM.]

INSECT ARMAGEDDON!

A troubling new study warns that the world's insect population is rapidly declining and the entire planet could be in peril as a result. The worrisome research project reportedly found that the total number of bugs across the globe is dropping by around 2.5% each year. While this may not initially sound like a significant amount, scientists behind the project, which examined a whopping 73 different papers on the topic, say that insect species are going extinct at a rate eight times faster than their more sizeable counterparts like mammals and birds.

This turn of events is particularly concerning because insects are a critical component of the planet's ecosystem since they not only provide food for a vast number of animals, but also serve as pollinators for vegetation. As such, the researchers who put together the new study cautioned that the widespread extinction of these creatures would be "catastrophic to say the least" as it would have a cascading effect in which even more animals would be threatened due to the loss of sustenance and, ultimately, the human population would be profoundly impacted as well.

The scientists pointed to two culprits behind the drop in the insect population: industrial agriculture which uses powerful pesticides and rising temperatures due to climate change. While combating the latter factor has proven to be a difficult task to date, researchers say that a reexamination of how we produce food is necessary in order to try and slow down the decline before it's too late. Despite the paper's strong stance that the world is in profound danger due to the dropping number of insects, it remains to be seen if anything will be done about it as 'save the bugs' may prove to be a tough sell for some squeamish people.

[SOURCE: COAST 2 COAST AM.]

UNTOUCHED 1000-YEAR OLD MAYAN CAVE OF RITUAL OBJECTS DISCOVERED!

Maya ritual cave ‘untouched’ for 1,000 years stuns archaeologists
Exploration of Balamku (Cave of the Jaguar God) reveals ancient religious practices—and may hold clues to the rise and fall of the Maya empire.
BY GENA STEFFENS
PUBLISHED MARCH 4, 2019


Archaeologists hunting for a sacred well beneath the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula have accidentally discovered a trove of more than 150 ritual objects—untouched for more than a thousand years—in a series of cave chambers that may hold clues to the rise and fall of the ancient Maya. The discovery of the cave system, known as Balamku or “Jaguar God,” was announced by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in a press conference held today in Mexico City.

After its initial discovery by farmers in 1966, Balamku was visited by archaeologist Víctor Segovia Pinto, who wrote up a report noting the presence of an extensive amount of archaeological material. But instead of excavating the site, Segovia then directed the farmers to seal up the entrance, and all records of the discovery of the cave seemed to vanish.

Balamku remained sealed for more than 50 years, until it was reopened in 2018 by National Geographic Explorer Guillermo de Anda and his team of investigators from the Great Maya Aquifer Project during their search for the water table beneath Chichén Itzá. Exploration of the system was funded in part by a grant from the National Geographic Society.

De Anda recalls pulling himself on his stomach through the tight tunnels of Balamku for hours before his headlamp illuminated something entirely unexpected: A cascade of offerings left by the ancient residents of Chichén Itzá, so perfectly preserved and untouched that stalagmites had formed around the incense burners, vases, decorated plates, and other objects in the cavern.

“I couldn’t speak, I started to cry. I’ve analyzed human remains in [Chichén Itzá’s] Sacred Cenote, but nothing compares to the sensation I had entering, alone, for the first time in that cave,” says de Anda, who is an investigator with INAH and director of the Great Maya Aquifer Project, which seeks to explore, understand, and protect the aquifer of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

An unprecedented second chance
To access just the first of seven ritual offering chambers identified so far within Balamku, archaeologists must crawl flat on their stomachs through hundreds of feet of tortuously narrow passages. In the original report on the cave (recently located by archaeologist and GAM investigator James Brady of California State University, Los Angeles), Segovia identified 155 artifacts, some with faces of Toltec rain god Tláloc, and others with markings of the sacred ceiba tree, a potent representation of the Maya universe. In comparison, the nearby cave of Balankanché, a ritual site excavated in 1959, contains just 70 of these objects.

“Balamku appears to be the ‘mother’ of Balankanché,” says de Anda. “I don’t want to say that quantity is more important than information, but when you see that there are many, many offerings in a cave that is also much more difficult to access, this tells us something.”

Why Segovia would decide to seal up such a phenomenal discovery is still a matter of debate. But in doing so, he inadvertently provided researchers with an unprecedented “second chance” to answer some of the most perplexing questions that continue to stir controversy among Mayanists today, such as such as the level of contact and influence exchanged between different Mesoamerican cultures, and what was going on in the Maya world prior to the fall of Chichén Itzá.

Entrances to the Underworld

“For the ancient Maya, caves and cenotes [sinkoles] were considered openings to the underworld,” says Holley Moyes, a University of California, Merced expert on the archaeology and religious use of Maya caves who was not a part of the project. “They represent some of the most sacred spaces for the Maya, ones that also influenced site planning and social organization. They are fundamental, hugely important, to the Maya experience.”

But until the concept of cave archaeology began to take shape in the 1980s, archaeologists were more interested in monumental architecture and intact artifacts than they were in analyzing the residues and materials found in and around objects. When Balankanché was excavated in 1959, caves were still mapped by hand in the dark and artifacts were routinely removed from their sites, cleaned, and later put back. Of all the incense burners found in Balankanché that were filled with material that could have provided definitive evidence related to the chronology of the site, for instance, only one was ever analyzed.

Investigators of the Great Maya Aquifer Project see the (re)discovery of Balamku as a chance to implement a totally new model of cave archaeology, one that employs cutting-edge technology and specialized fields such as 3-D mapping and paleobotany. These new insights could give us a much more detailed idea of what was actually occurring in Maya cave rituals, as well as the history of the great city of Chichén Itzá, which declined for unknown reasons in the 13th century.

“Balamku can tell us not only the moment of collapse of Chichén Itzá,” says de Anda. “It can also probably tell us the moment of its beginning. Now, we have a sealed context, with a great quantity of information, including useable organic matter, that we can use to understand the development of Chichén Itzá.”

Further study of the site will also shed light on the intimate details of the catastrophic droughts that likely provoked the collapse of the Maya civilization. While this area has always been prone to drastic cycles of climate variability, some researchers have suggested that excessive deforestation in the Maya lowlands, which was once home to some 10-15 million people, could have exacerbated the problem and made the entire region uninhabitable.

Understanding these past cycles can have an added benefit for modern life as well, says National Geographic archaeologist-in-residence Fredrik Hiebert. “By studying these caves and cenotes, it’s possible to learn some lessons for how to best use the environment today, in terms of sustainability for the future.”

In this sense, de Anda believes archaeology has the potential to become a much more “useful” science.

“It’s always been considered the opposite—a beautiful and interesting field of science, but without a great deal of utility,” he says. “I think that here, we will be able to demonstrate the contrary, because when we begin to understand these marvelous contexts, we can understand the footprints of humankind’s past, and what was happening on Earth during one of the most dramatic moments in history.”

[SOURCE: michaelsavage.com.]

THE DARK SECRET OF THE BLACK LAGOON

In her new book, The Lady From the Black Lagoon, author Mallory O'Meara comes out swinging from the first page. In defense of Milicent Patrick, the true designer of the monster that we know as The Creature From the Black Lagoon, Ms. O'Meara makes the claim in the first few paragraphs of her introduction that Patrick was a victim of the kind of 50's male aggression that was pervasive during the period. In particular, she cites makeup artist Bud Westmore as being so power hungry and so jealous of her talent that he kicked her out from under her artist's stool, sabotaged her work, and eventually blackballed her from Hollywood.

The author aims to set the record straight and does so in a feminist-flame of retribution against the male machinations of Hollywood. Under this veneer, Milicent Patrick is shown as an extremely talented artist who got her start at Disney as one of the first female animators, who went on to create several monster designs for films, and even appeared in a few movies herself. We've seen photos of her on the internet and know somewhat of her travails, but this book provides the whole story.

Following is an article from the NY Post online that further illuminates the interesting tale.

Why this Hollywood movie legend was blackballed
By Raquel Laneri March 9, 2019 | 12:49pm | NY POST

Milicent Patrick helped invent a new kind of animation at Disney. She was the first woman to work in special effects for a movie studio. And she designed sci-fi and horror creatures that would go on to influence filmmakers from Steven Spielberg to Guillermo del Toro.

Patrick was such a big deal in her day that, in 1954, Universal sent her on a cross-country tour. The former model, then 38, went to theaters and TV stations with drawings and prototypes of the studio’s famed monsters, including her own design for the Gill Man from “Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

But she was also blackballed from Hollywood by a jealous male boss who stole her legacy.

Now a new book by Mallory O’Meara, “The Lady from the Black Lagoon,” restores Patrick’s rightful place in film history.

“She wasn’t being helplessly carried away in the arms of the monster,” O’Meara writes. “She was creating it.”

Milicent Patrick was not only a talented artist, but she was a beautiful
and glamorous woman as well.

Born Mildred Elisabeth Fulvia Rossi in 1915 to a San Francisco society girl and an engineer who helped build Hearst Castle, Patrick went on to graduate from the ­Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. In 1939 she became one of Disney’s first female animators. There she helped pioneer a signature style, diluting paint to create an impressionistic “pastel effect,” which she used to animate the winged demon in the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence in 1940’s “Fantasia.”

But all that detail work led to unbearable migraines, and she quit Disney after two years.

Making her living as a model and a bit player in movies, she changed her name to Milicent Patrick — taken from a short-lived marriage — and told people she was an Italian baroness.

On set, Patrick would draw portraits of her co-stars, which is reportedly how Bud Westmore, head of Universal’s makeup department, came to hire her in 1952.

Patrick designed the looks of characters that the props and makeup team would bring to life. She came up with Errol Flynn’s pirate mustache for “Against All Flags,” the masks for “Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and the creepy eyeball in “It Came From Outer Space.” But her greatest creation was the Gill Man.

Like “Beauty and the Beast” with a sci-fi twist, “Creature from the Black Lagoon” revolved around a sea monster who falls in love with a human woman. Patrick took the concept art — a guy in a spandex leotard — and discarded it for a superhero suit of articulated scales, based on prehistoric aquatic animals. The head, with its prominent brow and lush lips, didn’t disguise the actor’s humanity, allowing his eyes to show heartache.

“[Gill Man] elicits so much empathy,” O’Meara told The Post.

Patrick among her monster creations.

When Westmore got wind that Universal was planning a huge tour around Patrick, he demanded it be rebranded from “The Beauty Who Created the Beast” to “The Beauty Who Lives With the Beasts,” and that Patrick credit the design to “Westmore and his staff” instead of claiming her sole ownership.

She went along with it — and was such a hit that journalists devoted reams of copy to her beauty, glamorous get-ups and jarring affinity for frightful ghouls.

Driven by jealousy, Westmore not only sacked Patrick, he blackballed her from every makeup department in Hollywood. He also stole drawings she had been working on for Universal’s “This Island Earth” and claimed them as his own.

“It was the ’50s. She couldn’t fight back,” said O’Meara.

Patrick continued to work as a bit actress through the 1960s. She also had a string of doomed romances: one lover committed suicide, another died of cancer. Her family had long ago cut her off, considering her work as a model akin to prostitution.

She never stopped creating: Patrick designed her own outfits and drew portraits of co-stars including Kirk Douglas. When Westmore died in 1973, she began, privately, to take credit for the Creature.

“She never allowed herself to be tamped down,” O’Meara said of Patrick, who died in 1998 at age 83. “She carried her SAG card till her death; she filled her home with portraits of friends.”

Now, O’Meara added, Patrick is having the last laugh. “Westmore may have killed her career, but he couldn’t kill her artistic spirit.”

[SOURCE: NYPost.com.]