Mr. Lanagan's Big Break

Glenn Langan
July 8, 1917 - Jan. 19, 1991

Now, let's get one thing straight. This piece has nothing to do with Glenn Langan. He's incidental to it, really, and I know nothing about the man. Other than his birth and death dates and film credits (and having seen one of his movies many, many times), I may or may not have any idea what I'm talking about.

You can work your entire life, slowly and methodically mastering your craft, and never get the attention you seek. It happens to a lot of people. Glenn Langan (or Langen, depending on your source) was one such man. From his early 20s on, he slowly and steadily worked in a series of films, with each acting role being meatier than the preceding one, and yet true stardom eluded him. A good actor, reliable and employable, sure...but was he known? Answer: no.

But ultimately it paid off. All those auditions, all that time pounding the pavement, it lead up to the role of a lifetime.

That's right, 1957's The Amazing Colossal Man.

It's the tale of Major Glenn Manning, exposed to radiation in a government experiment, who grows to an amazing colossal size in the middle of the Nevada desert. After experiencing self-pity and angst over his predicament, he does what any man would do...he goes to Las Vegas and steps on things.

It was the role of a lifetime, and these days it's the role that Glenn Langan is best remembered for. It's one of director Bert I. Gordon's more successful giant monster movies, and he made a metric buttload of those (it also seems to have indirectly inspired Stan Lee and Jack Kirby when they were creating The Incredible Hulk for Marvel Comics in 1962...but that's another story). It was a decent flick in the classic monster tradition.

But that's where the tragedy comes in. The rules of monster movies in those days were different. The man (or woman) who becomes the monster had to be a well-intentioned, average person. Through a cruel plot device of fate, he is cursed to spend the rest of his life (usually about 68 minutes, give or take) causing mayhem and being hounded like an animal. The monster becomes increasingly insane and violent over the remainder of the film and kills innocent people. In the end, the monster is destroyed for the good of mankind. No exceptions.

Unless the movie makes money, that is...in which case the monster comes back for War of the Colossal Beast in 1958. Which it did, and it did.

But Glenn Langan wasn't in that one. His character was made facially disfigured so you couldn't tell it was some other actor playing the part. Odds are he wanted more money, or wanted to be taken more seriously, so he went back to doing television. Glenn Langan's last film was a very small uncredited part in The Andromeda Strain in 1971 and he died of cancer in 1991.

But again, this rambling and disjointed piece is not really about Glenn Langan, who was born 92 years ago today.

It's about a giant bald guy walking around the desert, looking like Mr. Clean in an oversized diaper, picking up toy cars and looking inside them, and throwing a giant syringe at an army dude and killing him with it.

Now that's entertainment...and they don't make 'em like that any more.