You never know when inspiration strikes, but if you're lucky, it'll probably happen at one of Orson Welles' very fancy dinner parties.

For some, it seems like a dream, but William Alland, it was an incredible reality. According to Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic by Mark Vieira, film producer William Alland was given the inspiration for The Creature From the Black Lagoon in the most unexpected of ways.

Vieira wrote that Allan was in attendance at a dinner party hosted by none other than Dolores Del Rio and director Orson Welles. There, he struck up a conversation with cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Today, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest cinematographers of Mexico. Vieira explained that at that dinner party, Figueroa recounted an urban legend of sorts that would mark the true beginnings of The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

"Figueroa told Allan about a region along the Amazon River where dwelt a race of creatures that were half fish and half human," wrote Vieira. "Ten years later, Alland wrote a memo, putting a fish-man into a beauty-and-beast story called The Sea Monster. It was expanded into a treatment in December 1952 by Maurice Zimm, then by Harry Essex and Arthur Ross as The Black Lagoon."

Of course, the story went through several transitions and changes from its initial inception. Most notably, Essex and Ross didn't want to make their film the stuff of fable. They wanted audiences to sympathize with the monster, now affectionately referred to as Gill-man.

"The whole idea was to give the Creature a kind of humanity," said Essex. "All he wants is to love this girl, but everybody's chasing him!"