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Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American-British animator and creator who is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of both fields. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he built upon the techniques of his mentor, Willis H. O'Brien, to develop a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation" and advance the field of cinematic special effects. Though not credited as a writer or director on any of the feature films he worked on, the role he played in shaping those he made during his peak years has led to him being regarded as "cinema's sole visual effects auteur," and the creatures and sequences he animated are considered some of the most iconic in the history of cinema.
Inspired by O'Brien's work on The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933), Harryhausen spent his adolescence developing his skills with stop motion, leading to him working under O'Brien on Mighty Joe Young (1949) and The Animal World (1956). He took charge of the animation on The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) before teaming up with producer Charles H. Schneer, with whom he would make 12 films over 26 years. These include It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), First Men in the Moon (1964), The Valley of Gwangi (1969), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and Clash of the Titans (1981), after which he retired from feature filmmaking. He also created the special effects for One Million Years B.C. (1966), produced by Hammer Films.
In 1960, Harryhausen moved to the United Kingdom and became a dual American-British citizen. During his life, his innovative style of special effects in films inspired numerous filmmakers, and homages to Harryhausen and his work have appeared in a wide range of media. He spent his retirement giving talks, authoring books, and appearing in retrospectives on his work and legacy. In 1986, he and his wife Diana Livingston Bruce founded the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation to preserve his models and archives, which have been the subject of multiple exhibitions around the world. His accolades include the honorary Gordon E. Sawyer Academy Awards, an honorary BAFTA, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Visual Effects Society. His death in May 2013 was met by widespread tributes from filmmakers, animators, and special effects technicians, with Peter Lord calling him "a one-man industry and a one-man genre."
After studying art and anatomy at Los Angeles City College, Harryhausen secured his first commercial model-animation job, on George Pal Puppetoons shorts, based on viewing his first formal demo reel of fighting dinosaurs from a project called Evolution, which was never finished, after Harryhausen saw Disney's Rite of Spring montage in Fantasia.
During World War II, Harryhausen served in the U.S. Army's Special Services Division under Colonel Frank Capra, as a loader, clapper boy, gofer and later camera assistant, whilst working at home animating short films about the use and development of military equipment. During this time, he also worked with composer Dimitri Tiomkin and Ted Geisel ("Dr. Seuss"). Following the war, he salvaged several rolls of discarded 16 mm surplus film from which he made a series of fairy tale-based shorts, which he called his "teething-rings".
In 1947, Harryhausen was hired as an assistant animator (credited as "First technician, Special Effects") on what turned out to be his first major film, Mighty Joe Young (1949).
It was on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms that Harryhausen first used a technique he created called "Dynamation" which split the background and foreground of pre-shot live action footage into two separate images into which he would animate a model or models, seemingly integrating the live-action with the models. The background would be used as a miniature rear-screen with his models animated in front of it, re-photographed with an animation-capable camera to combine those two elements together, the foreground element matted out to leave a black space. Then the film was rewound, and everything except the foreground element matted out so that the foreground element would now photograph in the previously blacked-out area. This created the effect that the animated model was "sandwiched" in between the two live-action elements, right into the final live action scene.
In most of Harryhausen's films, model animated characters interact with, and are a part of, the live action world, with the idea that they will cease to call attention to themselves as only "animation." Most of the effects shots in his earliest films were created via Harryhausen's careful frame-by-frame control of the lighting of both the set and the projector. This dramatically reduced much of degradation common in the use of back-projection or the creation of dupe negatives via the use of an optical printer. Harryhausen's use of diffused glass to soften the sharpness of light on the animated elements allowed the matching of the soft background plates far more successfully than Willis O'Brien had achieved in his early films, allowing Harryhausen to match live and miniature elements seamlessly in most of his shots. By developing and executing most of this miniature work himself, Harryhausen saved money, while maintaining full technical control.
A few years later, when Harryhausen began working with color film to make The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, he experimented extensively with color film stocks to overcome the color-balance-shift problems. Ray's producer/partner Charles H. Schneer coined the word Dynamation as a "merchandising term" (modifying it to "SuperDynaMation" and then "Dynarama" for some subsequent films).
Harryhausen was always heavily involved in the pre-production conceptualizing of each film's story, script development, art-direction, design, storyboards, and general tone of his films, as much as any Auteur theory director would have on any other film, which any "director" of Harryhausen's films had to understand and agree to work under. The complexities of the Directors Guild of America's rules prevented Harryhausen from being credited as the director of his films, resulting in the more modest credits he had in most of his films.
Throughout most of his career, Harryhausen's work was a sort of family affair. His father did the machining of the metal armatures (based on his son's designs) that were the skeletons for the models and allowed them to keep their position, while his mother assisted with some miniature costumes. After Harryhausen's father died in 1973, Harryhausen contracted his armature work out to another machinist. An occasional assistant, George Lofgren, a taxidermist, assisted Harryhausen with the creation of furred creatures. Another associate, Willis Cook, built some of Harryhausen's miniature sets. Other than that, Harryhausen worked generally alone to produce almost all of the animation for his films.
The same year that Beast was released, 1953, fledgling film producer Irwin Allen released a live action documentary about life in the oceans titled The Sea Around Us, which won an Academy Award for best documentary feature film of that year. Allen's and Harryhausen's paths would cross three years later, on Allen's sequel to this film.
Harryhausen soon met and began a fruitful partnership with producer Charles H. Schneer, who was working with the Sam Katzman B-picture unit of Columbia Pictures. Their first tandem project was It Came from Beneath the Sea (a.k.a. Monster from Beneath the Sea, 1955), about a giant octopus attacking San Francisco. It was a box-office success, quickly followed by Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), set in Washington D.C. – one of the best of the alien invasion films of the 1950s, and also a box office hit.
In 1954, Irwin Allen had started work on a second feature-length documentary film, this one about animal life on land called The Animal World (completed in 1956). Needing an opening sequence about dinosaurs, Allen hired premier model animator Willis O'Brien to animate the dinosaurs, but then gave him a practically impossibly short production schedule. O'Brien again hired Harryhausen to help with animation to complete the eight-minute sequence. It was Harryhausen's and O'Brien's first and only professional full-color work. ( Animal World is available on the DVD release of O'Brien's 1957 film The Black Scorpion.)
Harryhausen then returned to Columbia and Charles Schneer to make 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), about an American spaceship returning from the planet Venus. The spaceship crashes into the sea near Sicily, releasing an on-board alien egg specimen which washes up on shore. The egg soon hatches a creature that, in Earth's atmosphere, rapidly grows to gigantic size and terrifies the citizens of Rome. Harryhausen refined and improved his already-considerable ability at establishing emotional characterizations in the face of his Venusian Ymir model, creating yet another international box office hit.
Schneer was eager to graduate to full-color films. Reluctant at first, Harryhausen managed to develop the systems necessary to maintain proper color balances for his DynaMation process, resulting in his biggest hit of the 1950s, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). The top-grossing film of that summer, and one of the top-grossing films of that year, Schneer and Harryhausen signed another deal with Columbia for four more color films.
Harryhausen was then hired by Hammer Films to animate the dinosaurs for One Million Years B.C. (1966). It was a success at the box office, helped in part by the presence of Raquel Welch in her second film. Harryhausen next went on to make another dinosaur film, The Valley of Gwangi with Schneer. The project had been developed for Columbia, who declined. Schneer then made a deal with Warner Brothers instead. It was a personal project to Harryhausen, which he had wanted to do for many years, as it was storyboarded by his original mentor, Willis O'Brien for a 1939 film, Gwangi, that was never completed. Set in Mexico, The Valley of Gwangi is a parallel Kong story—cowboys capture a living Allosaurus and bring him to the nearest Mexican town for exhibition. Sabotage releases the creature, and it wreaks havoc on the town. The film features a roping scene reminiscent of 1949's Mighty Joe Young (which was itself recycled from the old Gwangi storyboards), and a spectacular fire and animation sequence inside a cathedral toward the end of the film, combining multiple special effects.
Schneer and Harryhausen finally were allowed by MGM to produce a big budget film with name actors and an expanded effects budget. The film started out smaller, but then MGM increased the budget to hire stars such as Laurence Olivier. It became the last feature film to showcase his effects work, Clash of the Titans (1981), for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Special Effects. For this film, he hired protégé model animators Steve Archer and two-time Oscar-nominated Jim Danforth to assist with major animation sequences. Harryhausen fans will readily discern that the armed-and-finned Kraken (a name borrowed from medieval Scandinavian folklore) he invented for Clash of the Titans has similar facial qualities to the Venusian Ymir he created 25 years earlier for 20 Million Miles to Earth.
Perhaps because of his hermetic production style and the fact that he produced half of his films outside of Hollywood (living in London since 1960), reducing his day-to-day kinship with other more traditional, but still influential Hollywood effects artists, none of Harryhausen's films were nominated for a special effects Oscar. Harryhausen himself says the reason was that he worked in Europe, but this oversight by the AMPAS visual-effects committee also occurred throughout the 1950s when Harryhausen lived in Los Angeles.
In spite of the very successful box office returns of Clash of the Titans, more sophisticated computer-assisted technology developed by ILM and others began to eclipse Harryhausen's production techniques, and so MGM and other studios passed on funding his planned sequel, Force of the Trojans, causing Harryhausen and Schneer to retire from active filmmaking.
In the early 1970s, Harryhausen had also concentrated his efforts on authoring a book, Film Fantasy Scrapbook (produced in three editions as his last three films were released), and supervising the restoration and release of (eventually all) his films to VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, and currently Blu-ray. A second book followed, Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life, written with author and friend Tony Dalton, which details his techniques and history. "Model Heroes: ... Ray Harryhausen recalls the battles behind the scenes of Jason and the Argonauts". Ray Harryhausen. The Guardian. December 20, 2003. Retrieved 2009-01-27. This is an edited extract from Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton (Aurum Press, 2003). Amazon page Retrieved 2009-01-27. This was then followed in 2005 by The Art of Ray Harryhausen, featuring sketches and drawings for his many projects, some of them unrealized. In 2008, Harryhausen and Dalton published a history of stop-motion model animation, A Century of Model Animation, and, to celebrate Harryhausen's 90th birthday, the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation published Ray Harryhausen – A Life in Pictures. In 2011, Harryhausen and Dalton's last volume, called Ray Harryhausen's Fantasy Scrapbook, was also published.
Harryhausen continued his lifelong friendship with Ray Bradbury until Bradbury's death in 2012. Another longtime close friend was Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine editor, book writer, and sci-fi collector Forrest J Ackerman, who loaned Harryhausen his photos of King Kong in 1933, right after Harryhausen had seen the film for the first time. Harryhausen also maintained his friendships with his longtime producer, Charles H. Schneer, who lived next door to him in a suburb of London until Schneer moved full-time to the U.S. (a few years later, in early 2009, Schneer died at 88 in Boca Raton, Florida); "Charles H. Schneer, Sci-Fi Film Producer, Dies at 88" by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, January 27, 2009, p. A28 (NY edition). Retrieved 2009-01-27. and with model animation protégé, Jim Danforth, still living in the Los Angeles area.
Harryhausen and Terry Moore appeared in small comedic cameo roles in the 1998 remake of Mighty Joe Young, and he provided the voice of a polar bear cub in the film Elf. He also appears as a bar patron in Beverly Hills Cop III, and as a doctor in the John Landis film Spies Like Us. In 2010, Harryhausen had a brief cameo in Burke & Hare, a British film directed by Landis.
In 1986, Harryhausen formed the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation, a registered charity in the U.K. and U.S. that preserves his collection and promotes the art of stop-motion animation and Harryhausen's contributions to the genre.
In 2009, he released self-colorized versions on Blu-Ray video of three of his classic black-and-white Columbia films: 20 Million Miles to Earth, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and It Came from Beneath the Sea. He also personally supervised the colorization of three films, two of them in partial tribute to their producer Merian C. Cooper, who had supervised King Kong, the film that inspired him as a young man: The Most Dangerous Game (1932), She (1935), and the non-Cooper film Things to Come (1936).
Harryhausen was buried in St Peter's Church, Brooke, Norfolk.
The Daily Mirror quoted Harryhausen's website, saying his "influence on today's film makers was enormous, with luminaries; Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, John Landis and the U.K.'s own Nick Park have cited Harryhausen as being the man whose work inspired their own creations." Harryhausen drew a distinction between films that combine special effects animation with live action and films that are completely animated, such those of Nick Park, Henry Selick, Ivo Caprino, Ladislav Starevich (and his own fairy tale shorts), which he saw as pure "puppet films", and which are more accurately (and traditionally) called "puppet animation".
The BBC quoted Peter Lord of Aardman Animations, who wrote on Twitter that Harryhausen was "a one-man industry and a one-man genre". The BBC also quoted Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright: "I loved every single frame of Ray Harryhausen's work ... He was the man who made me believe in monsters." In a full statement released by the family, George Lucas said, "Without Ray Harryhausen, there would likely have been no Star Wars". Terry Gilliam said, "What we do now digitally with computers, Ray did digitally long before but without computers. Only with his digits." James Cameron said, "I think all of us who are practitioners in the arts of science fiction and fantasy movies now all feel that we're standing on the shoulders of a giant. If not for Ray's contribution to the collective dreamscape, we wouldn't be who we are."
John Walsh, author of , calls Harryhausen "the most influential stop-motion animator and special-effects wizard in cinema history."
In November 2016 the BFI compiled a list of those present-day filmmakers who claim to have been inspired by Harryhausen, including Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Joe Dante, Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Nick Park, James Cameron, and Guillermo del Toro. Others influenced by him include George Lucas, John Lasseter, John Landis, Henry Selick, J. J. Abrams, Wes Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, special effects supervisors Phil Tippett,, StarWars.com and Dennis Muren,Visual Effects Society narrator, "Lifetime Achievement Award" presentation, February 11, 2007 and video game creator David Jaffe.
In 2013, the RH foundation and Arrow Films released a feature-length biography of Harryhausen and his films, Ray Harryhausen – Special Effects Titan, on Blu-Ray. Featuring photos, artifacts, and film clips culled directly from Harryhausen's estate and never before seen by the public, the film was initially released only in the U.K., but was released on Blu-Ray in the U.S. in 2016.
In February 2016, John Walsh and Collections Manager Connor Heaney began a podcast about all things Harryhausen, from the films to the various composers involved on the productions. Occasionally the podcast features interviews with fans, as well as insights into Harryhausen's models from Foundation model conservator Alan Friswell. The podcast has featured Mark Gatiss, John Cairney, Caroline Munro, and Vanessa Harryhausen.
Some of Harryhausen's models and artworks were showcased as part of the Barbican Centre's 'Into the Unknown' exhibition from June 3 to September 1, 2017. To mark his 97th birthday on July 29, 2017, the Barbican posted a guest blog by Heaney, highlighting Harryhausen's lasting influence on science fiction.
On June 5, 2017, it was announced that a major exhibition of Harryhausen's models, "Ray Harryhausen—Mythical Menagerie", would take place at the Science Museum Oklahoma. The exhibition opened on July 29. USA Today called it "one of best museum exhibits in the U.S. this fall". In 2018 the exhibition was nominated for a Rondo Hatton Award for "Best Live Event".
An exhibition at Tate Britain from June 26 to November 19, 2017, features work from the Harryhausen collection and short film made by John Walsh on the restoration of a painting owned by Harryhausen which influenced his work.
In September 2018, Titan Books published Harryhausen – The Movie Posters by author Richard Holliss, focusing on the various movie posters associated with Harryhausen's films from across the globe.
In September 2019, Foundation trustee, Titan Books published a new book by Walsh, which delves into the hidden treasures of Ray's unrealised film projects. On 15 September, a book launch and signing event was held at the Forbidden Planet London Megastore, and was followed up with a 4K screening of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. In a podcast interview with BritFlicks, Walsh discussed his plans to further develop lost Ray Harryhausen film projects, which includes the follow-up to 1981's "Clash of the Titans", entitled "Force of the Trojans".
An exhibition opened showing items from the Harryhausen collection at the Valence House Museum on March 14, 2018. The exhibition was inspired by local man Alan Friswell, who worked with Ray Harryhausen on the creatures' restorations. It was funded by Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council.
It was also announced that Vanessa Harryhausen was writing a book to mark her father's centenary, to accompany the exhibition in Edinburgh. Also entitled , the book looks back on his personal and professional life through Vanessa's 100 favourite objects from his collection, and contains contributions from John Landis, Rick Baker, Phil Tippett, Jim Danforth and others.
In 2021, it was announced that The Ray Harryhausen Award would be launched to celebrate Ray's influence on contemporary filmmakers and animators. The first awards ceremony took place on what would have been Ray's 102nd birthday, in June 2022. The film Mad God won the inaugural award for best feature film, and six other winners were selected across a range of categories.
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