The Man HimselfRaymond Frederick Harryhausen was born on the 29th June 1920 in Los

Angeles, California, USA, to parents Fred and Martha.

He had a passion, which never abated, for dinosaurs and anything fantasy.

His parents both encouraged him to pursue what he wanted to, even if the

chosen career wasn’t what they would have probably

considered usual.

His favourite haunts as a child were museums, marionette

shows, the ocean, local parks and movie houses.

Early InspirationIt was whilst at Grammar school that he learnt how to make model miniature set. 

This took him to the next phase in which he began to make three dimensional

figures and sets that of course led him to make his own versions of prehistoric

creatures. 

He discovered the LA County Museum where he marvelled at the murals of

prehistoric creatures created by Charles R. Knight (1874-1953), particularly the

one of the Le Brea Tar Pits which is still in situ. Knight’s visualisation of what

dinosaurs looked like became the vision that Ray used throughout his career. 

When he was eighteen years old Ray entered a competition called The Junior

Museum Hobby Show at the County Museum in March/April of 1938, submitting a

diorama that included his stegosaurus (based on Knight’s paintings), which won

first prize. 

Early DaysThe young Ray began to recreate images from King Kong by using

marionettes or string puppets.

He searched around to try and find out how Kong seemed to be ‘alive’ and

eventually he discovered articles that included information about

something called stop-motion animation.

“As I continued to study and learn how the effects for Kong were achieved,

I realised this was something I really wanted to try for myself and perhaps

even be part of, so I began to construct my own miniature dioramas and

crude models, which eventually led me to take the step in making larger

moveable figures”.

Early WorkIn 1938, when Ray was just eighteen years old he began his most

ambitious project called Evolution of the World, in which he planned to

visualise the dawn of the planet to the end of the age of the dinosaurs.

He designed and built a number of models including a tyrannosaurus

rex, a triceratops, a brontosaurus and pterodacty.

Sadly the project was way too ambitious and when Ray saw the ‘Rites of

Spring’ sequence in Walt Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia, he

knew that the project was doomed.

Willis O’Brien (Obie)It was during Ray’s work on Evolution that he met Willis O'Brien, the man who had created the

dinosaurs and animated them for The Lost World and King Kong.

He called O’Brien at the MGM Studios. Taking some of his own models, Ray made his way to the

studio. He said, “I walked in and my jaw just dropped [...] it was breathtaking”.

Eventually Ray plucked up the courage to show Obie some of his own creations that he had

brought with him. Nervously he produced the stegosaurus, the one that had won first prize at

the LA County Museum, and handed it to Obie. Obie looked at it for a few minutes and then

said, ‘The legs look like wrinkled sausages. You’ve got to put more character into it and study

anatomy to learn where the muscles connect to the bone’.

That day was a turning point in Ray’s design and execution of a model and led to still further

fluid animation as when he did get creatures anatomically correct, moving them seemed more

natural.

Art & FilmmakingTaking Obie’s advise Ray enrolled in art and anatomy night classes at the

Los Angeles City College (LACC).

Still later Ray realised that he needed to know about techniques of filming

so he decided to attend night classes at the University of Southern

California where he studied a number of disciplines including art direction,

editing and photography.

He also made frequent trips to the zoo to study

animals and see how they reacted. 

Art & FilmmakingWhen he left high school Ray began to look around for work as an animator. Ray noticed an

advert in the paper asking for technicians with film and animation techniques experience to

work on short films. There he was interviewed by a Hungarian film producer who had escaped

the Nazis and settled in Hollywood, his name was George Pal.

Pal was to produce a series of shorts to be called Madcap Models, which were later to become

Puppetoons. Ray was one of the first animators to join Pal.

Pal’s European styled models were made of wood and each movement necessitated a separate

set of legs and heads. This allowed the animator very little creativity, which didn’t really suit

Ray.

As the production became more successful the staff increased and for a very short time,

perhaps only ten days, Ray and Pal were joined by Obie. Like Ray, Obie disliked the process of

animating pre-planned models so left. After working on thirteen Puppetoons Ray also left. He

was reluctant to do so because he liked Pal but he had the feeling that he could do better.

The War and Mother Goose

During the war, Ray made many propaganda films and also work alongside Frank

Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life).

After being honourably discharged, Ray went on to produce some of his most

notable early work, The Mother Goose series.

Ray decided he would make his own short films and using some out of date 16mm

colour Kodachrome stock he had acquired, and with the help of his father and

mother, he shot a series of nursery rhymes that included Little Miss Muffet, Old

Mother Hubbard, The Queen of Hearts and Humpty Dumpty.

When he had completed all of these stories he lumped them

all together under the title The Mother Goose Stories (1946),

which he distributed to schools with great success.

Notable ProjectsWithin a few years, Ray’s name became synonymous with stop motion animation

and he went on to pioneer new and exciting techniques.

Notable Harryhausen titles include:

• Mighty Joe Young (1949)

• It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)

• Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

• The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960)

• Mysterious Island (1961)

• Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

• The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

• Clash of the Titans (1981)

‘Dynamation’For many years Ray had had an idea that would allow the live action to be ‘split’ so

enabling a model to be inserted directly into the action and appear to interact with

the actors.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

This is generally seen as Ray’s best picture. Harryhausen said, “everything seemed

to fit and work so well”.

This is the film we shall be watching fully.

His LegacyRay ’retired’ from dimensional animation in 1984 although he did indulge himself

occasionally, to keep his hand in, on such projects as the UK television documentary

Working With Dinosaurs (1999) and the completion of The Tortoise and the Hare, now

called The Story of the Tortoise and the Hare (2001/2).

The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation now owns and looks after his extensive

collection of models, artwork, stills and miniatures, preserving and exhibiting the

50,000 + items into the future so protecting his legacy and his art.

Ray was the father of stop-motion animation (he called Willis O’Brien the grandfather).