At the Son of Famous Monsters Convention in 1995 a panel was held featuring Ray Harryhausen, John Philip Law, Terry Moore & Gordon Hessler. I brought my mini tape recorder and recorded the proceedings, this is a transcript of that panel discussion and it’s accompanied by photos I took on that same day. Before I begin I have to day that this was the first time I actually saw Mr. Harryhausen in person and I was very excited to realize I would be in his presence. I hope this piece will take you to that crowded room at the Universal Sheraton back in May of 1995.
The panel began with a screening of several clips from Mighty Joe Young and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.
RH: I guess we can start this by seeing if there are any questions from the audience concerning these two films (MJY & Beast 20,0000).
Q: Did you have anything to do with the sounds the beasts made?
RH: Well that's all done in the studios, they had whole departments for that. we discuss it with them, we have certain things in mind, but they try different things. There are two or three different versions to see what goes visually with the body. Then Charles Schneer and myself pick the sound we feel is best suited for it.
Q: Being friends with Ray Bradbury, how did he respond when he heard you were making his short story into a movie?
RH: That all came about quite by accident. They had a script that was very indefinite, a treatment, the first time I came on the project. Then Mr.Dietz came in with the Saturday Evening Post story with this wonderful illustration. It was Ray's story The Foghorn. They called it The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, but it was originally called The Foghorn. So they wanted to get Ray to elaborate on the script, they just had a rough script. So we just used the light house, since Ray's story was just a short story we just worked that into the sequence. They got Ray in to work on the script and I'm not sure what all went on. There was a lot of hokey-pokey, but finally we made the picture.
Q: What were the Manhattan sky scrapers made of, when the Beast comes through and picks up the car and throws it down?
RH: Those were the real buildings, some New York architect years ago made those.
Q: Did you ever make skyscrapers?
RH: We tried not to make miniature sets, it was quite costly. On Mighty Joe Young we used glass paintings made on eight by ten foot pieces of glass. There was a background painting, then the animation table (with the miniature sets) and then a foreground piece of glass. It was a very complicated shot, the lions had to be projected in and that was a very expensive process. When I got the chance to do the Beast, I tried to simplify that process by using a minimum of miniatures. I devised a matte process by using projected images behind the beast and then matting out certain areas so it would look like the monster was in the picture. and that was later called Dynamation.
Q: When the three men were standing in front of the cage can you tell me how you did that?
RH: Oh yes, that was rear projection. First we animated the gorilla. I did all the basement scenes and the drunk scenes. I always wanted to get a drunken gorilla. That was great fun doing that, it took several weeks. We put a large screen behind the actors and the bars were part of the set lined up with the miniature bars so the creature could react and put his hand through. It required split second timing and a lot of it was done by editing process. You're not supposed to be aware on any one process so we jump to another process in the next cut.
Q: In Mighty Joe Young there was a lot of interaction between the gorilla and people and props, were you and Willis O'Brien involved in staging the action?
RH: Oh yes, Willis was in charge of the production. That was my first feature film and I had the great pleasure of working with my mentor. I met Willis O'Brien years before and he had two defunct projects, War Eagles and Gwangi. War Eagles was for MGM and Gwangi was for RKO, but they both were never made because of the war. Gwangi was made years later.
Willis O'Brien designed how the shots would be done. I had the great pleasure of working together with him on the pre production period which took about a year before we got into production. He made many drawings and sketches to make it easy for the continuity to flow throughout out the picture. That guides the directors and actors to let them know what they're looking at. Many times in the later pictures we used traveling mattes and used a blue backing and the actors had to react to that. With rear projection, it's much easier to react because you can see what's there. Then the whole thing is re photographed by another camera. So many different processes were used.
Willis O'Brien was the father of dimensional animation and he was the first one to see the theatrical possibilities of a dinosaur being a movie star. His greatest triumph was that great old hairy gorilla King Kong which has become an American legend. It's a sixty year old picture that's still great entertainment today.
Q: Do you have a personal favorite film?
RH: Of my films? Yes, well, as I told you before, I try not to have a favorite because the others get jealous, but there are always bits and pieces. I like the challenges, like seven skeletons fighting three men in Jason and the Argonauts that became quite a challenge. Then of course there was a big challenge in Clash of the Titans where I had Medusa with twelve snakes on her head. Every frame became a challenge. In each frame you had to move the head of each snake, synchronize her body movements, like putting an arrow in her bow and she had a rattlesnake's tail, those kinds of thing always present a challenge. The most complete favorite, of course is Jason and the Argonauts.
I just happen to have here, through the courtesy of Bob Burns, the real armatures for Mighty Joe young and King Kong. The larger one was King Kong. This was designed by Willis O'Brien and was a slightly larger scale than Mighty Joe. This type of armature is favored by animators, as you can see it holds its pose. You just move it a bit and take a picture, move it, take a picture and so on. Mighty Joe was on a smaller scale. I designed this for Willis O'Brien with his approval. We had four models of this and I think there were only two of Kong.
This Kong later became Son of Kong. He stripped it down and rebuilt it as the nice little gorilla. Willis O'Brien liked to use these kinds of joints, because they allowed a greater flexibility. Sometimes ball and socket joints have a tendency to distort underneath the rubber. Every joint in a real gorilla is represented, we took a photograph of a real gorilla's skeleton and machined the armature from that. This type of mechanism is covered with sponge rubber, sometimes it is built-up or cast, then a skin is put over it. I thought you'd like to see these models and I brought some that are covered.
Everybody has a skeleton. This is an original skeleton from the Seventh voyage of Sinbad. I made six others for Jason. We figured if one skeleton was good, then seven would be seven times as good. He's all jointed as well. the armature was made by my father and as you can see he has every joint a real skeleton would have. Trying to hide a metal structure inside a skeleton became quite a challenge.
Q: How did you do it?
RH: We made very small bones at the joints and then I built up the bone structure by dipping it into latex rubber. You couldn't cast it, he was too fragile.
We have another made form a mold. At that time, instead of the build up process, we modeled things in clay. The figurehead in Golden Voyage of Sinbad. This was made from the same mold as the original model. It had to be animated in the same way with a slight movement for each frame of film.
Very few people have seen a real flying saucer. Here we have a model of the medium sized flying saucer. We had three different sizes. We had three very small ones about three inches in diameter for distance shots. These, too were made by my father.
Q: In the shot where it crashed into the Washington Monument and the bits of debris fell, how did you do that? Were they suspended on invisible wires?
RH: Yes. We were making pictures on a very low budget and we couldn't afford high-speed photography which is how you'd accomplish a shot like that. You'd build a six or eight foot miniature and shoot it at 96 frames a second, but we didn't have the money for that. The Washington Monument was made of wood and each little piece that falls down was suspended on a piece of wire and for every frame of film you've got to move it an eighth of an inch and take a picture so it's all done thorough the same process as animating the saucers.
Q: Whenever you animated the creatures you were dealing with, did you have a diagram or did you improvise their movements?
RH: Well, I'm glad you asked that question because it brings up another point. Most of these stories are started with pre production drawings. We do a series of these sometimes before the scripts are written, because or pictures are essentially visual. As I said we were on a low budget and most of these things had to be designed before a director was even hired. And that hampered us to a great degree. Here is a drawing I made for the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. I made eight of these drawings of highlights that would be visually successful to do. I wanted to get away from the monster on the loose pictures and this gave us a chance to use the Dynamation process in an Arabian Nights adventure.
This is an early drawing of the Ymir and it came out quite like this except we used the real Temple of Saturn in Italy.
Here's an early drawing of the skeletons. These are various sorts of drawings to tell the directors and actors just what they're looking at because many times there's nothing there, just a stick or something. So we use these continuity drawings which are published in the script so we know a close-up goes here and a cut goes there. We didn't have the luxury of going back.
This is Jason and the Hydra. It turned out very well. Sometimes the art director uses these to create the backgrounds. For example at the Temple of Kali (from Golden Voyage of Sinbad) the director used one of these as the basis for the set.
This is from Mysterious Island, it's been compared to King Kong, the log sequence. King Kong got it out of Gustav Dore`, so we all rob Peter to pay Paul. This one became a matte painting and we put people into the footage through the use of traveling mattes.
Here's a drawing from Gwangi. Willis O'Brien started the picture in the forties and I had an old script in my garage and we found it and tried to resurrect it. This is the scene from Gwangi where the boy is lifted off the back of the horse by the pterodactyl.
And this is the Centaur he came out like this, but only inside of the cave. These drawings were important not only in planning the picture, but in publicizing it later. This one was used later in the advertising. that is the way we basically start a production and it seems to work out quite well for our type of picture. It also aids the composer often times if he starts the music before the picture has its final cut.
Q: Have you ever considered putting your drawings out as limited edition prints?
RH: Yes I have. I may do that one day. A lot of them have been published and I'm writing a new book in association with Tony Dalton a friend of mine in England who is doing a great deal of research on it. I don't know what it will be called at the moment, but we hope it will be finished by the end of the year. It will be much more detailed...revealing all.
Q: In 1981 I saw an exhibition of your art and there was one drawing that I've never seen published anywhere and the caption on it was "Skin and Bones" would you care to comment on what that was all about?
RH: That was a comedy. My wife read a Torin Smith book called Skin and Bones, a rather obscure story. We thought it would be kind of fun to do a comedy so I made a couple of illustrations of it, but we never got it off the ground, it was never finished. It was the story of a photographer who was mixing chemicals, he got some new chemicals and got them all over himself. He threw them out, but every time he'd take a drink of liquor, he'd turn into a skeleton. But you'd have to have something like a Woody Allen story to have it work.
Q: How much time is involved to produce a minimum amount of animation we would see on the screen?
RH: In the case of Jason and the Argonauts where we had seven skeletons fighting three men, on that I averaged thirteen frames a day. and that's less than a foot of film, there's sixteen frames to the foot. It's a very slow process and of course the accountants got quite upset, it was costing money. So I tried to keep those scenes at a minimum. the average of some day's work could be twenty five feet if its a simple scene with just one figure. Ten to twelve feet of film is what you'd average in a day, depending upon how complicated it is.
Q: In the movie Gwangi you had characters in rear screen trying to rope Gwangi, then you had them circle around Gwangi...how?
RH: That's mainly to confuse the mind.
Q: You succeeded!
RH: We tried to use different techniques. My main technique is having a projection screen and the monster in front of it, then a camera re photographing the monster and projection screen. and that is the basic process, but you can use that too long. So if you want people, characters to go in front of the monster you have to resort to a traveling matte, which means the actors are actually against a blue background and they later are composited within the optical printer in what is called a traveling matte. If it's done properly, you shouldn't see the seams. But its a question of duping, every time you dupe a piece of film you loose resolution, but now with television and computer and digital all make the duping process so much easier for people making films today.
Q: In that same scene, how were the riders able to throw the ropes from the horses, around the neck of the dinosaur and still be attached to the horses?
RH: You want to know how it's done. I don't want to disappoint anybody and have them looking for the seams, but we had a jeep with a pole about the same height as Gwangi. We would have the cowboys lasso the jeep which would be in the same position as the creature and the jeep. Later, by various means of hocus pocus would be blotted out and the monster would be put in its place. Does that tell you?
Q: Any comments on your work on the Puppetoons with George Pal?
RH: That was a totally different technique, of course. The Puppetoon is a stylized puppet like The Nightmare Before Christmas. That was very similar to a Pal Puppetoon.
That was a pleasure to work on , but I never found it as creative. It wasn't as satisfying as using an articulated figure like this where you create the movement on the set. The Pal Puppetoons were all pre conceived by a cartoon method where each step was figured out on paper and the figure was cut out of wood. It would take 25 figures to make one step so you could keep repeating that like an assembly line method.
It was fun, I had a great deal of joy working on it and I certainly learned one thing and that was patience. It takes a great deal of patience to sit there and change things like taking the pimentos out of olives. This is much more creative, you create all your illusion of movement on the set. You may have a broad outline that is dictated by these preliminary drawings, but the movement has to be synchronized with the movement of the actors. So it takes a great deal more of what I think of as creativity to actually create on the set the character of the figure, it's a different technique.
Q: Years ago there was talk of another Sinbad movie, can you tell us about that.
RH: Yes, it was called Sinbad on Mars. (laughter) Everybody laughs when I say that. Everybody's gotta go somewhere, we had him go to Atlantis and Lemuria. We could have had him go to hell, but that wasn't very attractive, Jason had already been there. We had a good way to get him up to Mars, a very logical way, but after we got him to Mars, our script got bogged down and we abandoned the project before it got made.
Q: How was he going to get to Mars?
RH: I have nothing to say. I may want to revive it.
Q: Did Willis O'Brien ever discuss with you footage that was cut out of King Kong?
RH: I don't think there was that much animation footage. One big sequence that was cut out of course, was the spider sequence over the gorge where Kong shook the men off the log. That was quite elaborate, but the producer felt it slowed the picture down. The only person I know of who's ever seen it is Ray Bradbury. He said he saw a preview of it in Phoenix or San Bernardino. But footage of it has never surfaced. I don't know where it is, but it was photographed and put in the picture. Then there was also the triceratops that chased the men on to the l log. They edited that out and I think they were quite right in doing that, because that was one of the great pictures that kept the pace going. The pace never stopped, Merian Cooper knew what he was doing, he was a great film maker.
RH: Before we go on I want to introduce you to the star of Mighty Joe Young, Terry Moore.
Terry Moore: Whenever my children and now my grandchildren come to visit, they always want to know where Mighty Joe Young is and I tell them that he's in Africa. They want to know it he lives in a condo with a swimming pool.
RH: I hope you explained to them he wasn't real.
TM: They'd like to think he is real, like Santa Claus. And they always want to visit him. It was funny, our director Earnest Schodesack was very tall, six foot six, and all the kids used to come up to him and ask "Are you Mighty Joe Young?"
Earnest was a real soldier of fortune, at the time he made King Kong and Chang and all those other movies all the directors held their own cameras and he was one of the greatest camera men in the world. He hunted Bengal tigers. He fought with Lawrence of Olivier...I mean Lawrence of Arabia. He was really a very macho man and during World War II he was a fighter pilot and he put his head out of the window and his eyes froze. So, he was nearly blind. He still directed the movie. He and his wife, Ruth, who wrote Mighty Joe Young and King Kong, sort of adopted me. From the time of Mighty Joe Young up until his death he would have me to his house for lunch on rainy days when he could see better. Bright sunlight distorted things for him. He had in his den one of the original models of Mighty Joe young and he was leaving that Mighty Joe Young to me when he died. But after his wife died the maid stole the model, she probably didn't know the value of it or anything, she just took it home for her kids to play with, it was very, very sad.
And this man (Harryhausen) was working behind the scenes all the time. When I was handing Joe a banana and saying "Here Joe, have a banana," I was working alone. Joe wasn't there. Then you went off and were working alone, but at least you had your gorilla.
RH: That was called "Gorilla My Dreams"
(large groans from audience)
TM: He was such a sweet gorilla. I just saw it recently and I sat there crying my eyes out. People ask me if I still cry at my movies and I tell them every time I see Mighty Joe Young, I cry.
RH: He was a good gorilla, but he didn't quite make the money of King Kong. But I think that people like to see gorillas in things. People think gorillas destroy, but they don't. Mighty Joe was more like a real gorilla than Kong was.
Q: Seriously about the name of the gorilla, Ray, didn't you have a name for your favorite armature?
RH: There were four models of this size made of the gorilla. They wanted to get more people animating because I was the only one turning out animation for quite a number of months and they wanted to get another set up going, so there were several other models made. The favorite one was mine, which I think was this one, it looks very familiar, and I called it Jennifer after Jennifer Jones. Because at the same time Selznick was at the same studio making "Duel In The Sun". We saw some of the dailies of "Duel In The Sun" and there was a scene with Jennifer's little hand quivering up over a rock and for some reason I decided this gorilla should be called Jennifer. I wouldn't want to tell Jennifer that because she's such a great actress, but that was my favorite model.
TM When I look at this (armature) and think I've been in its arms, it picked me up.
RH Since he was a baby.
TM He was my best friend.
RH We have another couple of people, from "The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad", Gordon Hessler, the Director and John Philip Law who played Sinbad.
John you have a lot in common with Terry Moore in that you had to play a lot of scenes with nothing there. And Gordon had to direct scenes with one of the characters not being there. I'm sure everyone would be interested to hear what Gordon has to say about his experience with Dyanmation.
GH Quite devastating. Without Ray's help it would have been complete nonsense. Basically it was an acting problem because they had no idea of what they would be seeing or what these creatures would be like. All of these things were created later by Ray in post. All we had on the set was a stick to push around.
RH The Monster Pole.
GH But they didn't actually have a monster when they were acting and it was very difficult for them to react to. They only reacted to this pole.
JPL An interesting thing I remember on the set were the chalk lines. You drew those chalk lines and said whatever you do don't cross those lines.
Q Would it be possible to hear any of those wonderful Arab proverbs that you had in the movie?
JPL Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel. I always liked that line.
RH Wasn't there one about "He who walks in fire, burns his feet"?
JPL (with Sinbad accent) He who walks in fire, burns his feet.
RH Gordon and I were out on location for some time and they had supposedly rehearsed the scene in the temple where the green men were supposed to perform. We were both standing with our lower jaws hanging when we saw what had been done by somebody else. It looked like a nightclub scene from Carol's night club. We had to revise it.
GH We were filming it in Majorca, Spain and for the Green Men we hired some local dancers.
JPL They were a Spanish dance troupe as I recall.
RH A ballet troupe. It looked like a chorus line out of "Just Imagine". It was so incongruous with what we had in mind.
GH As it turned out I directed two completely different pictures. When we finished and turned one picture over to Ray and he worked his magic on it. It came back as an extraordinary work of art. And to think it all started with some pencil sketches. When we were working together from these sketches, saying we were going to shoot it this way or that way, I wanted to challenge Ray. I said, look in the big final scene, it would make it more climactic, could we have the man sort of disappear? Ray said we could do anything, all it would take is time and money.
RH Time is money in Hollywood.
GH What's interesting about that final scene, it took place in a huge cave with the water fall and the temple...you have to understand that the cave is a model. It was shot months before we shot the scene. Where I was shooting was just a big set with just columns in it. Then you hand that piece of picture to Ray, the then has to add on top of that all these special effects, the swords disappearing, the men disappearing and all that and the monsters it was an extraordinary piece of film making. It was quite extraordinary at the time he made it before all the computers. It's a great work of art.
JPL You still have a sort of a little voodoo doll of me probably.
RH Yes I have one, but I haven't stuck pins in it. It's a little shrunken Sinbad for when he had to jump on the back of the centaur.
JPL I remember seeing it and saying, well, that's not me.
TM Ray do you have a miniature of me, also?
RH We did have one, it's in Berlin. It was converted into something else. I think it became a sailor. The little model that was Jill playing the piano was about this size (approximately 5 inches in height) in scale to Mighty Joe. It was all jointed just like these models. It actually came from "War Eagles", it was one of the men from "War Eagles" that we converted and put Jill's face on it and had her playing the piano. But you did some of that.
TM I can still play "Beautiful Dreamer."
RH "Beautiful Dreamer" your favorite song.
TM And Joe's, too.
RH And Joe's. You used to calm his nerves by singing "Beautiful Dreamer".
When we were doing "Golden Voyage", John had to fight a six armed statue of Kali and for rehearsals we had to tie three stunt men together, one behind the other with a big belt. It was quite a grotesque sight, but that was the only way we could get synchronization of the arms. And the stunt men would rehearse with John under Gordon's direction. How many rehearsals did you have ten or twelve? By then you knew where to stop your sword and all that. Then we would shoot John shadowboxing, separately, going through all these motions with nothing in front of him.
JPL The whole thing would be choreographed. Interestingly enough the only injury I received wasn't in any of my fights with the monsters. I've got this scar on my thumb from one of my sword fights with Tom Baker. We were using real swords, not particularly sharp. He gave me a little nick here, but fortunately I've still got my thumb.
Q I have two questions. One is there any chance you will ever come out of retirement? And the other is What do you think of CGI?
RH Not if I can help it. I've had my stint in a dark room for a year while every body else goes out and makes two or three pictures.
On the computer, well, there's such tremendous hype about the computer these days. Everyone thinks it's the only thing left to use, but it's just another tool. It's a glorious tool. Some day in the future somebody will be using holograms. But for our period we relied on the hand done process and it was very well done.
RH Willis O'Brien wanted to make "Frankenstein" before King Kong. He wanted to make Frankenstein as an animated creature and he had done some preparation on it.
Q As I understand it, eventually you will be able to scan entire movies into computer, so if you wanted to star James Dean and Greta Garbo together you could.
RH Then actors would be obsolete.
TM If they just use old films, the new actors would be obsolete.
GH Ray's art will continue to be appreciated. If you take this model and move it frame by frame which Ray did, the question becomes how does it react, how does the head move how it turns all those things together are the genius of Ray Harryhausen. They might be able to duplicate that in the future, but they won't have the artistry behind it.
TM And the facial expressions, that to me was the greatest thing, the facial expressions of your characters.
RH I was always grateful years ago when I was going to Los Angeles City College, I took Harold Turney's course in drama. I thought in one mad moment I was going to be an actor. But I got butterflies and didn't like that, so I decided to stay behind the camera. But I'm grateful that I took that course in drama because it taught me a great deal about acting and reacting with characters. And that is what is unique about our films. I don't think anyone else has done that except Willis O'Brien who started it in 1931. He took a character like King Kong or Mighty Joe Young and made that a lead character in a film. And here you have a character like King Kong, a mass of eighteen inch figures such as this of metal and covered with sponge rubber and fur and his name in Hollywood has become as great as Clark Gable, Marlene Detrich or Greta Garbo. That is the fascination of our kind of films where you take the animated model and make it a character that goes right through the story.
JPL Something I noticed on the set that I've wondered about. The camera was bolted solidly to the floor. It was actually held down by cables and turnbuckles. Why was it so important for the camera to be so solidly held down?
RH That was very important part of the Dynamation process, because sometimes it was required to expose that piece of film three or four times. If there was any movement what so ever, you would see the separation in the finished film. Sometimes we would have to add smoke in or put the other half of the picture in and if there was any movement it would be very disturbing on the big screen. So, everything was solid,
Q How often did you have to retake a scene because you didn't like the acting. Did you pull a favorite take or was it all done on the first take?
RH We tried to keep it to the minimum. I'd say 90 percent was the first take. Occasionally something would happen where we would have to re shoot. But the animation was so time consuming that we had to keep a minimum the cutting room floor.
Q This is a question for the actors. WC Fields once said never work with animals or children, could you say the same thing about working with Dynamation
RH We had actors turn down parts because they didn't want to be upstaged by a gorilla or a monster. But most of the actors we've worked with have been most cooperative and have understood the problems. And I suppose even in a normal film you have to carry on a conversation with someone who isn't there.
Q What's your reaction to the Colorizing of King Kong.
RH A disaster. In Kong and Mighty Joe young the picturesque leaves and jungles were matte paintings and when they were colorized, it destroyed the illusion so they looked like what they were, matte paintings. King Kong was ruined because O'Brien and Cooper loved Gustav Dore's engravings. He had the dark foreground, light middle ground and very pale background. That was completely destroyed when you have this pea green jungle. You lost the whole mood. So I'm not that happy with computer colorization. Laurel and Hardy I don't mind.
Q Can you tell us about your cold cast kits?
RH King Kong? Yes Dark Horse put that out. That was the one that I made for the Berlin Film Festival. The original is about eight feet tall. They ran the new Turner print of King Kong at the Berlin Festival on an enormous Cinerama screen. It was unbelievable. Some of these people who attend these festivals are very jaded, they've seen everything. And there was spontaneous applause for this sixty year old picture.
Q Do you have any plans for further sculptures?
RH I think they have another model, but I don't know if it will come out. It all depends upon economics.
Q Are you doing any more bronze sculptures?
RH Yes. I'm doing quite a few of them. I just restored The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and the light house. I recently got the light house back from Forry. In one mad moment I gave him the lighthouse years ago. He gave it back to me and I had it cast in bronze. Then I restored the Beast. There was nothing left of the Beast, I had to cannibalize him. In making inexpensive pictures, you have to cannibalize your previous actor to make a new one. Some of the Octopus tentacles you saw pulling down the Golden Gate bridge later became dinosaur tails.
The lecture concluded with the screening of several clips from Harryhausen's films. Afterward I asked Mr. Harryhausen his opinion all the resin and vinyl kits of his characters being made today. he said "They're marvelous although I don't see anything from them. I sold my soul to the studios long ago and I don't own any of the copyrights now."