RAPUNZEL - RAY HARRYHAUSEN - 1940's
BackAfter having seen King Kong for the first of many times in 1933, Harryhausen spent his early years experimenting in the production of animated shorts, inspired by the burgeoning science fiction literary genre of the period. After viewing Harryhausen's first formal demo reel of fighting dinosaurs from an abortive project called Evolution (an homage to a similar project of Willis O'Brien's called Creation (Merian C. Cooper, the producer of "King Kong", saw O'Brien's initial work for "Creation" and had him reassigned to "King Kong"), Paramount executives awarded him his first job, beginning on George Pál's Puppetoons shorts. During World War II, Harryhausen was also employed by the Army Motion Picture Unit, animating sequences educating soldiers about the use and deployment of military equipment when that equipment was unavailable for shooting in live action. From this work, he acquired several rolls of unused film from which he made a series of fairy tale-based shorts. After World War II, Ray Harryhausen shot a scene of an alien emerging from a Martian war machine based on H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds, part of an unrealized project to adapt the story using Wells' original "octopus" concept for the Martians. Harryhausen also produced a variety of other short animation demos during the post-WWII 40s. Harryhausen put together a demo reel of his various projects and showed them to Willis O'Brien, who eventually hired him as an assistant animator on what turned out to be Harryhausen's first major film, Mighty Joe Young (1949). O'Brien ended up concentrating on solving the various technical problems of the film, leaving most of the animation up to Harryhausen. Their work won the special effects Oscar Academy Award that year.
Channel: Film & Animation
Uploaded: February 18, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Author: jodyvalyou
Length: 0:10:54
Rating: 4.38
Views: 20,160
Tags: rapunzel fairy tale ray harryhausen puppets
Video Comments:
swimchick05 (Monday 17th of November 2008 08:38:32 AM)
We have this VHS called 50 cartoon classics and this cartoon and little lu-lu were always my favourite!
earthi3 (Thursday 13th of November 2008 03:31:59 AM)
this makes me scared
jcstupidmonkey (Sunday 2nd of November 2008 07:31:53 AM)
These films are now available on DVD in the RAY HARRYHAUSEN: THE EARLY YEARS COLLECTION. I believe it includes all of the fairy tale films along with some early stop-motion experiments and extras.
Bottledflower (Friday 31st of October 2008 07:54:33 AM)
02:42 RUN HE HAS A STICK!!
kieghacat (Friday 24th of October 2008 02:26:40 AM)
these films creeped me out.....
kadag (Thursday 16th of October 2008 10:23:05 PM)
you can tell how much detail and attention to the fluidity of motion there is in the animation. Ray can really act though the models.
fromthesidelines (Wednesday 15th of October 2008 01:29:12 PM)
Actually, this was one of a series of fairy tales that Harryhausen produced for the 16mm "home movie market" {through Bailey Films} in the early '50s- this one was first released in 1951.
sidran1968 (Wednesday 8th of October 2008 12:44:49 AM)
Wonderful movie with soul stirring music and lucid narration.
Sid, Ron and Baby
CultureJudge (Saturday 4th of October 2008 05:41:14 AM)
As a Harryhausen fan, I've been wanting to see these early shorts for years. Thanks for putting them up.
Thopter (Sunday 28th of September 2008 12:49:23 AM)
Here's some trivia....The narrator of this was Del Moore, he played Dr. Warfield, Professor Julias Kelp's boss in the Jerry Lewis movie, The Nutty Professor. (1963)
He was a close friend of Jerry Lewis in real life.