Ray Harryhausen Honored at American Cinemateque

Science-fiction writing icon Ray Bradbury recently passed away at age 91.  He was a good friend of stop-motion genius Ray Harryhausen.  Back in 2002, I attended a tribute program for Harryhausen at the American Cinemateque in Hollywood.  Bradbury was also in attendance along with the late Forrest J. Ackerman.  Here's the write-up on the event I wrote back then:

Above, Ray Harryhausen takes questions from the audience.  Photo by Armand Vaquer.

One of the true pioneers and innovators of special effects, Ray Harryhausen, was feted with a special program December 5, 2002 by the American Cinemateque at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood called, "A One-Night Tribute To Ray Harryhausen In Person!"

The theater was a sell-out as Harryhausen was honored by fans and notables in the industry.  Plus, Harryhausen's "The Tortoise and the Hare" was premiered after being completed recently with the help of animators Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh.  "Tortoise" was started in 1952 by Harryhausen as part of his series of animated stop-motion Aesop Fables (in his garage), but was set aside for 50 years as Harryhausen became busy with other projects, including "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms."   "Tortoise" will be shown at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival.

Also shown was another fable, "The Story of King Midas,"  and newly-restored and struck prints of "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" (1974) with John Phillip Law and Caroline Munro and "Mysterious Island" (1961) with Herbert Lom, Michael Craig and Joan Greenwood.  Special kudos to Columbia Pictures for these restorations.  Several props from "Tortoise" were on display in the Egyptian's lobby.

In attendance were science-fiction author Ray Bradbury, announcer and former Laugh-In regular Gary Owens (who also did the narration of "The Tortoise and the Hare"), Forrest J. Ackerman (looking frail after his recent illness, but game) and "Golden Voyage of Sinbad" director Gordon Hessler.  Sony Entertainment's Michael Schlesinger and kaiju fans Dave Chappel and Richard Pusateri also attended.

Harryhausen was joined on-stage by Caballero and Walsh for a brief question & answer session following the two fable films and they discussed the history of "The Tortoise and the Hare" and how they completed the film.  Harryhausen was asked his opinion of today's computer-generated special efftcts and he expressed the view that while fimmakers can do many realistic things with it, his style of stop-motion animation adds more to the "fantasy" of the films that he made.

Turner Broadcasting taped the program for later showings on the Turner Classic Films cable channel. 

Harryhausen's inspiration for his career in stop-motion special effects was the landmark classic, "King Kong" (1933).  Harryhausen was taken to Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood by his aunt to see "King Kong," and he hasn't been the same since.  Ironically, the inspiration for Tomoyuki Tanaka's "Gojira" was "King Kong," and also Harryhausen's own "Beast From 20,000 Fathoms."  Harryhausen later teamed up with Kong's creator, Willis O'Brien for "Mighty Joe Young" (1949).  It has been said that Harryhausen has looked at "Gojira" with disdain.  One of our group was thinking about asking what he thought of Godzilla, but wisely didn't. 

Animator Caballero described their first meeting with Harryhausen in Animation Magazine, "He was waiting at the hotel, and we had our two crappy little movies.  We were like, 'There's no way he's gonna like these' because they were all cartoony and rubber hose and stuff."  But he was into it and saw our enthusiasm."  But Harryhausen stated (in Animation Magazine), "These two young men did an excellent job [on "Tortoise"].  They're very sensitive to the way I did things in the early primitive days." 

One of the most interesting aspects of completing "Tortoise and the Hare" was that Harryhausen himself did a little puppet-manipulating, which he hasn't done in 20 years since "Clash of the Titans."  Harryhausen retired from filmmaking officially at age 61 following completion of "Clash of the Titans." 

It is nice to see that this giant of special effects is still fondly remembered by fans of science-fiction and fantasy films and be honored while he is still with us.