In 1933, when he was 13, Ray saw King Kong and marvelled at how they were able to bring the giant ape to life like that. A friend of his fathers worked at RKO Pictures and explained to him how it was done, using models, and an animation technique called Stop Motion. A fascinated young Ray then started to build his own models, and shoot his own stop motion stories. He took a model stegosaurus he made to show Willis O’Brien, who created the special effects for King Kong, who advised the young Harryhausen to study anatomy, after describing the model’s legs as “wrinkled sausages”.
Harryhausen did just that – first taking evening classes at the University of Southern California in photography, art direction, and editing and later studying art and anatomy at Los Angeles City College. He eventually managed to turn this hobby into a profession and, in 1947, was invited by his hero, Willis O’Brien, to come and work on another film about a giant gorilla, Mighty Joe Young.
His realisation of the title character led to the film winning an Acadamy Award for Special Effects (given to Willis, despite Harryhausen doing most of the animation) – but it was not a financial success; meaning, not only was a planned sequel not produced, but film companies now veered away from special effects films as major movies, leaving that for low-budget ‘B’ movies.