Everyone has to start somewhere, even a master of stop motion. Mike Hankin chronicles Ray Harryhausen’s early attempts to bring inanimate creatures to life...

Ray filming Evolution in 1939

How do you launch a career in the film industry? The answer is to have a skill that could be put to good use in some aspect of film production. The majority of these skills can be taught (patience and the willingness to work hard has to be in-built), but there is one vital ingredient that goes beyond teaching and must be instilled almost from the point of birth and that is imagination.

Ray Harryhausen possessed an abundance of both technical abilities and imagination, but apart from the numerous skills he had, his upbringing had a lot to do with sparking that all-important imagination. Fred and Martha Harryhausen were of German descent and Ray’s earliest memories are of the German folk tales that were read to him by his mother. His parents were also avid movie-goers and when Ray was five, he saw a film that would leave a deep and lasting impression on his young mind, The Lost World (1925), sparking a life-long love of dinosaurs.

There was also the stimulating environment of his schooling at Audubon Junior High in Los Angeles, where he first learnt to build things using clay, an art-form that would also become a home pastime. Soon he was modelling the creatures of times past, while also creating detailed dioramas in which to display them.

Then came the epiphany moment when he would see a film that would change his life forever. It was a film that, because of its very nature, he no doubt would have caught up with at some time, but luckily his aunt worked for theatre owner Sid Graumann and was given some tickets to see a film that had opened only a few days before. That film was King Kong (1933).

Ray’s memories of that day remained vivid, “The gigantic bust of Kong was in the forecourt of Graumann’s Chinese Theatre, surrounded by foliage with live flamingos. Walking down the aisle and taking my seat, the whole thing was so exciting. In those days the film was preceded by a stage show with dancers in native costume, but the moment came when the Max Steiner music began and I was lost. I suppose you could say I was mesmerised, because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the screen. I left the theatre totally stunned, with the images going around and around in my head. It really took me some time to recover, it had such an impact on me.”