STOP-MOTION ANIMATION: FROM MELIES TO AARDMAN (2008), which covers 100 years in slightly more than 200 pages, too much of it devoted to Harryhausen himself and his mentor, Willis O’Brien; and the welcomely autobiographical but distinctly authorized and occasionally inaccurate RAY HARRYHAUSEN: AN ANIMATED LIFE (2010). Also available are Jeff Rovin’s FROM THE LAND BEYOND BEYOND (1977), the lengthy chapter that forms the most resonant chapter of Paul M. Jensen’s THE MEN WHO MADE THE MONSTERS (1996) and Roy P. Webber’s THE DINOSAUR FILMS OF RAY HARRYHAUSEN (2004), to name a few. That’s a lot of attention for a non-auteur technician, es- pecially one whose métier is no longer in vogue, and whose films are often less impressive than his own body of work within them.
Between this body of work and the further coverage devoted to Harryhausen over the de- cades in such magazines as CINEFANTASTIQUE, CINEFEX and FXRH (SPECIAL EFFECTS BY RAY HARRYHAUSEN), it would seem that everything needing to be said on the subject must have been said at least once. Yet all it takes is read- ing a few paragraphs of Mike Hankin’s RAY HARRYHAUSEN MASTER OF THE MAJICKS to feel the spark that once so memorably leaped from his subject’s fingers to breathe life into a gallery of unforgettable armatured creatures. We’re told, along the way, that they are surprisingly large, thick fingers to have commandeered such intri- cate work—and it is precisely this eye for detail (and, more importantly, parenthetical detail) that makes these two volumes so precious and so essential.
Unfortunately, unlike the other books men- tioned above, Hankin’s are the ones that have al- ready disappeared from print. Though not advertised as limited editions, these hefty hardcovers were published in print runs of only 1,000 copies; VOL- UME 2, which appeared in September 2008 (“the very month that Lehmann Brothers collapsed and started the downward spiral of the encomy over- all,” noted publisher Ernest Farino in an email to me), took two years to sell out, while the supply of VOLUME 3 (“with greater awareness, word-of- mouth, and a slightly stronger economy”) was exhausted after only six months. Be advised the same print run will hold true when VOLUME 1 finally appears, at a still-unannounced date. Farino, the former publisher-editor of the FXRH fanzine, notes at the beginning of each volume that it was commercially impractical to present Hankin’s chef-d’oeuvre as a whole work, and would hardly have served this project well to launch it
with a volume devoted to Harryhausen’s curiosa and juvenalia. Therefore, Hankin “cuts to the good stuff” (as most readers would, anyway) with VOL- UME 2, which opens with the 28-year-old anima- tor walking onto a feature film set for the first time, as a young salaried professional hired to assist his hero and mentor, Willis O’Brien on RKO’s MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949) and culminates in the Dynamation breakthrough, THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958).
Each new chapter opens with a gasp: a full- page photo chosen for its ability to distill a film’s singular magic to a single image, and Hankin’s 104,000-word text escorts us through the fully il- lustrated details of pre-production, production and post-production, offering pertinent sidebars about key cast and crew members, musical scores, and promotion (including some unbelievably gorgeous international poster art, in full color) along the way. Hankin’s writing is beautifully judged, walking a perfect tightrope between the technical and the wholly accessible, and his remarkable eye for de- tail extends to offering not only the numbers of the soundstages where live-action scenes were shot, but sometimes the measurements of those spaces as well. He seizes upon scientific details (eg., the pelt of an unborn calf was utilized for the skin of Mr. Joseph Young of Africa), as well as the human details of production (eg., Kerwin Mathews’ moving response to a photograph recovered of him and his mother at his hometown premiere of 7TH VOYAGE). In referencing Stephen Foster’s song “Beautiful Dreamer,” so memorably used in MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, he not only mentions it was the last song Foster wrote before his death in 1864, but that the song originally to be performed by Terry Moore’s character was Foster’s “Old Black Joe,” a change of plan which—he doesn’t need to say, and doesn’t—was most fortunate for the film’s shelf life.
The text encompasses the author’s meticulous (and, occasionally, guesstimated) deconstructions of Harryhausen’s guarded secrets about his effects sequences, deleted scenes, as well as details about technical challenges and advancements (it was the introduction of Eastman’s intermediate negative- positive 5253 color stock that made it possible to film 7TH VOYAGE in color, as its detail was fine enough to not betray Harryhausen’s use of rear- projected settings), deleted scenes and effects shots, as well as quotes from cast and crew mem- bers (original and from other print sources), all meticulously annotated at the end of each chap- ter. The exclamation-pointed headlines identify- ing various sidebars throughout the book (“San
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