Every true movie lover is familiar with the work of Ray Harryhausen, the visual effects legend who died this morning at age 92. But while we’re all mournfully remembering his great science fiction and fantasy creations, models and animations for such films as Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and the original versions of Mighty Joe Young and Clash of the Titans, there’s a significant part of his career that mustn’t go unrecognized. His contribution to the U.S. war effort under the leadership of Col. Frank Capra as a member of the Special Services Division.
Even before joining the army, while working during the day for George Pal and taking combat photography classes at night, 22-year-old Harryhausen created an independent stop-motion training film called How to Bridge a Gorge (aka How to Build a Bridge or How to Build a Gorge), which could instruct troops on the titular task. The five-minute short was produced to both show how this sort of animation could be used by the military and to show the military that he could be vital to their filmmaking efforts. Ultimately it was shared with Capra, who transferred the enlisted soldier over to his team.
Over the next few years, Harryhausen got his wish, contributing to such projects as the famous Why We Fight series — which includes the Oscar winner Prelude to War, The Nazis Strike, Divide and Conquer, The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Russia, The Battle of China and War Comes to America — plus The Negro Soldier (a Documentary Channel staple) and John Huston’s Let There Be Light. At first, though, he assisted cinematographers on films for Army-Navy Screen Magazine as a loader, clapper boy, gofer then assistant cameraman. He continued as an assistant cameraman for the aforementioned titles, and part of his job was creating transitional effects with travelling mattes like the memorable one pictured above from War Comes to America (watch the full film below and find the editing trick at 30:10).
In his spare time (even though he was technically in the army, he could go home at the end of each day to his parent’s home where he lived), he also directed another independent short of his own called Guadalcanal, again to present stop-motion animation as a tool for propaganda films. Ten minutes in length, this one features model ships and planes for a depiction of the Pacific battle. He wrote of the film in Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life:
Unlike the previous effort, this was a much more sophisticated project that used wipes, sound effects and music ‘borrowed’ from Max Steiner and Miklos Rozsa. For the sea I used a huge sheet of frosted ripple glass lit from below with a blue light, and for the waves on the glass I animated ‘waves’ of sand. The final touch was to show a Japanese ship sinking, and to simulate the distressed water I used salt, animated like the sand into ripples of white ‘sea’.
He also worked with Major Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) and the producers of the Private Snafu cartoons, sculpting 3D models of the characters for use by the artists as well as for illustrated features in Yank magazine, including one warning soldiers about malaria.
After the war, Harryhausen was able to take a bunch of film home with him, and that allowed him to further experiment while producing a handful of fairy tale shorts he referred to as his “teething rings” because they were mostly for his development as an artist. Later he landed the job assisting his idol, Willis O’Brien, on Mighty Joe Young and the rest is history of the more well-known variety.
