Ray Harryhausen

Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American-British animator and special effects creator who is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of both fields. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he built upon the techniques of his mentor, Willis H. O’Brien, to develop a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation" and advance the field of cinematic special effects. Though not credited as a writer or director on any of the feature films he worked on, the role he played in shaping those he made during his peak years has led to him being regarded as “cinema’s sole visual effects auteur,” and the creatures and sequences he animated are considered some of the most iconic in the history of cinema.

Inspired by O’Brien’s work on The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933), Harryhausen spent his adolescence developing his skills with stop motion, leading to him working under O’Brien on Mighty Joe Young (1949) and The Animal World (1956). He took charge of the animation on The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) before teaming up with producer Charles H. Schneer, with whom he would make 12 films over 26 years. These include It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), First Men in the Moon (1964), The Valley of Gwangi (1969), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and Clash of the Titans (1981), after which he retired from feature filmmaking. He also created the special effects for One Million Years B.C. (1966), produced by Hammer Films.

In 1960, Harryhausen moved to the United Kingdom and became a dual American-British citizen. During his life, his innovative style of special effects in films inspired numerous filmmakers, and homages to Harryhausen and his work have appeared in a wide range of media. He spent his retirement giving talks, authoring books, and appearing in retrospectives on his work and legacy. In 1986, he and his wife Diana Livingston Bruce founded the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation to preserve his models and archives, which have been the subject of multiple exhibitions around the world. His accolades include the honorary Gordon E. Sawyer Academy Award, an honorary BAFTA, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Visual Effects Society. His death in May 2013 was met by widespread tributes from filmmakers, animators, and special effects technicians, with Peter Lord calling him “a one-man industry and a one-man genre.”