RAPUNZEL

By the late 1940s, special effects artist Ray Harryhausen had already become experienced in several different filmmaking settings. He had worked as an independent producer, shooting stop-motion animated short subjects in his garage workshop; he had worked under Frank Capra on effects for War Department films; he had worked as a cog in a large unit, on the George Pal Puppetoon films for Paramount; he had tried his hand at TV commercials; and he had worked alongside his idol, stop-motion pioneer Willis O'Brien, on the big budget feature Mighty Joe Young (1949). So, when Harryhausen returned to producing short subjects in 1950, it was with the knowledge that he would be honing his skills and experimenting with different techniques until he was given the chance to resume creating effects for feature films. Rapunzel (1951) was the third short Harryhausen filmed in the Fairy Tale series of animated adaptations. He completed a group of four Mother Goose Stories in 1946, and following his work on Mighty Joe Young, he began a new series of shorts based on classic fairy tales. The first two he produced were The Story of Little Red Riding Hood (1949), and Hansel and Gretel (1951). Harryhausen had hopes for Rapunzel, and looked forward to tackling a technical aspect of adapting the story in particular. As he wrote in his autobiography (Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life, co-authored with Tony Dalton, for Billboard Books), "...there were two specific aspects of the story that appealed to me: the pictorial attraction of the tower and Rapunzel's long golden hair being used as a rope for the witch and then the prince to ascend the tower. To use the hair as a rope it had to be plaited, and I had a visual image of the strands plaiting themselves as though by magic. Before I began filming I plaited the hair and then for filming unplaited it frame by frame. This was then reversed by the lab, thus the hair appears to plait itself." When finished with Rapunzel, Harryhausen was less than pleased with the result. He later wrote, "when read in print [the story] had enormous charm, but when acted out in three dimensions bordered on the absurd. Yet again I was forced to 'tone down' the violence. Whatever the reasons, the film lacks pace and charm, and is my least favorite in the series." Harryhausen saw the shorts he made as a great testing ground for the animation techniques he would later employ in his feature films. In his 2005 book, The Art of Ray Harryhausen, (again co-authored with Tony Dalton), Harryhausen wrote that "the great thing about these films was that I felt I had all the time in the world to make them. There were no schedules to restrict my freedom to explore and innovate. They were not only enjoyable to develop and animate, but also allowed me the luxury of experimenting with effects that would be impossible to attempt in a feature because I would have been apprehensive that they might not work – and besides, I wouldn't have had the time." After completing Rapunzel, Harryhausen got the chance to be in charge of the stop-motion animation and effects for a feature film. In 1952, RKO mounted a national reissue of Harryhausen's favorite film, King Kong (1933). The reissue proved to be an unexpected box-office bonanza for RKO, and the film went on to become one of the top-grossing releases of the year. Many producers took note and rushed films into production featuring giant monsters invading major metropolitan cities. The first such film out of the gate was The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), produced by Hal E. Chester and distributed by Warner Bros. Harryhausen designed the prehistoric monster of the title and produced all of the effects and animation. For this moderately budgeted film, he put to use methods he had devised to save time and money as compared to the painstaking methods practiced by his mentor Willis O'Brien on such films as King Kong and Mighty Joe Young. (Harryhausen would later dub his process "DynaMation"). Before his feature film career took off in earnest, Harryhausen would complete one more short in the Fairy Tales series, The Story of King Midas (1953). Producer: Ray Harryhausen, Fred Blasauf Director: Ray Harryhausen Costume Design: Martha Reske Cast: Del Moore (Narrator) C-11m. by John M. Miller