Recent Obituaries, Classic Films Only

[CBHagman]

43. Ray Harryhausen, 92, special effects innovator.

This is weeks late, but I wanted to make sure Ray Harryhausen's passing was noted here.

The link will connect you to Fresh Air, a program on NPR (National Public Radio, for those of you who aren't in the U.S. or Canada).

[url]http://www.npr.org/2013/05/09/181947528/remembering-monster-maker-ray-harryhausen[/url]

"I do a lot of research when I create a creature," he told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 2003. "I like to make him logical. That's my theory: Is that if you make them too extreme, too exaggerated, you lose your audience because they're just a grotesque piece of whatnot. You don't know quite what they are. So I try to keep them within harmony of something they've seen."

Harryhausen, a pioneer of stop-motion animation, won an Oscar for special effects with 1949's Mighty Joe Young, about a girl who raises a giant ape.

He went on to create such memorable beasts as the pterodactyl that kidnaps Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. and the animated skeleton soldiers in Jason and the Argonauts.

Official website:

[url]http://www.rayharryhausen.com/index.php[/url]

IMDB credits:

[url]http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0366063/[/url]