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Mighty Joe Young (1949 film)

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Mighty Joe Young
Theatrical release poster
Directed byErnest B. Schoedsack
Screenplay byRuth Rose
Story byMerian C. Cooper
Produced byMerian C. Cooper
Starring
CinematographyJ. Roy Hunt
Edited byTed Cheesman
Music byRoy Webb
Production
company
Distributed byRKO Radio Pictures
Release date
  • July 23, 1949 (1949-07-23)
Running time
93 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.8 million[1]
Box office$1.95 million[2]


Mighty Joe Young (also known as Mr. Joseph Young of Africa and The Great Joe Young) is a 1949 American black and white fantasy film distributed by RKO Radio Pictures and produced by the same creative team responsible for King Kong (1933). The film was produced by Merian C. Cooper, directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose. It stars Robert Armstrong, Terry Moore, and Ben Johnson in his first credited screen role. Animation effects were handled by Ray Harryhausen, Pete Peterson and Marcel Delgado.[3][4]

Mighty Joe Young tells the story of a young woman, Jill Young, living on her father's ranch in Africa. Jill has raised the title character, a large gorilla, from an infant and years later brings him to Hollywood seeking her fortune in order to save the family homestead. It was later remade in 1998 with Charlize Theron and Bill Paxton.

Plot

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In 1937 Tanganyika territory, Africa, seven-year-old Jill Young is living with her father on his ranch. Two Africans come by with an orphaned baby gorilla; unbeknownst to her widowed father, Jill trades some of her toys, jewelry, and money for the gorilla and names him Joe Young. When he finds out, her father is initially reluctant to keep the gorilla, but eventually agrees.

Ten years later, business man Max O'Hara and cowboy Greg Johnson are on a trip to Africa looking for animals to headline in Max's Hollywood nightclub. The men have captured several lions and are about to leave when Joe Young appears, now 12 feet (3.7 m) tall and weighing 4,500 pounds (2,000 kg). When a caged lion bites Joe's fingers, he goes on a rampage. Visualizing Joe as their big nightclub attraction, Max and Greg try to rope him, but he throws both men from their horses, breaks free, and attempts to attack them. A grown Jill Young arrives, calming Joe.

The men meet with Jill, and Greg becomes smitten with her. Max asks her to bring Joe and be part of his nightclub entertainment. He tells her that she and Joe will be a huge Hollywood hit and will be rich within weeks. Needing the income in order to keep her dead father's property, she agrees to take Joe to Hollywood.

On opening night, Joe lifts a large platform above his head, holding Jill playing "Beautiful Dreamer" on a grand piano. Following that, Joe has a tug of war with "the 10 strongest men in the world", which he easily wins. Italian heavyweight boxer Primo Carnera tries to box with him, but Joe tosses him into the audience. Joe's popularity grows, and by the 10th week he is Hollywood's biggest nightclub attraction. By the 17th week, Joe has grown tired of performing and is homesick. Later, during dinner, Greg and Jill express their love for one another, with Greg agreeing to return with her to Africa. In his cage, an unhappy Joe tries to ignore three drunks who have sneaked backstage; they offer Joe an open whiskey bottle, and he becomes intoxicated. Taunting him, the drunks burn Joe's fingers with a cigarette lighter. Roaring with pain and rage, he breaks out, wrecking the nightclub's interior. He also smashes the glass of the lion habitat, allowing the lions to escape into the crowded club.

After the drunks accuse Joe of trying to kill them, a court decree orders Joe to be shot. Greg, Max, Jill, and a friend named Windy devise a plan to get Joe back to Africa using a moving van and cargo ship. Before reaching port, they see a tall orphanage engulfed in flames. Jill and Greg help the caretakers save the children. A last group, along with Jill and Greg, are trapped on the top story. Joe braves the raging fire by climbing an adjacent tall tree, carrying Jill to safety, while Greg lowers each child by rope to the ground. One child is left behind, so Joe climbs up again, grabbing the little girl. Max assures Jill that because of Joe's heroism, his life will now be spared.

Much later, Max receives home movies from his friends. Jill and Greg are married and living on their ranch in Africa with Joe. Joe waves "goodbye," along with Jill and Greg, to Max.

Cast

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Uncredited performances with dialogue:

Production

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Model used in the film

Willis O'Brien, who created the animation for King Kong, was the supervisor of the film's stop-motion animation special effects. Ray Harryhausen was hired in 1947 on his first film assignment as an assistant animator to O'Brien. However, O'Brien ended up concentrating on solving the various technical problems of the production, delegating most of the actual animation to Harryhausen, Pete Peterson, and Marcel Delgado.[6]

The models (constructed by Kong's builder Marcel Delgado) and animation are more sophisticated than in King Kong, containing more subtle gestures and even some comedic elements, such as a chase scene where Joe is riding in the back of a speeding truck and spits at his pursuers. Despite the increased technical sophistication, this film, like King Kong, features scale issues, with Joe noticeably changing size between many shots. Harryhausen attributed these lapses to producer Cooper, who insisted Joe appear larger in some scenes for dramatic effect.[7]

Release

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Mighty Joe Young's marketing campaign was run by Terry Turner.[8] The film was advertised on television and radio commercials, including NBC, and at the P.T. Barnum Festival Fun Day Parade in Connecticut.[9] The studio created four different poster designs and multiple lobby cards.[10] Additionally, they sent 11,000 postcards to people, each of which had a message from Joe Young.[10] In New Jersey, a city manager named Guy Hevia hired a man to dress in a gorilla suit and surf on the beach while holding up promotional signs; a week before the film officially showed in theaters, he also hired a man in a gorilla suit to climb a local movie theater.[10] In New York, a televised parade featured a Joe Young mascot riding on a street float; the float stopped in front of the movie theater, where the mayor greeted the Joe Young mascot.[10] On opening night in one city a man dressed as a gorilla performed stunts on buildings and tightropes, while "gorilla trucks" drove around New York and New England.[11] Flannery O'Connor, who was living in New York City when the film was released, borrowed aspects of its campaign for her novel Wise Blood. Specifically, she based Gonga the Gorilla off of the campaign's use of men in gorilla suits.[12]

Mighty Joe Young premiered in 358 theaters across New England and New York.[10] Its mid-summer release was an uncommon practice at the time because producers often thought that people would rather be outside than watch movies.[11] Ticket sales added up to about $1,950,000 but because of production costs the film made no profit and the company lost $675,000.[8] Once production companies saw its deficiency in the box office, O'Brien struggled to find work in major motion pictures.[13]

Reception

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Film critic Thomas M. Pryor in his review for The New York Times said that Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, as producer and director "... are endeavoring to make all the world love, or at the very least feel a deep sympathy for, their monstrous, mechanical gorilla."[14] A review in Variety had a similar opinion: "Mighty Joe Young is fun to laugh at and with, loaded with incredible corn, plenty of humor, and a robot gorilla who becomes a genuine hero. The technical skill of the large staff of experts...gives the robot life."[15] Writing for The Daily Express, Leonard Mosley stated that, though Joe is portrayed by an animation model, he "had much more sympathy than any flesh and blood actor in the film."[16] Motion Picture Herald called Joe "the ingenious creation of Mr. Willis O'Brien."[17] The Daily Mail felt similarly, writing that "the star of this film is a Mr. Willis O'Brien."[18] Screenwriter Paul Dehn wrote that "'Mr. Young' is as real as 'Slavering Sam.'"[16]

Mighty Joe Young was generally not well-liked among viewers who perceived it as a revisitation of King Kong.[19] The London Times dubbed Joe "the King Kong of 1949".[16] Today's Cinema predicted that the film would "clean-up at popular box-offices".[16] A review in The Hollywood Reporter expressed that the film "leaves much to be desired. It is little more than footage strung together by a plot that rarely makes sense."[20]

Current

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Neil Pettigrew of Cinefantastique in particular praises the scenes where Joe sits disconsolately in his cage, commenting that they are "fluidly animated" and give Joe "a distinct and credible personality". Pettigrew rated them as the fifth of "20 finest stop-motion special effects sequences".[21] Jeff Rovin states that the skill by which Joe was animated contrasts with the skills of the actors and actresses, who, in his view, do not seem to take the film seriously.[22] Kim Newman of Empire says that Joe is "a smoother character than Kong, but he's a pretender rather than a king." Newman adds that "no one in the movie even mentions that there might be something unusual about a sixteen-foot-tall ape".[23]

Academy Award

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In 1950 Mighty Joe Young won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects,[24] a new category for the Oscars.[25] The other nominee that year was the film Tulsa, which was nominated for its animation of an oil field.[26] O'Brien initially nominated multiple people he believed should receive the award, including Harryhausen, but Academy Awards had created a policy where only one person could receive the award.[27] O'Brien was sent to accept the award, saying, "Thank you, very, very much."[28] Following the award ceremony Cooper allowed O'Brien to keep the award, even though it was to have gone to him because he was the producer.[29]

Exhibition

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A rare album featuring original artwork and documentary photographs of the production was first publicly displayed in the exhibition Recapturing Mighty Joe Young: The Movie! The Memory!! The Make-believe!!![30] The album commemorates the collaborative efforts that earned Mighty Joe Young an Academy Award for Special Effects. Showing the tools and tricks of the trade, it contains behind-the-scenes photographs as well as production stills, drawings, and watercolor paintings by O’Brien, the film’s "Technical Creator." The album also records the work of Obie’s apprentice, Harryhausen, whose name became synonymous with pre-CGI fantasy film and stop-motion animation. The album was bequeathed to Aberystwyth University by the film historian Raymond Durgnat.[31]

Also featured in the exhibition was a board, signed in January 1948, by forty-five members of the cast and crew. However, as curator and art historian Harry Heuser points out, "not all of the names listed here appear in the credits on screen. Some have never been associated with the film." The board, illustrated by Disney cartoonist Scotty Whitaker, is a "unique record of a production underway."[31]

The exhibition opened in November 2017 with a presentation from The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation's collections manager Connor Heaney. He presented a history of the film's production and surviving models and artworks held in the foundation's archive, before introducing a screening of the movie.[32]

Sequel and remake

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Following the release of Mighty Joe Young, Cooper and Sol Lesser contemplated creating a sequel entitled Mighty Joe Young Meets Tarzan.[33] Leland Laurence was to write the screenplay, and the plot was to take place solely in Africa. The film was never completed.[19]

Mighty Joe Young was remade through a collaboration between RKO and Disney and was released in 1998.[34] It was written by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal and produced by Tom Jacobsen and Ted Hartley.[35] Charlize Theron played Jill and Bill Paxton played Greg O'Hara.[35] Joe was created with a combination of animatronics, CGI, and a gorilla costume worn by creature performer John Alexander.[36] Joe was designed by Rick Baker and CGI was created by DreamQuest Images.[35] Harryhausen expressed satisfaction with the adaptation.[37]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Notes: Mighty Joe Young." Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved: November 25, 2023.
  2. ^ "Top Grossers of 1949". Variety. 4 January 1950. p. 59.
  3. ^ Harryhausen 1974.
  4. ^ "Articles: Mighty Joe Young." Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved November 25, 2023.
  5. ^ a b "King Kong's Successor". Life. Vol. 27, no. 4. July 25, 1949. pp. 94–95.
  6. ^ Cady, Brian. "Articles: Mighty Joe Young." Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved November 25, 2023.
  7. ^ Harryhausen 1974, p. 22.
  8. ^ a b McKenna 2020, p. 61.
  9. ^ Hankin 2008, p. 53; McKenna 2020, p. 62
  10. ^ a b c d e Hankin 2008, p. 53.
  11. ^ a b McKenna 2020, p. 62.
  12. ^ Cofer 2010, pp. 143–144.
  13. ^ Hankin 2008, p. 64.
  14. ^ Pryor. Thomas M. (T.M.P.). "Movie review: Mighty Joe Young (1949), Mighty Joe Young, featuring giant gorilla, stars Terry Moore and Ben Johnson." The New York Times, July 28, 1949
  15. ^ "Review: Mighty Joe Young." Variety. Retrieved: January 20, 2015
  16. ^ a b c d Archer 1993, p. 48.
  17. ^ Archer 1993, p. 49.
  18. ^ Archer 1993, pp. 48–49.
  19. ^ a b Hankin 2008, p. 59.
  20. ^ Erb 2009, pp. 130–131.
  21. ^ Pettigrew 1999, p. 29.
  22. ^ Rovin 1977, p. 74.
  23. ^ Newman 2007.
  24. ^ Hankin 2008, p. 17; Walker-Werth 2021, p. 50
  25. ^ Fiscus 2005, p. 36.
  26. ^ Harryhausen & Dalton 2008, p. 99; Willis O'Brien Wins Special Effects
  27. ^ Hankin 2008, pp. 53, 59.
  28. ^ Willis O'Brien Wins Special Effects.
  29. ^ Harryhausen & Dalton 2008, p. 99.
  30. ^ Aberystwyth University (November 8, 2017). "Rare 1940s Hollywood artefacts on display at Aberystwyth School of Art - Aberystwyth University". www.aber.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-10-18.
  31. ^ a b "Recapturing Mighty Joe Young: Introduction". 25 July 2020.
  32. ^ "Recapturing Mighty Joe Young at Aberystwyth University". rayharryhausen.com. Retrieved 8 July 2020.
  33. ^ Harryhausen & Dalton 2009, p. 39.
  34. ^ Mallory 2001; Variety Staff 1997
  35. ^ a b c Variety Staff 1997.
  36. ^ Mallory 2001; Gleiberman 1998
  37. ^ Mallory 2001.

Bibliography

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  • Archer, Steve (1993). Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Classics. ISBN 0-7864-0573-2.
  • Erb, Cynthia (2009). Tracking King Kong A Hollywood Icon in World Culture (2nd ed.). Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-3430-0.
  • Harryhausen, Ray; Dalton, Tony (2008). A Century of Model Animation: From Méliès to Aardman. London, England: Aurum Press. ISBN 978-1-84513-367-2.
  • Harryhausen, Ray; Dalton, Tony (2009). Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life (2nd ed.). London, England: Aurum Press. ISBN 978-1-84513-501-0.
  • Pettigrew, Neil (1999). "20 Stop-Motion FX Highlights". Cinefantastique. 31 (1): 29–31.
  • Rovin, Jeff (1977). From the Land Beyond Beyond: The Films of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen. New York, New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation. ISBN 978-0425035061.
  • Variety Staff (1997-04-09). "Theron gets close to 'Joe'". Variety. Retrieved 2024-10-18.
  • Walker-Werth, Thomas (Winter 2021). "Ray Harryhausen: Giving New Life to Old Legends". The Objective Standard. 16 (4): 49–55.
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