Raymond Frederick Harryhausen Net Worth is $700,000
Raymond Frederick Harryhausen Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018
When it comes to motion picture special effects, there is only one name that personifies movie magic - Ray Harryhausen. From his debut films with George Pal to his final film, Harryhausen imbued magic and visual strength to motion picture special effects as no other technician has, before or since. Born in Los Angeles, the signature event in ...
Los Angeles City College, University of Southern California
Nationality
American
Spouse
Diana Livingstone Bruce child
Star Sign
Cancer
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Trademark
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Famous for his imaginative stop-motion special effects which are showcased in fantasy films depicting Greek Mythological and Arabian Nights stories.
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Quote
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The cinema was made for fantasy, rather than normal types of stories, mundane stories. It gives you a feeling of wonder, for one thing, it gives you stimulation of the imagination, and I think adults like fantasy as well as children. Most people feel it's rather childish to have an imagination. I don't agree with that. I think you should go through life and imagine the very best.
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I had to do everything because I couldn't find another kindred soul. Now you see eighty people listed doing the same things I was doing by myself.
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There's a strange quality in stop-motion photography, like in King Kong (1933), that adds to the fantasy. If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.
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I'm very happy that so many young fans have told me that my films have changed their lives. That's a great compliment. It means I did more than just make entertaining films. I actually touched people's lives -- and, I hope, changed them for the better.
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They were considered B pictures because they were made on a tight budget. But we outlived many of the A pictures made at the same time.
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Oh, certainly it was. The Academy ignored every film. So I was grateful we got an Oscar. But that was for Lifetime Achievement.
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[from an interview in 2000] I went to see it again and again. I was a King Kong (1933) addict! I loved the way the film took you from the mundane world into the surreal.
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King Kong (1933) haunted me for years, I came out of the theatre in another world. I'd never see anything like that before in my life. I didn't know how it was done and that was half the charm. I didn't just say "Eureka, I've found what I want to do", that came over a period of time. But I'd done a few dioramas in clay of the La Brea tar pits and I saw in "King Kong" how you could make them move. Luckily a friend of my father's worked at RKO and he knew all about stop-motion, so I started experimenting in my garage.
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The problem was that Mighty Joe Young (1949) was seen as expensive by the studios. A lot of them got frightened, so I had to go to the other extreme and prove that you could do it on a budget. As a result, I'm afraid, I got stuck in the low-budget productions, which could be very frustrating but seem to be coming to the fore now as classics.
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I got tired of being in a dark room while the rest of the crew went off making another two or three films while I was still on one! But I don't regret it. People ask me if I would have used computer graphics today. I may have, I don't know. There's a lot of technology now that allows you to view instantly the film you've just shot. But I never cared what I had done, I only cared where I was going.
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The thing that finally persuaded me to quit was that I saw that the nature of the hero was changing. When I was growing up we had heroes such as Cary Grant, Ronald Colman and David Niven, real gentlemen on the screen. Now, all you have is Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and all those people who solve problems with their fists. It's a different world and I sometimes feel I'm not part of it. Say what you like about Hollywood in my time, but they were in the business of happy endings, of escapism. Now, you have to sit through two hours of people dying, you know. Today, everything's so graphic it's rather unnerving.
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[on his Oscar] I was delighted to be recognized, and pleased now that animation is recognized as a legitimate profession.
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I'm another snowball. Willis H. O'Brien started the snowball, then I picked it up, then ILM picked it up and now the computer generation is picking it up. Where it will end, I don't know. Maybe in holography, although I'm not sure I'd like a grotesque monster appearing in 3-D in my living room.
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Fact
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Inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2005.
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He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6840 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on June 10, 2003.
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Ray Harryhausen passed away on May 7, 2013, less than two months away from what would have been his 93rd birthday on June 29th.
Has donated his models and artwork to the Bradford Museum of Media.
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In Corpse Bride (2005), the use of stop-motion animation reaches new heights, and as a tribute to him, the grand piano that appears in it has a gold name plate with "Harryhausen" engraved on it.
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He developed the technique of rear and front projecting footage one frame at time while animating to do stop-motion on a budget. This technique which he named Dynamation is still used by stop-motion animators today.
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He often talked to Bernard Herrmann about doing a film in which Herrmann would have written pieces of music and Harryhausen would have designed animation sequences to go with them, a la Fantasia (1940).
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His wife, Diana Livingstone Bruce, was a descendant of Scottish explorer David Livingstone. Of the marriage, Ray Bradbury--a friend for more than 50 years--commented, "He found just the right woman at just the right time, and it worked out terrifically".
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Another unmade project of his was "Elementals", about a colony of humanoid bat-creatures which attack Paris. All that remains of the project is several conceptual drawings and some test footage of one of the creatures snatching up and carrying off a hapless victim (played by Harryhausen himself).
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The restaurant in Monsters, Inc. (2001) is named after him.
Because of his unusual last name, some sources have incorrectly listed his name as "Ray Harry Hausen" and even just "Harry Hausen".
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As a teenager in this native Los Angeles, Harryhausen joined a science fiction club. It was there that he met two men who would become lifelong friends, Ray Bradbury and Forrest J. Ackerman.
$700,000
