Mighty Joe Young (1949 film)

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 Ruth Rose wrote the screenplay. It stars Robert Armstrong (who appears in both films), Terry Moore, and Ben Johnson in his first credited screen role. Animation effects were handled by Ray Harryhausen, Pete Peterson and Marcel Delgado.

Mighty Joe Young tells the story of a young woman, Jill Young, living on her father's ranch in Africa, who 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
In 1937 Tanganyika territory, Africa, eight-year-old Jill Young is living with her father on his ranch. Two Africans come by with an orphaned baby gorilla; Jill trades her toys and money for him.

Twelve years later, Max O'Hara and sidekick Gregg are on a trip to Africa looking for animals to headline in O'Hara's Hollywood nightclub. The men have captured several lions and are about to leave when gorilla Joe Young appears, now 12 ft tall and weighing 4500 lb. When a caged lion bites Joe's fingers, he goes on a rampage. Visualizing Joe as their big nightclub attraction, Max and Gregg try to rope him, but he throws both men from their horses and breaks free. A grown Jill Young arrives, calming Joe.

The men meet with Jill, and Gregg becomes smitten with her. Max tells her that she and Joe will be a huge Hollywood hit and will be rich within weeks. Needing the income, 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, Gregg and Jill express their feelings for one another, with Gregg 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.

A court decree orders Joe to be shot. Gregg, O'Hara, and Jill devise a plan to get him out of California using a moving van, then a cargo ship. Before reaching port, they witness a tall orphanage engulfed in flames. Jill and Gregg help the caretakers save the children. A last group, along with Jill and Gregg, are trapped on the top story. Joe braves the raging fire by climbing an adjacent tall tree, carrying Jill to safety, while Gregg 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 Gregg are married and living on their ranch with Joe. Joe waves "goodbye," along with Jill and Gregg, to Max.

Cast

 * Terry Moore as Jill Young
 * Lora Lee Michel as Young Jill
 * Ben Johnson as Gregg
 * Robert Armstrong as Max O'Hara
 * Frank McHugh as Windy
 * Douglas Fowley as Jones
 * Denis Green as Crawford
 * Regis Toomey as John Young
 * Paul Guilfoyle as Smith
 * Nestor Paiva as Brown
 * James Flavin as Schultz
 * Primo Carnera as himself

Uncredited performances with dialogue:
 * Phil Olafsson as The Swedish Angel
 * William Schallert as a gas station attendant
 * Charles Lane as a producer
 * Ellen Corby as a nurse at the burning orphanage
 * Irene Ryan as a southern belle at the bar

Production
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. O'Brien, however, 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, also animated a few sequences in the film.

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 some serious scale issues, with Joe noticeably changing size between many shots (the title character is not supposed to be as large as Kong, perhaps 10–12 feet tall). Harryhausen attributed these lapses to producer Cooper, who insisted Joe appear larger in some scenes for dramatic effect.

Buoyed by the enormous success of King Kong in 1933 and its profitable theatrical reissues in 1938, 1942, and 1946, RKO had great hopes for Mighty Joe Young. Upon its release in 1949, the film was honored with an Academy Award for Special Effects (a category that did not exist in 1933 for King Kong). The film was unsuccessful at the box office and recorded a loss of $675,000. As a result, plans to produce a sequel (tentatively titled Joe Meets Tarzan) were quickly dropped.

The film has become a stop-motion animation classic. Special effects artists consider it highly influential, with the elaborate orphanage rescue sequence lauded as one of the great stop-motion sequences in film history. It was remade in 1998 with Charlize Theron playing Jill, Bill Paxton as Greg, and creature suit performer John Alexander as the title character. Joe was created through a mixture of gorilla suits and full-sized animatronics created by Rick Baker and digital effects by DreamQuest Images and Industrial Light & Magic.

Reception
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." The 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 (led by Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen) gives the robot life."

Awards
Mighty Joe Young won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, the only other nominee that year was the film Tulsa. The nominees were listed by studio only. When it came time to receive the award, it was O'Brien that went up to the stage to receive it, with the acceptance speech being all of five words: "Thank you, very, very much."

Mighty Joe Young exhibition
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!!!'' (School of Art, Aberystwyth University, UK, 20 Nov. 2017 – 2 Feb. 2018). The album commemorates the collaborative efforts that earned Mighty Joe Young an Academy Award for Special Effects. Showing off the tools and tricks of the trade, it contains behind-the-scenes photographs as well as production stills, drawings, and watercolor paintings by Willis "Obie" O’Brien, the film’s "Technical Creator." The album also records the work of Obie’s apprentice, Ray 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 (1932–2002).

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."

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.