Mighty Joe Young (1949) Ray Harryhausen's

Jill Young has brought up her pet gorilla since she was a child. Twelve years later, when the ...Jill Young has brought up her pet gorilla since she was a child. Twelve years later, when the gorilla is fully grown, Hollywood promoter Max O'Hara travels to Tanzania, Africa, and convinces Jill to bring her extraordinarily large gorilla, Joe, back to America. While in Hollywood, Joe is used in a stage production and is exploited to no end. It doesn't take long until Joe is sick of being mistreated and he escapes to run loose in civilization.
RKO. B/W. 94 minutes.
Producers: Merian C. Cooper & John Ford
Director: Ernest B. Schoedsack
Screenplay: Ruth Rose (from an original story by Merian C. Cooper)
Technical Creator: Willis H. O’Brien
Second Technician: Peter Peterson
Technical Staff: George Lofgren, Marcel Delgado, Fitch Fulton
Cinematographer: J. Roy Hunt
Art Director: James Basevi
Editor: Ted Cheesman
Photographic Effects: Harold Stine / Bert Willis
Optical Effects: Linwood Dunn
Music: Roy Webb
Cast: Terry Moore, Robert Armstrong, Ben Johnson, Frank McHugh, Douglas Fowley, Regis Toomey and Mr Joseph Young as himself.

Main on-screen credit: First Technician - Ray Harryhausen

Sadly Ray was too shy to ask for his model of Joe, which during animation he called Jennifer, but Ray does have a small human model that was used for Jill that had previously been made for O’Brien’s unrealised project WAR EAGLES.

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