Mighty Joe Young (1949 film)
| Mighty Joe Young | |
|---|---|
_poster.jpg) film poster | |
| Directed by | Ernest B. Schoedsack |
| Produced by |
Merian C. Cooper John Ford (executive producer) |
| Written by | Ruth Rose |
| Starring |
Terry Moore Ben Johnson Robert Armstrong Frank McHugh Douglas Fowley |
| Music by | Roy Webb |
| Cinematography | J. Roy Hunt |
| Editing by | Ted Cheesman |
| Studio | Argosy Pictures |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Release dates | July 27, 1949 |
| Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,800,000[1] |
Mighty Joe Young is a 1949 RKO Radio Pictures black and white feature film made by the same creative team responsible for King Kong (1933); actor Robert Armstrong appears in both films.
Written and produced by Merian C. Cooper (who provided the story) and Ruth Rose (who wrote the screenplay) the film was directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack. It tells the story of a young woman, 'Jill Young', played by Terry Moore, living on her father's farm in Africa, who ends up bringing the title character, a giant gorilla, to Hollywood. The movie co-stars Ben Johnson, as 'Gregg', in his first major Hollywood role.
Plot
In 1937 Tanzania, Africa, 8-year old Jill Young (Lora Lee Michel) is living with her father on his ranch. While playing in the yard, two Africans come by with an orphaned baby gorilla; Jill so wants a pet that she trades her toys and money for him, vowing to always care for the gorilla.
Twelve years later, Max O'Hara (Robert Armstrong) and sidekick Gregg (Ben Johnson) are on a trip to Tanzania looking for animals to headline in O'Hara's new Hollywood nightclub. The two men have captured several lions and are about to leave when gorilla Joe Young appears, having now grown to 12 feet tall and weighing nearly 2200 lb (1000 kg). After one of their caged lion bites Joe's fingers, he grows angry and goes on a rampage. Visualizing Joe as their big nightclub attraction, O'Hara and Gregg try to capture him; he throws both men off their horses, breaks free of their ropes, and nearly kills O'Hara. A grown Jill Young (Terry Moore) arrives, calming Joe down, and commands him to drop O'Hara. Jill is furious with both men and storms off with Joe.
Both men meet again with Jill, and Gregg becomes hopelessly smitten with her. Having calmed down, Jill, hears out their nightclub proposal. Gregg insists she and Joe will be a huge hit in Hollywood and will get rich within weeks. Jill does need the money, having lived on a poor ranch her entire life. She finally decides to take Joe to Hollywood to make their fortune.
On opening night, a large crowd comes to see the lions and the large gorilla. Joe makes his first appearance on stage, lifting an entire piano on a platform above his head while Jill plays the piano. Joe's strength is again put to the test in a tug-of-war with the ten strongest men in the world; Joe easily wins. He is then pitted against heavyweight boxer Primo Carnera in a faux boxing match, but Joes does not understand and just playfully tosses the famous boxer into the audience.
Joe's popularity grows; by the 10th week he is the biggest nightclub attraction in Hollywood. But Joe is beginning to miss his home in Africa, and so does Jill; she goes out with Gregg and tells him that she is having second thoughts. Gregg talks to O'Hara about letting Joe go home, but O'Hara, seeing only more profit for the nightclub, refuses to hear it.
By the 17th week, Joe is miserable; he has grown tired of performing and is very homesick. To make matters worse, his next act is a humiliating performance playing a organ grinder's monkey with Jill acting as a little girl turning the handle. Joe refuses to perform, and both Jill and Gregg plead for O'Hara to send Joe back home.
Three drunks sneak backstage. In his cage a very unhappy Joe tries to ignore them, but they offer him an open whiskey bottle; he becomes intoxicated after given two more open bottles. Thinking it now safe to toy with Joe, the drunks burn his fingers with a cigarette lighter. Roaring with pain and anger, he breaks out of his cage, smashes through a wall, and goes on a rampage breaking pianos and tearing apart the interior of the nightclub. He then smashes the glass of the lion habitat, and the lions escape into the crowded nightclub. Joe fights and kills several of them, and in their death throes more tables and chairs are smashed; he then breaks out of the building.
A court decree orders Joe be destroyed as a dangerous animal; Jill's pleas to save him are denied. Gregg, O'Hara, and Jill devise a plan to get Joe out of California with a moving van and then a cargo ship. When the execution team arrives at the closed nightclub to put Joe down, they find his cage empty and themselves suddenly locked inside. As the van is leaving, Joe is spotted by an itinerant worker, who later informs the police; an all points bulletin is broadcast. On the way to the ship, the police spot the moving van on its escape route and give chase. But Joe has now been cleverly transferred to a covered truck, and the moving van, driven by Gregg, is a decoy to misdirect the pursuit. The police finally stop the moving van, and Gregg is forced to reveal Joe's real truck location to avoid jail.
Driven by O'Hara and carrying Joe and Jill, the truck gets its wheels stuck in heavy mud; with Jill's encouragement, Joe manages to push the truck free, and the police then get stuck in the same mud as the truck drives away. Gregg later catches up with them, but before reaching the port where the cargo ship is waiting, they come upon a burning, multistory orphanage engulfed in flames.
Jill and Gregg immediately get to work with helping the caretakers save the children. They act fast and most of the children are saved; but the flames spread quickly, and the last group, along with Jill and Gregg, are suddenly trapped in the top story of the burning building. At Jill's urging, Joe redeems his public image by braving the raging fire; he climbs a tree and smashes a window, allowing Jill, Gregg, and the remaining children to escape. Joe carries Jill to safety and Gregg lowers each child with a rope to the ground; one child is left behind, and Gregg nearly loses his life trying to save her. Joe climbs the tree again at Jill's urging and grabs the little girl, carrying her to safety, just as the orphanage collapses.
The film ends with O'Hara receiving home movies from his friends, letting the audience know that Joe made it safely back home. Gregg and Jill have fallen in love and with Joe are now happier than ever; Joe signs "Goodbye" and then waves along with Jill and Gregg to O'Hara.
Cast
- Terry Moore as Jill Young
- Ben Johnson as Gregg
- Robert Armstrong as Max O'Hara
- Frank McHugh as Windy
- Douglas Fowley as Jones
- Denis Green as Crawford
- Paul Guilfoyle as Smith
- Nestor Paiva as Brown
- Regis Toomey as John Young
- Lora Lee Michel as Jill Young, as a girl
- Paul Stader as Ben Johnson's double
- Mahone T. Scott as Mighty Joe Young's double
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. But 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 also animated a few sequences in the film.
The models (constructed by Kong's builder Marcel Delgado) and animation are more sophisticated than 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 this increased technical sophistication, this film, like 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, as a result, plans to produce a sequel (tentatively titled "Joe Meets Tarzan") were quickly dropped.[1]
The film has become a stop-motion animation classic and has an affectionate following. 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.[citation needed] It was remade in 1998 with Charlize Theron playing Jill and Bill Paxton as Greg.
Awards
Mighty Joe Young won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects; the only other nominee that year was the film Tulsa. At the time, the rules of the Academy dictated that the producer of the winning film receive the Oscar. However, in recognition of his work on this picture and on "King Kong," producer Merian C. Cooper presented the award to Willis O'Brien.
See also
- List of American films of 1949
- Mighty Joe Young (the 1998 remake)
- List of stop-motion films
- King Kong
References
- Harryhausen, Ray. Film Fantasy Scrapbook. A. S. Barnes. 1974. ISBN 0-498-01632-7.
- Harryhausen, Ray and Dalton, Ray. The Art of Ray Harryhausen. Watson-Guptil. 2008. ISBN 0-8230-8464-7.
External links
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