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Jimmy’s Notes on Episode 58: The Tourists vs. ‘Mighty Joe Young’ (1949)

Published June 14, 2022

Nate’s not the only one who needs catch up on his content. No MIFV episode is complete without the intrepid Jimmy’s trademark blogs. With Winter and Board keeping us busy, and my personal projects in my garage eating up my time (top secret hush-hush stuff, you understand), I haven’t been able to keep up. Now your wait is over! Let’s start dropping some fact (check) bombs on Nate and company, starting with episode 58 on Mighty Joe Young.

  • Me and Nick’s e-mails are top secret. Although, not as top secret as my garage projects.
  • I hate to tell you this, Joy, but…
  • Little did I know this episode would become Memento  by working through the film backwards. Reminds me of the time I got caught in a time loop. That may or may not explain how I’ve aged gracefully. But let me tell you, I can only punch M11 so many times to restart and/or break the loop so many times before it gets older than some of the scientists around here.
  • This whole episode came off the rails—until the Toku Topic. Then it all came to a crashing halt because it was the most boring Toku Topic yet. I don’t know if it was Nate’s presentation, the topic of gorillas in captivity, or the exhaustion of the caffeine. All of the above, probably.
  • Ah, yes, Adam Smith. Author of The Wealth of Nations and philosopher who advocated for laissez-faire economics. It’s only the best bedtime reading for any kid.
  • I may have to talk with Mr. Gold about booking Mighty Joe and the Burning Orphans, especially after their album, “Rampage at the Nightclub.”
  • It wasn’t an interviewer but another special effects artist on the blu-ray commentary with Harryhausen and Moore: Ken Ralston.
  • Not the singing, Joy! See the above meme!
  • I could go for spaghetti and a western. Sounds like a great stay-at-home date night.
  • We’re getting canceled in Africa.
  • “Mighty Jimmy Young.” I like the sound of that.
  • Sacrificed orphans? That IS fake news! The textbook definition of slander! I could sue you for libel! (But I don’t want to talk about it).

Here are Nate’s leftover notes. (Am I still contractually obligated to share these? I better check the fine print).

  • This is what happens when the Three Stooges get drunk. (Was WHG3 one of them? -Jimmy)
  • He’s gonna realize he knows drunken monkey kung fu. Also, Mighty Joe can’t hold his liquor. Okay, there’s a line that they gave him more. (Actually, I think he does know drunken monkey kung-fu…mostly because he’s a drunken ape. -Jimmy)
  • I think he killed some lions. But not people.
  • “No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture.” You sure?
  • From “pull” to “push.” You suck at pushing. Stick to pulling. (Words to live by. -Jimmy)
  • What in blazes started this fire?! (Haha, Marchand. -Jimmy)

Commentary by Terry Moore, Ray Harryhausen, and Ken Ralston

  • Terry Moore didn’t have any storyboards in her script and acted to lots of nothing alone on set not knowing what Mighty Joe looked like.
  • She got the role when she came to the lot and Schoedsack asked, “Can you run?” so she took off her high heels, ran, and came back. He said, “You run like a deer. You got the role!” (I think that’s what David Perin was told when he played me in my favorite movie. -Jimmy)
  • Everyone called Schoedsack, “Monty.”
  • Harryhausen grew up loving King Kong, so it was an honor to work with that team.
  • Cooper once complained that the $25/day extras weren’t good enough, so instead of replacing them, they paid them $250/day.
  • Moore said Cooper promised one of the Mighty Joe puppets to her when he died, but the maid stole it when he died. There’s another one in London at the Museum of Moving Images.
  • Armstrong modeled his character after Cooper like he did in Kong. Ruth Rose, the screenwriter and Cooper’s wife, put much of him into the character.
  • The flying tackle was cut out for a while for some reason.
  • Harryhausen “was” Mighty Joe. He would eat vegetables on breaks to get into character.
  • Marcel Delgado also built the armatures for this.
  • This was Ben Johnson’s first movie. He acted in many John Ford westerns.
  • They shot for 3 months.
  • O’Brien developed the scenes with sketches while Harryhausen did most of the animation.
  • Terry Moore could whistle “Beautiful Dreamer.” She was surprised it didn’t make a comeback.
  • Moore became friends with the wrestlers. The Italian wrestler would put his foot next to hers and say, “Teeny-weeny.” He didn’t speak much English. He’d carry her on his shoulders, and she would go to the wrestling matches.
  • For the piano scene, Moore was lifted up using what she described as a “huge carjack.”
  • The long shots of Mighty Joe in the wrestler scene was a smaller armature. 8 inches tall.
  • Each of the coins was hand-drawn in the coin throwing scene.
  • Harryhausen covered the puppet’s lips with clay so he could hold the bottle. The liquor was glycerin.
  • Moore spent a lot of time acting toward a back projection screen. White screen.
  • Cooper was known for throwing a hat on the ground and stomping it. (Sounds like a certain radio host I know… -Jimmy)
  • Moore says Howard Hughes saw her in Return of October and told his projectionist, “I’m gonna marry that girl! Find out what she’s done!” He said she’d just made a film for RKO that hadn’t been released. He said, “Buy RKO.”
  • “Mama Walton” makes a cameo during orphanage scene.
  • The orphanage miniature was 5-6 feet high.
  • Marcel Delgado animated the shot of Mighty Joe climbing the tree.
  • Harryhausen says the Jill doll used for the piano was remade into a caveman.
  • Moore’s mother makes a cameo saving the little girl.
  • Mighty Joe peels the banana at the end when he ate it whole before. He was “civilized.”

Special Features

  • He got no direction from Schoedsack. He only worked with O’Brien during the planning stage. The script only had broad strokes for Mighty Joe’s scenes. He used O’Brien’s continuity stages.
  • Harryahusen gets mail from people saying they prefer his old films because they have more soul.
  • One of the armatures was made by Henry Cunningham.
  • The 4 armatures cost $1,500-$2,000 each!
  • The fur on Mighty Joe moved less because it was substituted with rubber.
  • Mighty Joe was brown.
  • The debris was animated with wires.

LeMay – Kong Unmade 2nd Edition

  • “The genesis of the story was inspired by a true event, recorded in the book Toto and I: A Gorilla in the Family (1941). The book, by Augusta Maria Daurer Hoyt, told of the author rescuing an orphaned gorilla in 1931 Equatorial Africa and making it part of her family. That is where the similarities ended, though. Using that as a jumping-off point, the rest of the story was essentially a light, happier retelling of King Kong. (The script was even written by Ruth Rose again, who had done one of the Kong drafts.)”
  • “Though it shares no continuity ties with King Kong, the resultant Mighty Joe Young is what could be called a spiritual sequel to Kong. As previously established, it was made by the same overall team and has the same themes of beauty and the beast, the beast brought to civilization, etc. Even the same trio of main character archetypes reappear. You have the girl that controls the beast in the form of Jill, then her rough-and-tumble cowboy love interest, Gregg, and the showman, Max O’Hara, out to exploit them—the latter even played again by Robert Armstrong. One could even say Mighty Joe Young presented a ‘road not taken’ with King Kong. What if Ann had tamed Kong? What if Denham’s show had been a success rather than a tragic failure? In the years that followed the release and rereleases of King Kong, audiences had grown fonder and more sympathetic for Kong, so it was only natural Joe would be treated as nothing but sympathetic, and in the end, even heroic. The climax, where Joe is on the run from the authorities out to kill him, is quite the nail-biter due to the audience’s sympathy for Joe. But of course, we’re not here to discuss what the film is, but what it could have been.”

Morton – King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon, from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson

  • Other Kong alumni included Linwood Dunn, Ted Cheesman, and Walter Elliot.
  • He says it took six months to shoot. (No one can agree on a timeline, it seems. Because time travel is dangerous. -Jimmy)
  • A big torso only armature was made but never used.
  • The models were covered with the fur of unborn lambs and rubberized by taxidermist George Lofgren.
  • He says the animation took 14 months.
  • O’Brien was unable to use his miniature projection process due to time constraints, so the composite work was done with an optical printer.

The Ray Harryhausen Podcast, Episode 24: Mighty Joe Young, 70th Anniversary Special

  • Colorized test footage was made, but it’s been lost.
  • It’s popular with animators because of Harryhausen’s work, especially with how much is in it.
  • This was essentially the end of O’Brien’s career and big-budget special effects pictures.
  • Tarzan would’ve been played by Lex Barker, who’d just played the character.
  • Soundtrack has never been released because it was “married” into the mix. It was re-recorded later and released, with Harryhausen playing cymbals on “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life

  • Peterson’s trademark was broad humor, most of which was cut. Harryhausen didn’t like it. Example: Mighty Joe slapping his knee during the chase.
  • Harryhausen was 29 when he worked on this.
  • Harryhausen is most proud of the lion cage sequence.

I’m pretty sure Nate read most of his notes on that boring interesting Toku Topic, so I cut the rest.

As for upcoming episodes, this moth we have two regular episodes and two bonuses! These include a Damon Noyes double-header with The Giant Claw (yep, antimatter-powered alien Beaky Buzzard) and his Patreon-sponsored episode on Little Shop of Horrors (1986). Then Nate invites his “co-host in kamen” (ba-dum-tsh!) on so he can finally “see the goo” with a bonus episode on Beware! The Blob (aka Son of Blob). Then Nate and his friend Elijah Thomas have their first annual crossover on Ray Harryhausen since the two of them share a birthday with him. They’re being weird and going in reverse order of his filmography, starting with Clash of the Titans (1981).

Despite everything that has happened to all of us at MIFV, as I always say, “We shall overcome!”

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