Mighty Joe Young *** (1949, Terry Moore, Ben Johnson, Robert Armstrong) – Classic Movie Review 1745

In director Ernest B Schoedsack and producer Merian C Cooper’s 1949 fantasy adventure, Mighty Joe Young the gorilla is snatched from the African jungle to work in a Hollywood nightclub, holding up a piano.

At just 10 feet tall, he’s a midget compared with the same team’s similar beast, the actually mighty King Kong, but Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen’s elaborate and engaging special effects won them an Oscar (which visual effects supervisor O’Brien deserved for Kong, though there was no special effects prize back then) and redeem much of the film’s undeniable elements of daftness.

It is Harryhausen’s first film contributing stop-motion animation effects. He did up to 90 per cent of the stop-motion animation for the film, though it is based on O’Brien’s designs and storyboards. The special effects sequences took 14 months to complete.

The 20-year-old Terry Moore (playing the young heroine Jill Young), Ben Johnson and Robert Armstrong (from Kong) are the human stars, with Frank McHugh, Douglas Fowley and Regis Toomey providing the lusty character support.

Cooper provides the original story and the screenplay is by Ruth Rose. The executive producer John Ford, overseeing the movie for his Argossy company. The nightclub set is based on the real-life Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles.

It was remade in 1998 from Cooper’s story and Rose’s screenplay. Terry Moore has a cameo as the Elegant Woman at Party.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1745

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