Look up list in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

List or lists may refer to:

Enumerations[link]

• Any enumeration of a set of items
• A list of comma separated values, a common way of listing in everyday life and computing. (British usage: Comma-separated values)
• A mailing list
• An electronic mailing list
• An electoral list
• List (computing)
• Task lists, a list of tasks to be completed
• Listicle, an article in list format
• Watchlist
• Ranker

Other meanings[link]

• List (watercraft), the leaning to either port or starboard of a ship
• List, an alternative term for roll in flight dynamics
• Lists (jousting), a roped-off enclosure where medieval knights jousted
• SC Germania List, German rugby union club
• List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America

People[link]

• Friedrich List, German economist
• Guido von List, Austrian Armanist
• John List, murderer
• Liesbeth List, Dutch singer
• Maximilian List, SS officer and Commandant of Lager Sylt, a labour camp on Alderney
• Paul List, chess player
• Peyton List, the name of two American actresses:
  • Peyton List (actress born 1986), American actress in the TV series Mad Men
  • Peyton List (actress born 1998), American actress in the Disney Channel TV series Jessie
• Siegmund Wilhelm List, WWII German field marshal

Places[link]

• List, Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost village in Germany, on the island Sylt

Work titles[link]

The List may refer to:

• The List (magazine), a Scottish magazine
• The List (South Park), an episode of the television show South Park
• The List (The X-Files), an episode of the television show The X-Files
• The List (2007 film), a film based on the novel by Robert Whitlow
• The List (album), an album by Rosanne Cash

See also[link]

• Liszt (surname)
• Listing (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (November 2009)

Toby Keith
Keith in April 2010
Background information
Birth name	Toby Keith Covel
Born	(1961-07-08) July 8, 1961 (age 50)
Origin	Clinton, Oklahoma, U.S.
Genres	Country
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, record producer, actor
Instruments	Vocals, guitar
Years active	1993–present
Labels	Mercury Records Nashville Polydor A&M DreamWorks Nashville Show Dog-Universal (formerly of Show Dog Nashville)
Associated acts	Carter's Chord, Scotty Emerick, Lindsey Haun, Mac McAnally, Bobby Pinson, Trailer Choir, Stephen Cochran, Willie Nelson, Sting, Jewel Kilcher, Krystal Keith[1]
Website	TobyKeith.com

Toby Keith Covel (born July 8, 1961) best known as Toby Keith, is an American country music singer-songwriter, record producer and actor. Keith released his first four studio albums — 1993's Toby Keith, 1994's Boomtown, 1996's Blue Moon and 1997's Dream Walkin', plus a Greatest Hits package for various divisions of Mercury Records before leaving Mercury in 1998. These albums all earned gold or higher certification, and produced several chart singles, including his debut "Should've Been a Cowboy", which topped the country charts and was the most played country song of the 1990s. The song has received three million spins since then, according to Broadcast Music Incorporated.^[2]

Signed to Nashville DreamWorks in 1998, Keith released his breakthrough single "How Do You Like Me Now?!" that year. This song, the title track to his 1999 album of the same name, was the Number One country song of 2000, and one of several chart-toppers during his tenure on DreamWorks Nashville. His next three albums, Pull My Chain, Unleashed, and Shock'n Y'all, produced three more Number Ones each, and all of the albums were certified multi-platinum. A second Greatest Hits package followed in 2004, and after that, he released Honkytonk University.

When Dreamworks closed in 2005, Keith founded his own label, Show Dog Nashville, which became part of Show Dog-Universal Music in December 2009. He has released five studio albums on this label: 2006's White Trash with Money, 2007's Big Dog Daddy, 2008's That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy, 2009's American Ride and 2010's Bullets in the Gun as well as the compilation 35 Biggest Hits. He has also signed several other acts to the label, including Trailer Choir, Carter's Chord, Flynnville Train, Trace Adkins, Mac McAnally and Mica Roberts. Keith also made his acting debut in 2005, starring in the film Broken Bridges and co-starred with comedian Rodney Carrington in the 2008 film Beer for My Horses.

Keith has released thirteen studio albums, two Christmas albums, and multiple compilation albums. He has also charted more than forty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including nineteen Number One hits and sixteen additional Top Ten hits. His longest-lasting Number One hits are "Beer for My Horses" (a 2003 duet with Willie Nelson) and "As Good as I Once Was" (2005), at six weeks each.

Early life[link]

Keith was born in Clinton, Oklahoma, the son of Carolyn Joan (née Ross) and Hubert K. Covel Jr.^[3][4] He has a sister, Tonni, and a brother, Tracy. The family lived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, for a few years when Keith was in grade school, but moved to Moore, Oklahoma (a suburb of Oklahoma City) when he was still young.^[4] Before the family moved to Moore, he visited his grandmother in Fort Smith during the summers. His grandmother owned Billie Garner's Supper Club in Fort Smith,^{[citation needed]} where Keith became interested in the musicians who came there to play.^[4] He did odd jobs around the supper club and started getting up on the bandstand to play with the band. He got his first guitar at the age of eight.^[4] After the family moved to Moore, Oklahoma, Keith attended Highland West Junior High and Moore High School, where he played defensive end on the football team.^{[citation needed]}

Keith graduated from Moore High School and worked as a derrick hand in the oil fields. He worked his way up to become an operation manager. At the age of 20, he and his friends Scott Webb, Keith Cory and Danny Smith, with a few others, formed the band Easy Money, which played at local bars as he continued to work in the oil industry. At times, he would have to leave in the middle of a concert if he was paged to work in the oil field.

In 1982, the oil industry in Oklahoma began a rapid decline and Keith soon found himself unemployed. He fell back on his football training and played defensive end with the semi-pro Oklahoma City Drillers while continuing to perform with his band. (The Drillers were an unofficial farm club of the United States Football League's Oklahoma Outlaws; Keith tried out for the Outlaws but did not make the team.) He then returned to focus once again on music. His family and friends were doubtful he would succeed, but in 1984, Easy Money began playing the honky tonk circuit in Oklahoma and Texas. The band cut a single titled "Blue Moon" which received some airplay on local radio stations in Oklahoma.

Career[link]

In the early 1990s, Keith went to Nashville, Tennessee, where he hung out and busked on Music Row and at a place called Houndogs. He distributed copies of a demo tape the band had made to the many record companies in the city. There was no interest by any of the record labels, and Keith returned home feeling depressed. He had promised himself and God to have a recording contract by the time he was 30 years old or give up on music as a career, and had already passed that age without any prospects for a contract.

Fortunately for Keith, a flight attendant and fan of his gave a copy of Keith's demo tape to Harold Shedd, a Mercury Records executive, while he was traveling on a flight she was working. Shedd enjoyed what he heard, went to see Keith perform live and then signed him to a recording contract with Mercury. His debut single, "Should've Been a Cowboy" (1993), went to number 1 on the Billboard country singles chart, and his self-titled debut album was certified platinum. Other hit singles included "A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action" and "Wish I Didn't Know Now".

Keith was moved to Polydor Records and released his next album, Boomtown (1994), then was moved to A & M Records Nashville, as those two labels merged and released Blue Moon (1996). The albums went gold and platinum, respectively. In 1996, Keith was also featured on the Beach Boys' now out-of-print 1996 album Stars and Stripes Vol. 1 performing a cover of their 1963 hit "Be True to Your School" with the Beach Boys themselves providing the harmonies and backing vocals.

A & M decided to fold their country division and Keith moved back to Mercury Records (now called Mercury Nashville), and released his fourth album, Dream Walkin'' (1997). The album featured a duet with Sting, "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying", which had previously been a hit for Sting himself.

Toby Keith playing guitar

The first single off How Do You Like Me Now?! failed to make the Top 40 on the country charts. However, the follow-up single, which was the album's title track, went on to spend five weeks at number one, helping boost the album's sales to double platinum.

In 2002, he released the Unleashed album which included hit singles, "Who's Your Daddy?", "Beer for My Horses", and "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue".

On November 9, 2004, Keith released a remake of James Taylor and Carly Simon's "Mockingbird", a duet with his daughter, Krystal. They performed the song on the 2004 Country Music Awards. The song reached top 25 on the charts.

Keith was the subject of the January 2005 issue of Playboy's Playboy Interview. That year, Keith toured with rock guitarist Ted Nugent, whom Keith met in Iraq while they were both performing in USO-sponsored shows for the coalition troops.

On August 31, 2005, Keith parted ways with Universal Music Group — which had since bought DreamWorks — and launched his own record label, Show Dog Nashville. Its first release was Keith's album White Trash with Money, followed by the soundtrack to Broken Bridges. Big Dog Daddy, which featured his single "High Maintenance Woman", was released on June 12, 2007. The album debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 charts, his third album to reach this feat, after Unleashed and Shock'n Y'all.

He recorded a duet with Jimmy Buffett, "Piece of Work", which was featured on Buffett's album License to Chill.

In 2008, Keith completed his Biggest and Baddest Tour. On May 6, 2008, he released his 35 Biggest Hits 2CD set.^[5] The set was certified Platinum in August 2008.

In July 2008, Keith released a single, "She Never Cried in Front of Me". An album, That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy, followed on October 28, 2008.

In 2009, Keith toured the U.S. with fellow country star Trace Adkins on a tour known as America's Toughest Tour. The concert series was kicked off on June 18, 2009 at PNC Bank Performing Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. Keith did a free show earlier in the day at Asbury Park's famous Stone Pony.

Keith's thirteenth studio album, American Ride, was released on October 6, 2009.

In 2010, Keith performed on another USO tour, this time in South Korea.

A studio album, Bullets in the Gun, was released on October 5, 2010.^[6]

A new studio album, Clancy's Tavern was released on October 23, 2011. One of its songs, "Red Solo Cup", became a viral hit and gave Keith his biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #17.

In December 2011, Keith was named "Artist of the Decade" by the American Country Awards.^[7]

Television appearances[link]

Keith performed on a series of television advertisements for Telecom USA for that company's discount long distance telephone service 10-10-220. He also starred in Ford commercials, singing original songs such as "Ford Truck Man" and "Field Trip (Look Again)" while driving Ford trucks.

Keith made an appearance at the very first Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (then NWA-TNA) weekly pay-per-view on June 19, 2002, where his playing of "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" was interrupted by Jeff Jarrett. He would later enter the Gauntlet for the Gold main event, suplexing Jarrett and eliminating him from the match. A short video of the suplex is seen in the clip package when he goes onstage. He would appear the next week, on June 26, and help Scott Hall defeat Jarrett in singles action.

Keith received the "Colbert Bump" when he appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. He holds the distinction of being the only musical artist to have received a five star rating from Stephen Colbert on iTunes. Keith furthered this connection when he appeared in Colbert's 2008 Christmas Special as a hunter. Keith also made an appearance as a musical guest on the October 27, 2011 episode of the Colbert Report. Oct. 29, 2011 Toby Keith appeared on Fox Channel's "Huckabee" with former Gov. Mike Huckabee. He played "Bullets in the Gun" and he joined with Huckabee's house band to play a song at the end of the show.

Acting[link]

In the Autumn of 2005, he filmed Broken Bridges, written by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld, and directed by Steven Goldmann. This feature film from Paramount/CMT Films was released on September 8, 2006. In this contemporary story set in small-town Tennessee, Keith plays Bo Price, a washed-up country musician. The movie also stars Kelly Preston, Burt Reynolds, Tess Harper, and Lindsey Haun.

Keith wrote and starred in the 2008 movie Beer for My Horses, which is based on the 2003 hit song of the same name recorded by Keith and Willie Nelson.^[8]

Other business ventures[link]

In 2005, Keith opened Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, as well as Tulsa, Oklahoma, and now also has restaurants in Thackerville, Oklahoma; Auburn Hills, Michigan; Kansas City; Las Vegas; Mesa, Arizona; St. Louis Park, Minnesota; Foxborough, Massachusetts;Cincinnati, Ohio and Denver, Colorado. Keith does not actually own the new restaurants; the new restaurant is the first in a franchise under Scottsdale, Arizona-based Capri Restaurant Group Enterprises LLC, which purchased the master license agreement to build more Toby Keith restaurants nationwide. Capri Restaurant Group is owned by Frank Capri, who opened the restaurant in Mesa in the shopping center known as Mesa Riverview and is planning on opening multiple locations across the country.^[9]

In 2009, Capri Restaurant Group announced that it will open another I Love this Bar & Grill location in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's South Side Works shopping and entertainment district.^[10]

February 2010 marked the opening of the Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill in the Winstar World Casino, exit 1 on Interstate 35 in Oklahoma. Other locations opened in 2010 by the Capri Restaurant Group included those in Great Lakes Crossing in Auburn Hills, Michigan and in the Shops at West End in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Expected to open in late 2011 is the location at The Shops at Oyster Point in Newport News, Virginia.^[11][12]

Keith also established a line of clothing, "TK Steelman", in early 2009.^[13]

Keith also supports Ally's House, a non-profit organization in Oklahoma designed to aid children with cancer. Of the charity, Keith said:

This is a special charity to me. I saw firsthand how a child's cancer diagnosis can devastate a family. Please join me in supporting these kids through Ally's House. We're gonna make it better for the kids.^[14]

In 2011, Keith also started showing his love for the flavors of Mexico by introducing a new drink named “Wild Shot". At first it was only available in Mexico, but now is sold and served in America. It is also a featured drink in his restaurant chain "I Love this Bar and Grill".

Political beliefs[link]

Since 2002, Keith has made numerous trips to the Middle East to bring entertainment and encouragement to US men and women serving on or near the front lines. “My father was a soldier. He taught his kids to respect veterans,” said Keith. “It’s that respect and the thank-you that we have a military that’s in place and ready to defend our nation; our freedom.”^[15]

In 2004, Keith called himself "a conservative Democrat who is sometimes embarrassed for his party".^[16] He endorsed the re-election of President George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election and performed at a Dallas, Texas, rally on the night before the election. Keith also endorsed Democrat Dan Boren in his successful run in Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district and is good friends with former Democratic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. In a January 2007 interview with Newsday, Keith was asked whether he supported the Iraq War. He responded with "Never did," and said he favors setting a time limit on the campaign. He also said, "I don't apologize for being patriotic... If there is something socially incorrect about being patriotic and supporting your troops, then they can kiss my ass on that, because I'm not going to budge on that at all. And that has nothing to do with politics. Politics is what's killing America."

Keith performs for the troops at the O'Callahan's Cantina at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, on May 31, 2006.

In April 2008, Keith said that Barack Obama "looks like a great speaker and a great leader. And I think you can learn on your feet in there, so I don't hold people responsible for not having a whole bunch of political background in the House and Senate."^[17] At the same time he remarked, "I think [John] McCain is a great option too." In August 2008, he called Obama "the best Democratic candidate we've had since Bill Clinton".^[18]

In October 2008, Keith told CMT that he had left the Democratic Party and has re-registered as an independent. "My party that I've been affiliated with all these years doesn't stand for anything that I stand for anymore," he says. "They've lost any sensibility that they had, and they've allowed all the kooks in. So I'm going independent." He also told CMT that he would likely vote for the Republican ticket, partially because of his admiration for Sarah Palin.^[19]

In March 2009, Keith received the Johnny "Mike" Spann Memorial Semper Fidelis Award during a New York ceremony held by the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. The trophy is named for the CIA operative (and former Marine Corps captain) who was the first U.S. casualty in the war in Afghanistan. "Spending time with our soldiers around the world is something I've always regarded as a privilege and honor," he said. "I'm certainly happy to accept this award, but I won't forget for a second who's really doing the heavy lifting to keep this country safe. And that's why I'll keep going back and spending time with those good folks every chance I get."^[20]

In April 2009, he voiced support for Obama on Afghanistan and other decisions: "He hired one of my best friends who I think should run for president someday...Gen. James Jones as a national security adviser. He's sending troops into Afghanistan, help is on the way there. And I'm seeing some really good middle range stuff. I'm giving our commander in chief a chance before I start grabbing. So far, I'm cool with it."^[21]

Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue[link]

On March 24, 2001, Keith’s father, H.K. Covel, was killed in a car accident. That event and the September 11 attacks in 2001 prompted Keith to write the song "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue", a song about his father’s patriotism and faith in the United States. At first, Keith refused to record the song and sang it only live at his concerts for military personnel. The reaction to the song, the lyrics of which express clear nationalistic and militaristic sentiments, was strong in many quarters, even to the point that the Commandant of the Marine Corps James L. Jones told Keith it was his "duty as an American citizen" to record the song.^[22] As the lead single from the album Unleashed (2002), "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue" peaked at number one over the Fourth of July weekend.

Keith visits with fans during brief breaks in filming the music video "American Soldier" in hangar 1600 at Edwards Air Force Base on November 17, 2003.

ABC invited Keith to sing "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue" on a 2002 Fourth of July concert it was producing, then rescinded the invitation after host Peter Jennings heard the song and vetoed it. Jennings said the song "probably wouldn’t set the right tone". "I find it interesting that he's not from the U.S.", Keith said of Jennings, who was Canadian. "I bet Dan Rather'd let me do it on his special."^[23][24]

Feud with the Dixie Chicks[link]

Keith had a public feud with the Dixie Chicks over the song "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue", in 2003 as well as over comments they made about President George W. Bush on stage during a concert in London. The lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, Natalie Maines, publicly stated that Keith's song was "ignorant, and it makes country music sound ignorant".^[25] Keith responded by belittling Maines' songwriting skills, and by displaying a backdrop at his concerts showing a doctored photo of Maines with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. On May 21, 2003, Maines wore a T-shirt with the letters "FUTK" on the front at the Academy of Country Music Awards.^[26] While a spokesperson for the Dixie Chicks said that the acronym stood for "Friends United in Truth and Kindness," many, including host Vince Gill, took it to be a shot at Keith ("Fuck You Toby Keith"). In an October 2004 appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, Maines finally confessed that it was indeed a shot at Keith, and that she "thought that nobody would get it".^[27]

In August 2003, Keith's representation publicly declared he was done feuding with Maines "because he's realized there are far more important things to concentrate on". Keith was referring specifically to the terminal illness of a former bandmate's daughter, Allison Faith Webb.^[28] However, he continues to refuse to say Maines' name, and claims that the doctored photo was intended to express his opinion that Maines' criticism was an attempt to squelch Keith's free speech.^[20]

In April 2008, a commercial spot to promote Al Gore's "We Campaign", involving both Keith and the Dixie Chicks, was proposed. However, the idea was eventually abandoned due to scheduling conflicts.^[29]

Personal life[link]

On March 24, 1984, Keith married Tricia Lucus. He is the father of three children—two daughters, Shelley Covel Rowland^[30](born 1980, adopted by Keith in 1984) and Krystal "Krystal Keith" LaDawn Covel Sandubrae (born 1985), and one son (Stelen Keith Covel, born 1997). He also has one granddaughter (born 2008; mother is Shelley) and one grandson (born 2010; mother is also Shelley). Daughter Krystal Keith has been known to sing with her father on stage and is an aspiring country singer, following in the footsteps of her dad.^[31] An avid University of Oklahoma sports fan, Keith is often seen at Oklahoma Sooners games and practices. He is also a fan of professional wrestling, being seen in the front row of numerous WWE shows that take place in Oklahoma, as well as performing "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American)" live at the first ever TNA Wrestling show on June 19, 2002. He is also a Free Will Baptist^[32].

On March 24, 2001, Keith's father was killed in a car accident on Interstate 35. On December 25, 2007, the Covel family was awarded $2.8 million for the wrongful death of H.K. Covel. Elias and Pedro Rodriguez, operators of Rodriguez Transportes of Tulsa, and the Republic Western Insurance Co. were found liable as they failed to properly equip the charter bus with properly working air brakes.^[33]

Keith has an honorary degree from Villanova University, which he attended for one year.

Tours[link]

• Brooks & Dunn's Neon Circus & Wild West Show 2001
• Unleashed Tour 2002
  • with Jamie O'Neal and Emerson Drive
• Big Throwdown Tour 2004
• Shock'N Y'all Tour 2005
• White Trash With Money Tour 2006
• Hookin' Up & Hangin' Out Tour 2007
  • with Miranda Lambert
• Big Dog Daddy Tour 2007
• Biggest & Baddest Tour 2008-2009
  • with Montgomery Gentry and Trailer Choir
• America's Toughest Tour 2009
  • with Trace Adkins Also Julianne Hough(Few Dates)
• Toby Keith's American Ride Tour 2010
  • with Trace Adkins & James Otto
• Locked & Loaded Tour 2011
  • with Eric Church & JT Hodges
• Live in Overdrive Tour
  • with Brantley Gilbert

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

• Toby Keith (1993)
• Boomtown (1994)
• Blue Moon (1996)
• Dream Walkin' (1997)
• How Do You Like Me Now?! (1999)
• Pull My Chain (2001)
• Unleashed (2002)
• Shock'n Y'all (2003)
• Honkytonk University (2005)
• White Trash with Money (2006)
• Big Dog Daddy (2007)
• That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy (2008)
• American Ride (2009)
• Bullets in the Gun (2010)
• Clancy's Tavern (2011)

Compilation albums[link]

• Greatest Hits Volume One (1998)
• 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection (2003)
• Greatest Hits 2 (2004)
• 35 Biggest Hits (2008)

Christmas albums[link]

• Christmas to Christmas (1995)
• A Classic Christmas (2007)

Number one singles[link]

• "Should've Been a Cowboy"
• "Who's That Man"
• "Me Too"
• "How Do You Like Me Now?!"
• "You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This"
• "I'm Just Talkin' About Tonight"
• "I Wanna Talk About Me"
• "My List"
• "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American)"
• "Who's Your Daddy?"
• "Beer for My Horses" (duet with Willie Nelson)
• "I Love This Bar"
• "American Soldier"
• "Whiskey Girl"
• "As Good as I Once Was"
• "Love Me If You Can"
• "She Never Cried in Front of Me"
• "God Love Her"
• "American Ride"
• "Made in America"

Notable awards[link]

American Music Awards

• 2002 Favorite Country Album - "Unleashed"
• 2003 Favorite Country Album - "Shock'n Y'all"
• 2003 Favorite Country Male Artist
• 2005 Favorite Country Male Artist

Academy of Country Music

• 2000 Album of the Year - "How Do You Like Me Now?!"
• 2000 Top Male Vocalist
• 2002 Entertainer of the Year
• 2003 Album of the Year - "Shock'n Y'all"
• 2003 Entertainer of the Year
• 2003 Top Male Vocalist
• 2003 Video of the Year with Willie Nelson - "Beer for My Horses"

Country Music Association

• 2001 Male Vocalist of the Year

Billboard

• Country Artist Of The Decade

American Country Awards

• Visionary Artist Award at the Inagural American Country Awards, given out on Monday, December 6, 2010.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Toby Keith

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Toby Keith

• Toby Keith official website

Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen at Forbidden Planet, London.
Born	(1920-06-29) June 29, 1920 (age 91) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Stop motion model animator
Influenced by	Willis H. O'Brien
Influenced	Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren, Tim Burton
Spouse	Diana Livingstone Bruce (1963-present)
Awards	Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards (2006)

Raymond Frederick "Ray" Harryhausen (born June 29, 1920) is an American film producer and special effects creator. He created a brand of stop-motion model animation known as "Dynamation."^[1]

Among his most notable works are his animation on Mighty Joe Young (with pioneer Willis O'Brien, which won the Academy Award for special effects) (1949), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (his first colour film) and Jason and the Argonauts, featuring a famous sword fight against seven skeleton warriors.

Stop-motion animation[link]

Before the advent of computers for camera motion control and CGI, movies used a variety of approaches to achieve animated special effects. One approach was stop-motion animation which used realistic miniature models (more accurately called model animation), used for the first time in a feature film in The Lost World (1925), and most famously in King Kong (1933).

The work of pioneer model animator Willis O'Brien in King Kong inspired Harryhausen to work in this unique field, almost single-handedly keeping the technique alive for three decades. While O'Brien's career floundered for most of his life – most of his cherished projects were never realized – Harryhausen achieved considerable success.

Harryhausen draws a distinction between films that combine special effects animation with live action and films that are completely animated such as the films of Tim Burton, Nick Park, Henry Selick, Ivo Caprino, Ladislav Starevich and many others (including his own fairy tale shorts) which he sees as pure "puppet films", and which are more accurately (and traditionally) called "puppet animation".

In Harryhausen's films, model animated characters interact with, and are a part of, the live action world, with the idea that they will cease to call attention to themselves as "animation", which is different from the more obviously "cartoony" and stylized approach in movies like Chicken Run and The Nightmare Before Christmas, etc.

Harryhausen's last film was Clash of the Titans, produced in the early 1980s. In 2009, he released colorized DVD versions of three of his classic black and white Columbia films (20 Million Miles to Earth, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and It Came from Beneath the Sea) and a film from the producer of the original King Kong (She).

Professional history[link]

1930s and 1940s[link]

After having seen King Kong for the first of many times in 1933, Harryhausen spent his early years experimenting in the production of animated shorts, inspired by the burgeoning science fiction literary genre of the period. A friend arranged a meeting with Harryhausen's idol, Willis O'Brien, animator of King Kong. O'Brien critiqued Harryhausen's early models and inspired him to take classes in graphic arts and sculpture to hone his skills. Harryhausen became friends with an aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury, with similar enthusiasms.^[2] Bradbury and Harryhausen joined a Los Angeles-area science fiction club formed by Forrest J. Ackerman in 1939, and the three became lifelong friends.

Paramount executives gave Harryhausen his first job, on George Pal's Puppetoons shorts, based on viewing his first formal demo reel of fighting dinosaurs from an abortive project called Evolution (an homage to a similar Willis O'Brien project called Creation^{[citation needed]} which was never finished).

During World War II, Harryhausen was also employed by the Army Motion Picture Unit, animating sequences educating soldiers about the use and deployment of military equipment when that equipment was unavailable for shooting in live action. From this work, he salvaged several rolls of discarded surplus film from which he made a series of fairy tale-based shorts. His commander was Colonel Frank Capra, and he also worked with Ted Geisel ("Dr. Seuss").^[3]

One of Harryhausen's most long-cherished dreams was to make H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. After World War II, he shot a scene of an alien emerging from a Martian cylinder; it is from the story's ironic climax, showing the fearsome being from Mars fatally succumbing to an earthly illness, contracted from the air the natives breathe harmlessly. It was part of an unrealized project to adapt the story using Wells' original "octopus" concept for the Martians.

Harryhausen also produced a variety of other short animation demos during the post-World War II 1940s. He put together a demo reel of his various projects and showed them to Willis O'Brien, who eventually hired him as an assistant animator on what turned out to be Harryhausen's first major film, Mighty Joe Young (1949). O'Brien ended up concentrating on solving the various technical problems of the film, leaving most of the animation up to Harryhausen. Their work won O'Brien the Academy Award for Best Special Effects that year.

1950s[link]

King Kong was re-released in 1952, and contributed to a creation and revival of a giant monster cinema craze, especially at drive-in theaters. Harryhausen was hired to do the special effects for The Monster from Beneath the Sea. While in production, the filmmakers learned that a long-time friend of Harryhausen, writer Ray Bradbury, had sold a short story called "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (retitled "The Fog Horn") to The Saturday Evening Post, about a dinosaur drawn to a lone lighthouse by its foghorn. Because the story for Harryhausen's film featured a similar scene, the film studio bought the rights to Bradbury's story to avoid any potential legal problems. Also, the title was changed to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Under that title, it became Harryhausen's first solo feature film effort, and a major international box-office hit for Warner Brothers Pictures.

It was on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms that Harryhausen first used a technique that split the background and foreground of pre-shot live action footage into two separate pieces of film. The background would be used as a miniature rear-screen with his models animated in front of it, rephotographed with an animation-capable camera to combine those two elements together, the foreground element matted out to leave a black space. Then the film was rewound, and everything except the foreground element matted out so that the foreground element would now photograph in the previously blacked out area. This created the effect that the animated model was "sandwiched" in between the two live action elements, right into the final live action scene. Many shots were embellished with additional elements painted on glass, also sandwiched in between the rear screen and camera, as O'Brien had done on his films.

Most of the effects shots in his earliest films were usually done without resorting to expensive and time-consuming optical printer work. Harryhausen's careful frame-by-frame control of the lighting of both the set and the projector dramatically reduced much of second generation degradation common in most usage of back-projection. His use of diffused glass to soften the sharpness of light on the animated elements allowed them to match the soft background plates far more than Willis O'Brien had achieved in his early films, allowing Harryhausen to match live and miniature elements seamlessly in most of his shots. By developing and executing most of this miniature set wizardry himself, Harryhausen saved money, while maintaining full technical control to achieve a variety of superior and convincing special effects techniques.

A few years later, when Harryhausen began working with color film to make The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, color-balance-shift problems required more use of opticals than rear projections. Ray's producer/partner Charles H. Schneer coined the word Dynamation as a "merchandising term" (modifying it to "SuperDynaMation" and then "DynaRama" for some subsequent films).^[4]

While Schneer and the film's line-producers organized the film's live action production and hired various directors to develop the film's live action characters, Harryhausen concentrated mainly on the shots that involved model animation, visiting the sets only to supervise the filming of the live action background elements (called "plates" in the film effects industry) into which he would later add animated creatures.

However, Harryhausen was heavily involved in the pre-production conceptualizing of each film's story, script development, art-direction, design, storyboards, and general tone of the his films, as much as any auteur director would have on any other film, which any "director" of Harryhausen's films had to understand and agree to work under. Only the complexities of Director's Guild rules in Hollywood prevented Harryhausen from being credited as the director of his films, resulting in the more modest credits he had in most of his films.

Throughout most of his career, Harryhausen's work was a sort of family affair. His father did the machining of the metal armatures that were the skeletons for the models while his mother assisted with some skin textures. After Harryhausen's father died in 1973, Harryhausen contracted his armature work out to another machinist. An occasional assistant, George Lofgren, a taxidermist, assisted Harryhausen with the creation of furred creatures. Another associate, Willis Cook, built some of Harryhausen's miniature sets. Other than that, Harryhausen worked generally alone to produce almost all of the animation for all his films, until he hired protege model animators Steve Archer and two-time Oscar-nominated Jim Danforth to assist with major animation sequences for his last feature film Clash of the Titans (1981).

The same year that Beast was released, 1953, fledgling film producer Irwin Allen released a live action documentary about life in the oceans titled The Sea Around Us, which won an Oscar for best documentary feature film of that year. Allen's and Harryhausen's paths would cross three years later, on Allen's sequel to this film.

Harryhausen soon met and began a fruitful partnership with producer Charles H. Schneer, who was working with the Sam Katzman B-picture unit of Columbia Pictures. Their first tandem project was It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) about a giant octopus attacking San Francisco. It was a box-office success, quickly followed by Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), set in Washington D.C. – one of the best of the alien invasion films of the 50s, and also a box office hit.

In 1954, Irwin Allen started work on a second feature-length documentary film, this one about animal life on land called The Animal World (completed in 1956). Needing an opening sequence about dinosaurs, Allen hired premier model animator Willis O'Brien to animate the dinosaurs, but then gave him an impossibly short production schedule. O'Brien again hired Harryhausen to help with animation to complete the 8-minute sequence. It was Harryhausen's and O'Brien's first professional color work. Most viewers agree that the dinosaur sequence of Animal World was the best part of the entire movie. (Animal World is available on the DVD release of O'Brien's 1957 film The Black Scorpion. The Black Scorpion used some previously shot special effects footage and much new footage by Willis H. O'Brien to create a story similar to another sf film of the era, Them! from 1954.)

Harryhausen then returned to Columbia and Charles Schneer to make 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), about an American spaceship returning from Venus that crashes into the ocean near Italy, releasing an on-board alien egg specimen which washes up on shore and soon hatches a creature that, in Earth's atmosphere, rapidly grows to gigantic size and terrifies Rome. Harryhausen refined and improved his already-considerable ability at establishing emotional characterizations in the face of his Venusian Ymir model, creating yet another international box-office hit film.

Schneer was eager to graduate to color films. Reluctant at first, Harryhausen managed to develop the systems necessary to maintain proper color balances for his DynaMation process, resulting in his greatest masterpiece (and biggest hit) of the 50s, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), a major inspiration for Dennis Muren, decades later a long-time multi-Oscar-winning head of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic special effects company. The top grossing film of that summer, and one of the top grossing films of that year, Schneer and Harryhausen signed another deal with Columbia for four more color films.

1960s[link]

After The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960) and Mysterious Island (1961), both great artistic and technical successes, his next film is considered by film historians and fans as Harryhausen's masterwork, Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Among the film's several celebrated animation sequences is an extended fight between three actors and seven living skeletons, a considerable advance on the single-skeleton fight scene in Sinbad. This amazing stop-motion sequence, never since equaled by a single individual, took over four months to complete, and helped to inspire an entire generation of subsequent filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Tim Burton, Sam Raimi and James Cameron, among many others. (After presenting Harryhausen with a special Academy Award, actor Tom Hanks told the audience, "Some people say Casablanca or Citizen Kane...I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made!")

Harryhausen next made First Men in the Moon (1964), his only film made in the anamorphic widescreen process CinemaScope, based on the novel by H. G. Wells.

Amazingly, Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason, and First Men in the Moon were all box office disappointments at the time of their original theatrical release. That, plus changes of management at Columbia Pictures, resulted in his contract with Columbia Picture not being renewed. Also, as the 60s counter-culture came to influence more and more and younger filmmakers, and failing studios struggled to find a new audience, Harryhausen's love of the past, setting his stories in ancient fantasy worlds or previous centuries, kept him from keeping pace with changing tastes in the Sixties. Only a handful of Harryhausen's features have been set in then-present time, and none in the future. As this revolution in the traditional Hollywood movie studio system, and the influx of a new generation of film makers sorted itself out, Harryhausen became a free agent.

Harryhausen was then hired by Hammer Film Productions to animate the dinosaurs for One Million Years B.C., released by 20th Century Fox in 1967. It was a box office smash, helped in part by the presence of shapely Raquel Welch in a cavewoman bikini, in her second film.

Harryhausen next went on to make another dinosaur film, The Valley of Gwangi. The project had been developed for Columbia, which declined. Independent producer Schneer then made a deal with Warner Brothers instead. It was a personal project of Harryhausen, which he had wanted to do for many years, as it was story-boarded by his original mentor, Willis O'Brien for a 1939 film, Gwangi, that was never completed.

Scripted by William Bast, The Valley of Gwangi is set in 1912 Mexico, in a parallel Kong story – cowboys capture a living Allosaurus and bring him to the nearest city for exhibition. Sabotage by a rival releases the creature on opening day and the creature wreaks havoc on the town until it is cornered and destroyed inside a burning cathedral. The film features a roping scene reminiscent of 1949's Mighty Joe Young (which was itself recycled from the old Gwangi storyboards) and is the technical highlight of the film, which many Harryhausen fans are now rediscovering as one of his best films. The film was released in 1969 but was not a financial success, supposedly since it did not appeal with the counter-culture audiences of that era. But another more likely explanation is that Warner Brothers released the film as a double-bill with a biker film, trying to quickly cash in on the surprise success of the film Easy Rider, and thus Gwangi missed an advertising opportunity to find its rightful audience. Reportedly this decision was made after Kenneth Hyman of Seven Arts Productions – which had merged with Warners at the time and was involved with One Million Years B.C. – was released from his contract with the studio. Warners then threw the film away to second run neighborhood theaters, where kids in these small theaters discovered it, slowly growing up to become fans of the film as adults when the film was finally released to video in the 1980s and DVD in '90s.

1970s–present[link]

After a few lean years, Harryhausen re-teamed with Schneer, who talked Columbia Pictures into reviving the Sinbad character, resulting in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, often remembered for the sword fight involving a statue of the six-armed goddess Kali. It was first released in Los Angeles in the Christmas season of 1973, but garnered its main audience in the spring and summer of 1974. It was followed by Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), which disappointed some fans because of its tongue-in-cheek approach. Both films were, however, box office successes.

Schneer and Harryhausen finally were allowed by MGM to produce a big budget film with name actors and an expanded effects budget. The film started out smaller but then MGM increased the budget to hire stars such as Lord Olivier. It became the last feature film to showcase his effects work, Clash of the Titans (1981), for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Special Effects. Harryhausen fans will readily discern that the armed-and-finned kraken (a name borrowed from medieval Scandinavian folklore) he invented for Clash of the Titans has similar facial qualities to the Venusian Ymir he created twenty-five years earlier for 20 Million Miles to Earth.

Perhaps due to his hermetic production style and the fact that he produced half of his films outside of Hollywood (living in London since 1960), reducing his day-to-day kinship with other more traditional, but still influential Hollywood effects artists, none of Harryhausen's films were ever nominated for a special effects Oscar.^{[citation needed]}

In spite of the relatively successful box office returns of Clash of the Titans, more sophisticated technology developed by ILM and others began to eclipse Harryhausen's production techniques, and so MGM and other studios passed on funding the making of his follow-up story, Force of the Trojans, causing Harryhausen and Schneer to retire from active filmmaking.

In the early 1970s, Harryhausen had also concentrated his efforts on authoring a book, Film Fantasy Scrapbook (produced in three editions as his last three films were released) and supervising the restoration and release of (eventually all) his films to video, laserdisc, DVD, and currently Blu-ray Disc. A second book followed, An Animated Life, detailing his techniques and history,^[5][6] and then The Art of Ray Harryhausen, featuring sketches and drawings for his many projects, some of them unrealized. More books, interspersed with many world-wide tours, appearances, dedications, and career salutes are anticipated.

Harryhausen continues his life-long friendship with Ray Bradbury. Another long-time close friend was "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine editor, book writer, and sci-fi collector Forrest J. Ackerman, who loaned Harryhausen his photos of King Kong in 1933, right after Harryhausen had seen the film for the first time. Harryhausen also maintained his friendships with his long-time producer, Charles H. Schneer, who lived next door to him in a suburb of London until Schneer moved full-time to the USA (a few years later, in early 2009, Schneer died at 88 in Boca Raton, FL);^[7] and with model animation protege, Jim Danforth, still living in the Los Angeles area.

Harryhausen and Terry Moore appeared in small comedic cameo roles in the 1998 remake of Mighty Joe Young, and he has also provided the voice of a polar bear cub in the Will Ferrell film Elf. He also appears as a bar patron in Beverly Hills Cop III, and as a doctor in the John Landis film Spies Like Us. In 2010, Harryhausen had a brief cameo in Burke and Hare, a British film also directed by Landis.

Awards, tributes and homages[link]

During the 1980s and early 90s, those of Harryhausen's growing legion of fans who had graduated into the professional film industry, started lobbying the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to acknowledge Harryhausen's contribution to the film industry and he was finally awarded a Gordon E. Sawyer Award for "technological contributions [which] have brought credit to the industry" in 1992, with Tom Hanks as the Master of Ceremonies and Bradbury, a friend from when they were both just out of high school, presenting the award.^[8] This recognition made Harryhausen an international celebrity.

A long series of appearances at film festivals, colleges, and film seminars around the world soon followed as Harryhausen met many of the millions of people who had grown up enjoying his work.

The work of Ray Harryhausen was celebrated in an exhibition at London's Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) in 1990.

Near the turn of the 21st century, Harryhausen was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Inducted to the Monster Kid Hall Of Fame at The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards.

Fan and film maker tributes to Harryhausen abound in many forms, including a variety of model animation experiments posted on YouTube.

A clay animation short film by Sub-Genius Church founder Ivan Stang, "Martian Peen Worm" (the short title of that film) makes several whimsical Harryhausen references.

The ABC TV 90s children's puppet animation series "Bump In the Night" makes a variety of veiled tributes to Harryhausen, also.

The Mythos Games/Virgin Interactive Entertainment computer game Magic and Mayhem (1990) features over 25 stop-motion mythological creatures that were directly inspired by Harryhausen's work. Constructed by special effects expert and stop-motion animator Alan Friswell, the various characters include a dragon, a centaur, a griffin and a fighting skeleton. For the griffin's wing animation, Friswell studied the griffin from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974).

The 2001 Pixar film, Monsters, Inc. pays homage to Harryhausen in a scene where characters Mike Wazowski and Celia Mae visit a sushi restaurant named "Harryhausen's".

The 2005 Warner Bros. film, Corpse Bride also pays homage to Harryhausen in a scene where character Victor Van Dort is playing the piano in the Everglott's home. The brand of the piano being played is a "Harryhausen".

Tim Burton considers his satiric science fiction movie, Mars Attacks! (1996), to be a tribute to Mr. Harryhausen, especially in a scene in which one of the hostile alien's flying saucers chops down the Washington Monument by crashing into it, just as Harryhausen had done in his movie Earth vs. the Flying Saucers in 1956. Burton's movie, and this scene, initially gathered mixed reactions from Mr. Harryhausen, who has a habitually more subdued sense of humor. These differences were congenially resolved in subsequent meetings between the two film-makers for the Blu-ray Disc boxed set bonus features.

Harryhausen today[link]

In 2002, young animators Seamus Walsh and Mark Caballero helped Harryhausen complete "The Story of the Tortoise and the Hare". This was the sixth and final installment of the Harryhausen fairy tales. The film was started in 1952 and completed in 2002, 50 years later. Caballero and Walsh refurbished the original puppets and, under Harryhausen's guidance, completed the film. The film went on to win the 2003 Annie award for best short film and gained world wide attention. Walsh and Caballero have since moved on to form their own stop motion company, Screen Novelties which is based in Los Angeles, CA.

In 2005, Harryhausen released a 2-DVD set of a complete collection of all his non-feature film work, including all his tests, demos, military work, a re-edit of all the biographical material that had been released in the mid-90s to VHS video under the title Aliens, Dragons, Monsters, and Me, and his entire set of fairy tales, including "The Story of the Tortoise & the Hare". The second disc profiles a making of documentary, behind the scenes and interviews with Harryhausen, Walsh, Caballero and narrator, Gary Owens. During this time he also provided commentary for the DVD releases of King Kong and Mighty Joe Young, and was extensively interviewed for documentaries included in the DVD release. He was at the New York Premiere of the 2005 remake of King Kong and was disappointed that some scenes from the original did not make it into the final film. He was happy again when the Deluxe Extended Edition was revealed.

Harryhausen and a producing partner, Arnold R. Kunert worked on a series of animated shorts based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the first of which was "The Pit and the Pendulum" in 2006.^[9]

Harryhausen also worked with Legend Films to reissue some of his early feature films on Blu-ray Disc in a series of colorized versions using an improved colorization process. According to Legend Films president Barry Sandrew, the filmmaker told him that his original vision was to do them in color, but both limited budgets and limitations of color film stocks back then made it hard for him to do backgrounds and keep them color-balanced the way that was needed to maintain the films' realism.^[10] The finished 4-disc Blu-ray Disc boxed set was released in 2009, and includes Harryhausen's first four films for Columbia Pictures, including The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. There's also all new commentaries with Harryhausen and a variety of guest special-effects producers who were influenced by Harryhausen's work, an on-camera interview by Tim Burton, plus much in the way of other new bonus features. Other digital clean-up and restoration techniques were performed on this Blu-ray Disc edition, including a feature that allow you to see the first three films colorized, or in the original black and white form. Other Columbia Harryhausen films will be released on Blu-ray Disc, starting with Jason and the Argonauts released in 2010.

Harryhausen was also involved in the process of colorizing She, produced by Merian C. Cooper, who had originally intended to shoot the film in color, but at the last minute the budget was cut by RKO, forcing Cooper to shoot in black and white.^[11] As a tribute to Cooper, Harryhausen color designed the film in a manner in which he feels Cooper would have wanted it exhibited. The colorized DVD includes an audio commentary by Harryhausen and Merian C. Cooper expert Mark Vaz who discuss the film and color choices. The colorized trailer for She premiered at the 2006 Comic-Con.^[12] Harryhausen also helped design the color on two further Legend Films releases, Things to Come and The Most Dangerous Game.

In July 2006, it was announced^[13] that Harryhausen has licenced Bluewater Productions to create six comic book follow-ups to some of his most famous movies. The first three are Sinbad: Rogue of Mars, 20 Million Miles More and Wrath of the Titans, which were realised in May 2007 followed by a further three: Jason and the Argonauts: The Kingdom of Hades, Back to Mysterious Island and 10th Muse. Harryhausen will furnish new artwork, but not scripts. All will be five-issue miniseries. A full podcast interview with Ray Harryhausen can be heard here [1]. In the summer of 2009, the contract between Harryhausen and Bluewater came to an end and was not renewed^[14].

Ray is currently serving as a producer on the Movie War Eagles which is slated to be released in 2010^{[dated info]} per IMDb and Jim Dee on Take Two-The Movie Program.^[15][16] In the late 1930s, while at MGM, Merian C. Cooper (creator of King Kong) promoted a color film epic that would utilize stop-motion and the creative talents of Willis O'Brien to animate giant prehistoric eagles. The project was sadly abandoned. Bob Burns and other Kong experts discussed the "lost" War Eagles pitch to fans, he found typewriter documents and even a rough screenplay of War Eagles, and years later an author named "Carl Macek" marshaled the evidence into a book called War Eagles. The first copies were given to Ray Harryhausen and his friend Ray Bradbury. They thought the adaptation of it was splendid, and so began the working of Mr. Cooper's & Willis O'Brien's lost drafts into the upcoming project.

A new big-budget version of Clash of the Titans, with all-CGI special effects, appeared in movie theaters in early April 2010. With Harryhausen initially expressing surprise and wondering why it was even felt that there was any need for a remake of his movie, its fans currently await Harryhausen's reaction to the film itself.^{[citation needed]}

Ray Harryhausen now lives in England. As a ninetieth birthday tribute, he was featured on the BBC flagship current affairs programme Newsnight on Thursday, June 24, 2010, talking about his life's work. In 2010, he had a cameo as one of 'The Distinguished Gentlemen' in Burke and Hare, the British black comedy directed by John Landis. The film is about the notorious Ulster murderers in Edinburgh in the late 1820s.

In June 2010 it was announced that the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation had agreed to deposit the animator's complete collection of some 20,000 pieces with the National Media Museum in Bradford, England.

Anglo/Swedish pop band, the Hoosiers, dedicated their first single, Worried about Ray, to Ray Harryhausen. The music video features a character called "Ray" making films, and includes a Harryhausen style monster, which is killed after Irwin Sparkes uses his guitar to fire a drum stick into the monster's single eye.

Filmography[link]

• How to Bridge a Gorge (1942) (producer)
• Tulips Shall Grow (1942) (chief animator)
• Mother Goose Stories (1946) (producer)
• The Story of Little Red Riding Hood (1949) (producer, animator)
• Mighty Joe Young (1949) (first technician)
• Rapunzel (1951) (producer)
• Hansel and Gretel (1951) (producer)
• The Story of King Midas (1953) (producer)
• The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) (visual effects)
• It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) (visual effects)
• The Animal World (1956) (effects technician)
• Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) (special photographic, animation effects)
• 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) (visual effects)
• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) (associate producer, visual effects)
• The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960) (visual effects)
• Mysterious Island (1961) (special visual effects)
• Jason and the Argonauts (1963) (associate producer, visual effects)
• First Men in the Moon (1964) (associate producer, visual effects)
• One Million Years B.C. (1966) (special visual effects)
• The Valley of Gwangi (1969) (associate producer, visual effects)
• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974) (producer, visual effects)
• Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) (producer, visual effects)
• Clash of the Titans (1981) (producer, visual effects)
• The Story of the Tortoise & the Hare (2003) (director, co-producer, animator)
• Ray Harryhausen Presents: The Pit and the Pendulum (2007) (executive producer)

References[link]

Interviews

• Starlog December, 1977 no.10 "Ray Harryhausen" interview by Richard Meyers
• Starlog November, 1985 no.100 "Ray Harryhausen:The Man Who Work Miracles" interview by Steve Swires
• Starlog February, 1988 no.127 " Ray Harryhausen:Farewell To Fantasy Films" interview by Steve Swires
• Starlog Spectacular 1990 no.1 "A kind Of Magic" interview by Stan Nicholls
• Movie star (Germany) February, 1997 no.25/26 "Ray Harryhausen Trickfilmzauberer" interview by Uwe Sommerlad
• L'Eepress (France) December, 2000 no. 2580 "Les effets speciaux doivent donner a rever. Rencontre avec Ray Harryhausen, maitre du genre dont "Jason et les Argonauts ressort" by Arnaud Malherle
• Filmfax Magazine March, 2001 no.83 "The Many Worlds Of Ray Harryhausen" interview by Michael Stein
• Pranke (Germany) March, 2005 Vol. no.27 "Interview With Ray Harryhausen" interview by Martin Stadler
• Onion March, 21 2006 "Ray Harryhausen" interview by Christopher Bahn
• Monster Bash Magazine December, 2007 no.7 "20 Million Miles to Harryhausen" interview by Lawrence Fultz Jr.
• Van Helsing's Journal April, 2011 no.12 "A Conversation With Harryhausen" interview by Lawrence Fultz Jr.

External links[link]

• Official website
• Ray Harryhausen at the Internet Movie Database
• Ray Harryhausen at AllRovi
• Ray Harryhausen at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Ray Harryhausen in Dangerous Ink Magazine - 2009 interview)
• The 7th Voyage.com
• YouTube-hosted video with chronological clips of Ray Harryhausen movie creations
• Mother Goose Stories - complete animation film from 1946 on Archive.org
• A 2003 interview at Netribution
• Ray Harryhausen: An Animation Legend (2004 interview) at Tail Slate
• Feature on Ray Harryhausen's War Of The Worlds project at War Of The Worlds Invasion
• EyeForFilm.co.uk Ray Harryhausen In Person at Edinburgh International Film Festival
• Ray Harryhausen biography at the Science Fiction Hall of Fame