Willis O'Brien

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Willis O'Brien (born March 2, 1886 in Oakland , California , USA , as Willis Harold O'Brien , † November 8, 1962 in Los Angeles , California, USA) was an American trick technician who, through the use of Stop -Motion in King Kong and the White Woman became known.

Life

Willis O'Brien tried several jobs until he was hired as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Daily World newspaper . His interest in boxing led him to stop-motion technique when he reenacted a boxing match with clay figures. His second interest was in prehistoric times. A dinosaur played in his first stop-motion short film . He convinced the producer Herman Wobber and the short film The Dinosaur and the Missing Link was made in 1915 , which was awarded by the Edison Company. Mannikin Films was founded and five more stop-motion short films were made for the Edison Company by 1917. After the sale of the Edison Company, he left Mannikin Films and made his first lengthy short film, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain , for Herbert M. Dawley in 1918 , which was a huge box-office success.

Because of this success, he now dared to film an adventure novel by Arthur Conan Doyle . It won First National Pictures as a production company. The result was The Lost World , in which he refined the stop-motion technique and not only depicted the dinosaurs as monsters. Further projects could not be realized because the film companies increasingly invested in the new sound film and the global economic crisis made his expensive projects impossible. In 1929 he switched to RKO , which financed his next project, Creation . It was a sound film version of his success from 1925. However, RKO ran into trouble and the project was stopped in 1931. After reviewing the available material, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack signed him for King Kong and the white woman . This film is still considered a milestone in stop-motion technology and animation technology in general. However, his careful but lavish work exceeded the budget, so that he had to make do with far less money for the follow-up film, King Kong's Son .

He took on further work in the RKO productions The Downfall of Pompeii , Dancing Pirate and Citizen Kane , but his own film projects failed. During the war he worked briefly for George Pal and his Puppetoons and for propaganda films for the US Navy. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack hired him after the war to panic about King Kong . For this work he was awarded the Oscar for the best special effects in 1950. It was also a belated acknowledgment of his performance in 1933, when the Oscar for this category had not even existed. O'Brien worked on this film for the first time with the young Ray Harryhausen . Another collaboration followed in 1956 in the documentary The Animal World Calls by Irwin Allen , in which both animated a dinosaur sequence. Despite winning an Oscar, he was unable to realize his own projects. He oversaw the special effects for The Black Scorpion and The Loch Ness Monster . Irwin Allen hired him as a technical consultant for the remake of his own 1925 film. To his disappointment, the stop-motion technology was not used for reasons of cost for the Sunken World . Most recently he animated scenes in A totally, totally crazy world .

Although O'Brien's own projects failed after the artistic successes of 1925, 1933 and 1949, several of his ideas made it to the cinemas. The story of an allosaurus discovered by cowboys in a remote valley was filmed in 1956 without his involvement as The Curse of Monte Bravo . As a homage, Ray Harryhausen published Gwangi's Revenge in 1969 , which was also based on this idea. Another story was about the fight between a gorilla and a monster in San Francisco. Without his knowledge, the idea was sold to Toho Studios in Japan, which released The Return of King Kong in 1962 .

Willis O'Brien was married to Hazel Ruth Collette between 1925 and 1930. The marriage resulted in sons William and Willis Jr., who were shot by their mother in 1933. Your suicide attempt failed. She died in 1934. He had been married to Darlyne Prenett since 1934. He died of a heart attack.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

personal data
SURNAME O'Brien, Willis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES O'Brien, Willis Harold (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American trick technician
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Oakland , California , USA
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1962
Place of death Los Angeles , California , USA