He Made Wonders

Ray Harryhausen died today. The stop-motion animation master and Ray Bradbury had been best friends since they were teen-agers. I’ve talked about Ray Bradbury’s influence on my life and creative work before, but Ray Harryhausen got to me first, via a set of View Master disks that brought dinosaurs to life for me in glorious 3D. Those images were taken from Irwin Allen’s The Animal World. Here it is:

Ray H. got to bring some of Ray Bradbury’s vision to the screen in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Look:

For me, Ray Harryhausen did the same thing for dinosaurs that his best friend did for Mars: bring the fantastic to beautiful, poetic, magical life. I like to imagine the two of them once again gleefully building wonders together, forever eighteen and forever enamored with movies and monsters.

Thanks, Ray!

This is a post from Matthew Wayne Selznick. Thanks for reading He Made Wonders -- please click through and comment, and share with everyone you know!