Interview With Alan Young, Part I

Many years ago, your correspondent did a great deal of writing for various entertainment magazines.  I was lucky enough to do many interviews, not all of which ran as originally planned.  Some of these -- Clayton Moore, James Bernard, Lawrence Block – were published for the first time in The Jade Sphinx.  It’s with pleasure that I add another to that list, comedian Alan Young (born 1919).

This interview was originally conducted some 20 years ago when Young, now 94, was a sprightly 75 year-old.  We hope you enjoy!

For years it has been bandied about that Alan Young is one of the nicest men in Hollywood. One has only to watch him play the gentle characters in such genre classics as Tom Thumb and The Time Machine, his star turn as nice-guy Wilbur Post in television's Mr. Ed, or even listen to the old-softy undercurrents in his vocal characterization of Scrooge McDuck in countless Disney productions, and figure that all the things said about Mr. Young are true.

Figure no more. When we called Mr. Young for an interview in the summer of 1995, he proved as much fun, as generous of nature, as downright sweet as we had heard. And you might say we got it straight from the horse's mouth.

Mr. Young has a way of speaking that instantly puts the listener at ease, and it was with regret that our time together had come to an end.

Throughout the interview, Mr. Young made frequent references to his kindly, easy-going father. Spending time with him, you know that Alan Young is truly his father's son.

Here is what a man who knew Tom Thumb, a time traveler, and a talking horse had to say.

How did you get your start in show business?

Poverty! (Laughs.)  I was about 10 or 11 years old, and heard that the local Scottish society wanted somebody to entertain them. Well, I had been used to doing silly things, imitations of the old Scottish comedians and such, and I got $3 dollars for it.

And you've been working steadily ever since?

I don't know about steadily! It was sporadic. Nobody had much money. When my father came to walk me home after the show, we didn't have a car and it was a little village, and he saw the $3 they gave me. My Dad worked in a shipyard all day for that kind of money, and he said: "Son, keep up with that talking business because lips don't sweat!" That was the original title of my autobiography, which was re-titled Mr. Ed and Me.

While we're on talking, one of the best remembered shows from the Golden Age of  Radio was The Alan Young Show. Any memories of that?

I was never very happy with it. People send me tapes of it every now and then, and I listened to one the other day and I realized what I didn't like about it. It wasn't too funny! I got laughs from facial mugging, I guess, which didn't do much for the people at home, but meant a lot to the studio audience. I decided that when television came in that there was where I'd concentrate my efforts.  But I enjoyed radio because I met such nice people.

You had a terrific supporting cast for that show.

Oh yeah. When I think of the people that worked in New York, I didn't know them then, but people like Art Carney and Mercedes McCambridge, who became a very prominent actress, they were all what we called stooges on the show. That's what we called them, in those days. I was amazed later to find out who it was I was working with! (Laughs.)

One of the films dear to our readers is The Time Machine, which is considered one of the classics of the 60s. Is it the favorite of your films?

Well, that and Androcles and the Lion. I think it's a toss-up. But I think The Time Machine because in that I was allowed to play the character that I wanted to play, an old Scotchman like my father. George Pal was such a delight to work for!

How did your casting come about?

Well, I was in England and George Pal hired me for Tom Thumb. We got along so well, that during shooting he said, "When we get around to doing The Time Machine, I want you to play Filby." I said I'd love to. He didn't pay me much money for Tom Thumb because he didn't have much to spend. But he said he'd make it up to me with The Time Machine. When I got back to Hollywood, he called me up and said that we were going ahead with The Time Machine here instead of England, but I'm afraid you'll make less money now than you did in Tom Thumb! MGM was pretty tight on the money with George, and he had to make it up in talent.

Tom Thumb is also a wonderful little fantasy film.

It's a joy to watch now, because Russ Tamblyn was a great talent -- a terrific dancer. He's the whole picture.

Did you find working in two such heavy special effects films like Tom Thumb and The Time Machine daunting at times?

My character doesn't really have much to do with the special effects. I didn't know what they were going to do, I just did my part. I was so tickled in Tom Thumb just to be working with Jessie Matthews and people like that, who, when I was a little boy, were big stars. And I couldn't wait to see the finished product, because I knew just what a genius George was.

The Time Machine was a joy to work on because Rod Taylor was a real good guy and terrific actor. I really wasn't part of the special effects.

More Alan Young Tomorrow!

The World Loses Ray Harryhausen, Part I

Harryhausen animating the skeleton in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

It’s just about one month shy of the first anniversary of the passing of Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) one of the Great Men of American Letters.  Sadly, we now mourn the loss of one of the great visionaries of American Cinema, Bradbury’s friend Ray Harryhausen.

In an age when the cinema is glutted with fantasy and science fiction films bloated by special effects, it’s perhaps difficult to remember that genre films were the exception to the rule, and that special effects were once, well …, special.

Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) was born and raised in California, where he became friends with young Ray Bradbury, a fellow science fiction fan.  Like many of an entire generation of science fiction and fantasy buffs, the release of the original King Kong in 1933 was a seminal event in his life.  The mighty Kong fell not only from the Empire State Building, but he fell on Harryhausen as well, metaphorically smothering the boy and making him and a fan of stop motion animation.

The young Harryhausen went Kong-Krazy, and did all he could to learn how the effects of Kong were achieved.  It was then that he learned of Stop Motion Animation, a process by which models were filmed – literally one frame at a time – with slight alterations in posing.  When played sequentially, the animation effect simulated life – making steel-skeleton puppets covered with rubber, fur and miniature costumes come alive.  Harryhausen started building models and making amateur films while in his teens.  Footage of these early films still exists, including one where the young animator has envisioned the world of Venus.  A story that has passed into Harryhausen lore is that he appropriated his mother’s fur coat to create the model of a mastodon….

Harryhausen, in many ways, resembled the great studio painters of yore in that after showing early aptitude, he got to apprentice with an established master.  A friend arranged for Harryhausen to meet Willis O’Brien (1886-1962), the brilliant special effects pioneer who created King Kong.  O’Brien was impressed by Harryhausen’s experimental films, and urged him to take drawing and sculpture courses to hone his craft. 

Harryhausen started his professional career animating short films for science fiction auteur George Pal (1908-1980); the series was called Puppetoons, and specialized mostly in fairy tales.  He also worked with Frank Capra during World War II, mostly as a camera assistant.

After the war, Harryhausen went to work with his mentor, O’Brien, and together they made one of the most impressive fantasy films of the 1940s, Mighty Joe Young (1949).  The film won O’Brien his long over-due Academy Award, which is ironic in that Harryhausen did most of the actual animation while O’Brien focused on solving technical problems.

After that, there was no stopping Harryhausen, and he went on to create the special effects for some of the most celebrated and best-loved fantasy and science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s: It Came from Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, and Mysterious Island. He also produced many of his own films (such as Jason and the Argonauts and the original Clash of the Titans), and was always the guiding vision behind each and every film on which he worked.  This led to a unified body of work, similar in tone, outlook and depth of feeling.  No ironist and blessed with a sense of adventure and optimism, Harryhausen opened a world of the imagination to generations of movie goers and future film-makers.  When Harryhausen was honored 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!"

Like painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), there is little “color” or drama to Harryhausen’s life.  If Sargent’s epitaph was “he painted,” then Harryhausen’s could well be, “he created.”  He married late in life (in 1963), to Diana Livingston Bruce, and lived quietly in London and Spain, tirelessly breathing life into his magical puppets, and consequently bringing a little magic into the lives of all of us.  Ray Harryhausen loved fantasy, science fiction, hamburgers, his fans, and Diana.  His passing is a great loss to anyone who loves the world of the imagination.

Tomorrow: The Essential Ray Harryhausen Film List

Ray Animated an Elephant and Dinosaur for the Climax of

The Valley of Gwangi