Mighty Joe Young (also known as Mr. Joseph Young of Africa and The Great Joe Young) is a 1949 American black-and-white fantasy film distributed by RKO Radio Pictures and produced by the same creative team responsible for King Kong (1933). The film was produced and directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose. It stars Robert Armstrong, Terry Moore, and Ben Johnson in his first credited screen role. Animation effects were handled by Willis O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Pete Peterson, and Marcel Delgado. It was released on July 13, 1949, and underperformed at the box office, though reviews were generally positive. In 1950, the film won an Academy Award for special effects.
Mighty Joe Young tells the story of a young woman, Jill Young, living on her father's ranch in Africa. Jill has raised the title character, a large gorilla, from an infant, and years later brings him to Hollywood. The film explores the themes of domesticity, humanization, and primitivism. It was later remade in 1998 with Charlize Theron and Bill Paxton. From 2017 to 2018, Aberystwyth University hosted an exhibition about its production.
Plot In 1937 Tanganyika territory, Africa, seven-year-old Jill Young is living with her father on his ranch. Two Africans come by with an orphaned baby mountain gorilla. Unbeknownst to her widowed father, Jill trades some of her toys, jewelry, and money for the gorilla and names him Joe Young. When he finds out, her father is initially reluctant to keep the gorilla, but eventually agrees.
Twelve years later, businessman Max O'Hara and a cowboy named Gregg are on a trip in Africa looking for animals to headline in Max's Hollywood nightclub. The men have captured several lions and are about to leave when Joe Young appears, now tall and weighing . When a caged lion bites Joe's fingers, he goes on a rampage. Visualizing Joe as their big nightclub attraction, Max and Gregg try to rope him, but he throws both men from their horses, breaks free, and attempts to attack them. A grown Jill Young arrives, calming Joe. The men meet with Jill, and Gregg becomes smitten with her. Max asks her to bring Joe and be part of his nightclub entertainment. He tells her that Joe and she will be a Hollywood hit and rich within weeks. Dazzled by O'Hara's promises of fame and fortune, the naïve girl agrees to take Joe to Hollywood.
On opening night, Joe lifts a large platform above his head, holding Jill playing "Beautiful Dreamer" on a grand piano. Afterward, Joe has a tug of war with "the 10 strongest men in the world", which he easily wins. Italian heavyweight boxer Primo Carnera tries to box with him, but Joe tosses him into the audience. Joe's popularity grows, and by the 10th week, he is Hollywood's biggest nightclub attraction. By the 17th week, Joe has grown tired of performing and is homesick. Later, during dinner, Gregg and Jill express their love for one another, with Gregg agreeing to return with her to Africa. In his cage, an unhappy Joe tries to ignore three drunks who have sneaked backstage; they offer Joe an open whiskey bottle, and he becomes intoxicated. Taunting him, the drunks burn Joe's fingers with a cigarette lighter. Roaring with pain and rage, he breaks out, wrecking the nightclub's interior. He also smashes the glass of the lion habitat, allowing the lions to escape into the crowded club.
After the drunks accuse Joe of trying to kill them, a court decree orders Joe to be shot. Gregg, Max, Jill, and a friend named Windy devise a plan to get Joe back to Africa using a moving van and cargo ship. Before reaching port, they see an orphanage engulfed in flames. Jill and Gregg help the caretakers save the children. A last group, along with Jill and Gregg, is trapped on the top level. Joe braves the raging fire by climbing an adjacent tall tree, carrying Jill to safety, while Gregg lowers each child by rope to the ground. One child is left behind, so Joe climbs up again, grabbing the little girl. Max assures Jill that because of Joe's heroism, his life will now be spared.
Much later, Max receives home movies from his friends. Jill and Gregg are married and living on their ranch in Africa with Joe. Joe waves "goodbye", along with Jill and Gregg, to Max.
Cast Terry Moore as Jill Young Lora Lee Michel as Young Jill Ben Johnson as Gregg Johnson Robert Armstrong as Max O'Hara Frank McHugh as Windy Douglas Fowley as Jones Denis Green as Dan Crawford Regis Toomey as John Young Paul Guilfoyle as Smith Nestor Paiva as Brown James Flavin as Schultz Primo Carnera as himself
Uncredited performances with dialogue: Phil Olafsson as The Swedish Angel William Schallert as a gas station attendant Charles Lane as a producer Ellen Corby as a nurse at the burning orphanage Irene Ryan as a southern belle at the bar
Production
Conception Mighty Joe Young was produced by Arko, a company formed by John Ford and Merian C. Cooper and owned by RKO and Argosy Pictures. Arko was formed solely for making Mighty Joe Young.; John Ford was credited as a co-producer of the film, but left before shooting began. Though Cooper originally conceived of the story, he may have taken inspiration from Toto and I by Augusta Maria Hoyt. He wanted to make a film where a gorilla is raised by a woman, feels affection for her, and faces negative consequences as a result of his affection. This idea eventually evolved into the plot of Mighty Joe Young. It was approved for creation in 1946 by RKO, which was to distribute it.;
As production progressed with a budget between $1.2 and $1.5 million,; Ernest Schoedsack and Willis O'Brien contributed to the storyline, while Schoedsack's wife, Ruth Rose, wrote the screenplay. She based the characters Gregg and O'Hara on her husband and Cooper, respectively. In planning the film, Cooper aimed for a lighthearted reflection of King Kong. As such, it is considered the third segment in the King Kong trilogy, being preceded by King Kong and Son of Kong. Working titles included The Last Safari, African Cowboy, Mr. Joseph Young of Africa, and The Great Joe Young. Posters bearing the last title were released, but the name was changed on the day the film debuted. The producers considered cancelling the film several times, but after three years, it was completed.
Animation models While Mighty Joe Young was in its conception stages in 1945, production designer Willis O'Brien, with Cooper's approval, hired a young man named Ray Harryhausen with whom he had been acquainted for several years.; Harryhausen was fascinated by the stop-motion animation in King Kong and had experimented with stop-animation films of his own, showing them to O'Brien, to whom he looked up as a mentor.; ; Mighty Joe Young was Harryhausen's first major film project.; ; ; Until the film was officially approved in 1946, O'Brien and Harryhausen worked from O'Brien's home. At first, Harryhausen's duties mainly consisted of cutting frames, mounting storyboards, copy typing, and attending story meetings.; In these meetings O'Brien presented ideas for the plot.
With the film's approval, O'Brien and Harryhausen moved to an RKO studio in Culver City, where they were able to officially begin production. O'Brien was given a special effects team of 47 people.; O'Brien felt that he did not need a team that large, but Hollywood union rules stated that different jobs needed to be done by different people.; As a result, the film cost more to make than it would have with a smaller team.; Members of the team included O'Brien, Harryhausen, Pete Peterson, George Lofgren, Marcel Delgado, Fitch Fulton, Harold Stine, Bert Willis, and Linwood Dunn. Fewer than ten animators were on the team. Later, Harryhausen explained that few of the animators produced footage that was fit to be used in the final film. Animation took 14 months, from October 1947 to December 1948. Cooper went to the animation set every day.
Joe was animated using posable figures modeled after real gorillas. Each model, made of an aluminum-copper skeleton with 150 pieces, cost nearly $1500.; Harryhausen designed the armature with ball-and-socket joints; early models were designed with hinge joints. Using ball-and-socket joints allowed for increased natural joint movement though they required frequent repairs. Engineer Harry Cunningham was put in charge of assembling the armature. Years later, Cunningham denied assembling it, and animator Jim Danforth guessed that Cunningham delegated the task to someone else. Once the armatures were complete, Delgado formed the gorilla's muscles.; To do this, he attached foam rubber, cotton, and dental dam to the armatures and covered them with latex rubber to begin molding.; ; Forming the muscles directly onto the armature made it look like the muscles were moving as the model moved, necessitating careful attention to detail while creating the model.
The next step was to add the fur. The fur used on the models was taken from the hide of an unborn calf; the fine hair worked well for a small-scale model of a large animal.; O'Brien decided that it needed to be rubberized to prevent the hairs from sticking up when the animators handled the models, a problem that had not been addressed for the King Kong model.; Familiar with his patented technique for rubberizing fur, O'Brien hired George Lofgren to prepare the fur.; Lofgren stretched the hide, combed the fur, and covered the hairs with a washable adhesive. After the adhesive dried, he placed the hide skin-up in a sealed container with Dermestes larvae, which ate the skin but not the hair and exposed the hair follicles. This done, rubber latex was applied; the adhesive was washed away after the rubber cured.; In all, the six models varied from 5 to 16 inches tall.; The smaller models were used for long shots of Joe. Harryhausen also created a 15-inch model of Joe's torso for close-ups, but it was never used because the other models sufficed.; After filming was completed for the day, Delgado repaired the models. Having multiple models made continued animation possible, while other models were being repaired. Delgado designed and sculpted additional models for lions, horses, and people to be used in stunt scenes.;
Animation process O'Brien's work on the animation largely involved the planning and preparation, including setting up the background images, while his assistants did most of the stop-motion features.; Backgrounds for the animated scenes were created by using both glass paintings and projected images. To make a background of glass paintings, O'Brien layered sheets of painted glass, bringing depth to the image.; Further depth was achieved with multiple small-scale props in the foreground.; The other background method, projection, required small models so that the projected image could be smaller and therefore more crisp. O'Brien and Cunningham designed and made the ARKO projectors used for the process. Initially, Cooper wanted the film to be shot in Technicolor, but getting the colors to appear correctly on the glass paintings proved to take too much time and risked exceeding the budget.; Instead, it was filmed in black and white. Later, they tinted the burning orphanage scene in red, orange, and yellow.;