Blake Edwards' THE GREAT RACE - a big, bold and brassy live action cartoon

One of Warner Bros studios big budget shows of the sixties, THE GREAT RACE (1965) was a particularly loud though undeniably fun film with alot going for it.  Star Jack Lemmon, whom I'm very fond of, (especially in THE ODD COUPLE) was really allowed to cut loose hare and personify a hosh-posh of elements from every cartoon villain you've ever seen.

Tony Curtis was his usual dull and utterly forgettable self, with Peter Falk and Natalie Wood shining here.  Blake Edwards knows his stuff when it comes to slapstick comedy and in fact made a couple of the funniest films ever, THE PARTY and RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER  - both with Peter Sellers.

Henry Mancini contributed a sensational comic score that works perfectly, with the wonderful centrepiece musical number by Dorothy Provine being one of those numbers you just can't get out of your mind for days afterwards - in fact I'm playing it right now as I type this ("He shouldn't a had, ought-to-have had a swang on me").

An aspect I liked about THE GREAT RACE was that it won the Oscar for best sound effects editing - by one of the greats of sound effect creation, the legendary Treg Brown.  Now if anyone out there is anything like me, a fan of Chuck Jones Looney Tunes cartoons of the fifties, you'd know that Brown was Warners' chief sound cutter to all of those hundreds of six minute marvels - sound effects that were unlike ANY other animation studio in their sheer lunacy and incongruent hilarity.  Chuck Jones himself credited Brown as one of the great unsung heroes of the Warner Bros cartoon division for 30 years.

Anyway, on with the special photographic effects from THE GREAT RACE.  They are great!  The picture is loaded with matte shots painted by Cliff Silsby, Howard Fisher and Albert Maxwell Simpson, blue screen shots by Linwood Dunn and miniatures photographed by James B.Gordon - not to mention some amazing full scale mechanical effects by Lee Zavitz. The show looks and sounds great, even today.

So, on with the show...........

Special Photographic Effects - Linwood G.Dunn - Film Effects of Hollywood

Special Effects Cinematographer - James B.Gordon

Optical Cinematographer - Don Weed

Matte Painters - Cliff Silsby, Albert Maxwell Simpson, Leon Harris and Howard Fisher.

 Mechanical Special Effects - Lee Zavitz

Sound Effects Editor - Tregoweth Brown

A great title sequence done as a series of old lantern slides, complete with several projectionist jarring gags.

One of the 25 matte shots (I've never been able to spot that many).

The race begins - NYC painted cityscape. One of the key matte painters on this show, and many more for Linwood Dunn was Albert Maxwell Simpson - an artist who's career harked way back to the silent era and who had among thousands of films painted on THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, GONE WITH THE WIND and other Selznick pictures as well as the original KING KONG and many, many more mostly for RKO over the decades.  Simpson had a long association with Linwood Dunn right from the KONG days and they continued a working relationship up until the late sixties.

Another angle with matte painted NYC buildings added to Warners backlot street.

Painted western lanscape with simulated explosion and fire element on horizon.

A large miniature of Lemmon and Falk's evil lair - with typically cartoonish outcome.

The ole' west - probably a backlot set with painted in Arizona scenery.

Alaska - partial soundstage set with substantial matte painted snowy landscape.

Small set with actors matted into ocean plate.

A dazzling Cliff Silsby matte painted newpaper office - with flawless attention to detail and superb compositing.  Silsby was one of Hollywoods old hands at matte art, having worked over the decades for Twentieth Century Fox and Warners.

A beautiful soft blended matte shot as the adventurers reach land at last.  I suspect that possibly former Paramount matte artist Jan Domela may also have been involved with the show as he did do several contract matte jobs for Linwood Dunn around that year.  He did paint on HAWAII at Film Effects of Hollywood the following year.

A very rare original matte painting that still exists from the scene shown below.  The painting is 5 feet wide and is on thin hardboard.  The artist would either be Al Simpson or Cliff Silsby.      *Picture courtesy of Jim Aupperle.

A detailed photograph from the above original matte painting.

One of the mattes that was up for auction many years ago, and was credited to Leon Harris as matte painter.  The 1990 Disney movie DICK TRACY had Harris on the matte team along with six other artists, primarily as draghtsman for laying out the many complex architectural requirements on glass for the other artists to work from.

Another flawless painted matte, and like the others seen in this film very cleanly composited.

Paris!!!  A Linwood Dunn miniature Eiffel Tower perfectly lit and lined up into actual location plate.

The spectacular finale - the Eiffel Tower comes crashing down.  The story behind this wonderful sequence is fascinating.  In an interview effects supervisor Dunn was faced with the prospect of investing considerable sums in contstructing a large sixteen foot miniature, yet came across the notion of employing nothing mre than an over the counter seven dollar plastic model Eiffel Tower, from which an amazingly convincing scene of destruction was achieved which to all concerned was perfectly acceptable.(from an interview with Dunn in the book Special Effects in the Movies by David Everitt)

Willis O'Brien vents natures' fury for THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII

Among effects master Willis H.O'Brien's more atypical film credits would have to be the big Merian C.Cooper Roman-disaster epic LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (1935).  Whereas O'Bie was the specialist in stop motion animation as witnessed in a number of classic films, most notably KING KONG his skills in special visual effects were less often utilised elsewhere, with LAST DAYS OF POMPEII being a prime example.

I get the impression from all of the articles I've read on O'Bie that he never reached the degree of fulfillment in the field of special effects that he'd have desired - with often considerable gaps between assignments and many projects which never got off the ground such as GWANGI (pictured here with O'Bie posing with a Jack Shaw pre-production oil painting).  As if his stuttering film career wasn't impediment enough, the numerous personal tragedies that befell O'Bie were enough to sink the strongest of men.

Vernon Walker and Linwood Dunn

POMPEII is a fascinating film on a number of levels.  It's a film that tries hard to give the big studio look to an apparently modest budget film from a minor studio at the time.  It's pretty well written and well paced with several set pieces that shine through.  Of course it's the climactic eruption of Mt Vesuvius that was the selling point for the movie, and even though we have to wait until the last reel to see it there is enough drama and spectacle throughout to not leave one wanting.

Naturally to achieve such a setting as ancient Rome and Jeruselem photographic effects were required, and these are for the most part plentiful and well executed.  O'Bie surrounded himself with many of his tried and true crew from the two KONG films, and some even from THE LOST WORLD - all names familiar I'm sure to anyone who reads this blog - Byron Crabbe, Vernon Walker, Clarence Slifer, Harry Redmond, Marcel Delgado and Linwood Dunn to name but a few.  Many of these key figures also worked on the excellent SHE (which is covered elsewhere in detail in a previous blog here), with both films coming out in 1935 the workload at RKO must have been considerable indeed.

As this blog is primarily dedicated to glass shots I've assembled all of these here but not at the cost of overlooking the many miniatures and travelling matte composites, so these are here too.   Sadly I'm unable to locate an old magazine article I have from the thirties about this film which has photos showing before and after of some of Crabbe's glass shots.  If it turns up I'll add to shots to this blog. *(it did show up and it's now added just down this page 28/8/10)

I must say that the Warner Home Video DVD is up to there usual high standards and looks superb indeed.  Some of the matte shots are extremely grainy but that isn't due to the visual effect necessarily - more so down to the fact that many of those key narrative glass paintings occur during dissolves, which in themselves are optical dupes.  This isn't an uncommon irritation, for many older films had awful optical dissolves employed during matte painted shots, thus almost destroying the integrity of the visual effect that the matte artist and cameraman were trying to achieve.  I remember matte artist Rocco Gioffre once telling me of his utter annoyance at this exact phenomena, as the carefully painted and composited rooftop to an existing castle he had done for the movie ROB ROY being ruined by excess optical tampering to add a dissolve to the shot in the final film - an effect he said he could have facilitated quite easily at his end while making the composite, thus saving the image quality.  Of course this sort of 'wrecking' of such shots was dominant throughout the 30's and up until the early 60's where the optical transition such as the fade in or dissolve was orchestrated on separate elements altogether and spliced into the printing negative, with always obvious and distracting results - change of colour hue, grain and the rest of it.

Anyway, on with the show....

Director of Special Effects  Willis H.O'Brien

Matte Artist  Byron L.Crabbe

Production Illustrator  Mario Larrinaga

Photographic Effects  Vernon L.Walker

Miniature Process Projection  Carroll Shepphird

Model Makers Marcel Delgado and W.G 'Gus' White

Matte Cameraman  Clarence W.D Slifer

Optical Effects  Linwood G.Dunn

Mechanical Effects  Harry Redmond, jnr

The opening effects shot - a Byron Crabbe glass painting with separate smoke and sea elements, with studio mock up boat and people added via travelling matte, presumably the Frank Williams modified blue screen method.

As with all of the film, it was a soundstage shoot with extensive use of glass shots to open up the scenes.

A closer view of the same setting, presumably with a separate glass painting.

Nice subtle use of matte art to realistically extend a confined set.

More of the same with Byron Crabbe matte art.

A particularly nice matte composite.  Matte cameraman was the great Clarence Slifer who's career in effects cinematography would extend from the original KING KONG and GONE WITH THE WIND right up to BEN HUR, NORTH BY NORTHWEST and THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD and many other films.

Iconic image of glass painted Jeruselem.

A large miniature palace and a painted backing with separate volcanic smoke elements and water.

Possibly a painted backing in this shot?

I suspect a process plate of a miniature as in a later sequence it all collapses.

'she's ready to pop her cork'

'thar she blows' - Some Harry Redmond pyrotechnics at play.

What appears to be a miniature split screened into a stage set.

The aforementioned process miniature, now collapsing onto extras.

Lot's of fireballs and pyro elements added to production shots.

Willis O'Brien seen here on the miniatures stage shooting the lava flow scenes.

Very steady matte comp with actors split screened into lava flow miniature set.

Pompeii in flames - probably a miniature set due to camera movement.

One of the numerous blue backing matte sequences, with frequent bleed or show through of the background plate, particularly on the outside edges of the frame where horses appear translucent briefly and wagon wheels are invisible.

Collapsing senate building with travelling matte for foreground extras, and optical overlays of flames and smoke etc.

The giant statue collapses onto the running crowds in an optical composite.

Extras run from approaching river of lava by means of another blue screen optical composite, presumably using the updated Williams technique developed and improved upon during the making of KING KONG.

The arena in a view never properly shown to it's best advantage in the film, with matte artist Byron Crabbe seen here painting the glass shot for the stadium and crowds - which again is not well used in the final edit unfortunately.

A terrific studio promotional paste up that caught my eye when I was a 9 or 10 year old in a book and had me utterly transfixed.  Sadly no shot such as the grandeur or wonder of this ad-man's retouched still exists in the movie, which disappointed me no end!!

Creator of visual effects Willis H.O'Brien seen here with a MIGHTY JOE YOUNG puppet, and matte artist Byron L.Crabbe.

Upper picture - Crabbe and O'Bie looking over the very large model palace, and lower picture of the model as depicted in the film.