vayapues wrote:
FANTAMATION wrote:
Arthur Hayward may have experimented with stop motion briefly but that's all he did regarding animation. He was, however, responsible for sculpting and molding the majority of puppets for Ray starting from Mysterious Island all the way through to Gwangi....... which was when Ray and Arthur had their falling out from Arthur claiming to have done some of the animation for Gwangi which was just an all out lie.
My understanding about Ray's disaffection from Arthur Hayward revolves around Gwangi, but in a different way: that Hayward made "unauthorized" images of the Gwangi puppet available on one or more occasions to a published in a magazine or book -- I forget if the publication in question was a natural history magazine for children or something like that. I'm sure someone around this joint will know. But nothing about Hayward "animating Gwangi" -- that's a goofy confabulation if ever there was one. Anyone who's seen the neat old British Pathé newsreel about Hayward can attest to that, maybe that's where this rumor got started. Hey, maybe we can fob off the blame on him for animating that horse & rider plunging into the water tank!

Hayward, whose main job was supervising exhibits sculptor at the Museum of Natural History in London (where he mentored guys like Tony McVey & John Coppinger), did do a different, static T rex sculpt for the Museum that later appeared on the cover of a children's dino book in the 70s. I think this sculpt pre-dates the film, but looks very much like a prototype for the Gwangi we would come to know & love. Likewise, Hayward sculpted the Gwangi-like Rex toy figure for the Museum's famous line, now O.P.,  of plastic dino figures made by the Invicta company.

In short, though Harryhausen & Schneer may have "owned" Gwangi (the honor of which now falls to Warner Communications), these iterations of da Gwang really reflect the essence of Arthur Hayward's personal style & brilliance as a master sculptor.

Thanks for your post on Arthur Hayward and especially for mentioning "the neat old British Pathé newsreel" that actually shows him working. Wow, in all these years of I never was even aware of that. Found a good copy on youtube and what a treat it is to see for this dinosaur fanatic. Never been able to get a copy of Animals though I was lucky to find the book Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals. Have a few of the dinosaur toys made by Invicta for The British Museum of Natural History so if anyone would like to see some close up photos let me know and I'll post 'em.

Animals-magazine-763x1000.jpg

The Gwangi on the cover of Animals with all that fine skin detail looks so close to the stop motion puppet that it might even be from the same mold.

The book cover (below) appears more like it might be an early preliminary model.

Cover.jpg



Last Edited By: Aupperle Sep 27 15 1:10 PM. Edited 4 times.