The Marvelous Movie Menagerie of Marcel Delgado

There was a time not so long ago in
the movie industry when lizards and
alligators wearing rubber sails and frills
strode, often not too purposefully, across
the motion picture screen, unwittingly
doing dinosaur imitations. There was
a time when men wore suits to try to
approximate the appearance of gorillas
and even tyrannosaurs. These poor
substitutions were obvious to audiences
in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and they
are obvious now.
During the first fifty years of filmmaking
when men in suits and tegu
lizards in costume were preferred by
most producers of lost land and prehistoric
animal pictures, two names
stood out for their exotic stop motion
model and mechanical prop animals of
eye-popping excellence: Willis O’Brien
and Marcel Delgado.
As a team they lent their skills to
immortal films like The Lost World (First
National, 1925), King Kong (RKO, 1933),
Mighty Joe Young (RKO, 1949) and It’s
a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (United
Artists, 1963). Delgado built the models
and O’Brien animated them. King Kong
is on the American Film Institute’s list
of top 100 films of all time. Mighty Joe
Young won the 1949 Academy Award
for special effects.
Marcel Delgado might never have
become a legend in stop motion animation
had it not been for an encounter with
Willis O’Brien in the Otis Art Institute in
Los Angeles in 1923. Just a few years
previously, the twenty-one year old
Marcel had moved with his family from
the state of Coahila, Mexico, just south
of the Texas border, to Los Angeles. The
move had been in part due to a need
to flee from the Mexican Revolution.
His father had died when he was just
fourteen and Marcel had to drop out of
school in order to work and earn money
to help his impoverished family.
Marcel was attending the art school
and had a job at a grocery store as well
as a tuition-paying job as coach and
custodian. Since childhood he had been
interested in arts and crafts and had
made his own toys from spools and cans
since his family was too poor to purchase
such a luxury as a toy. “It was while I
was doing this, that Mr. O’Brien came
to Otis, presumably to study, but probably
to find a helper. He took an interest
in my work”, Delgado told George E.
Turner in a 1968 interview. Delgado was
offered his own studio at First National
by O’Brien and he signed up and spent
the next two years building 49 or 50
dinosaurs for The Lost World. They had
aluminum armatures and foam rubber
and latex exteriors. Some were fitted
with internal rubber bellows to simulate
breathing. Delgado relied heavily upon
the best scientists and artists, studying
the art of Charles R. Knight, respected
painter of prehistoric life, and consulting
with paleontologist Barnum Brown.
The Lost World was a huge success,
but when Warner Brothers acquired First
National, he was laid off. Despite all
the racial prejudice in the film industry,
The Marvelous
Movie Menagerie of
Marcel Delgado
by Deborah Painter
#755 • MOVIE COLLECTOR’S WORLD • 17

18 • MOVIE COLLECTOR’S WORLD • #755
Right: 1925’s “The Lost World”
had not only the most dinosaurs of
any motion picture of its time, but
the most lifelike dinosaurs of any
film in the silent era.
Below: Marcel Delgado constructed
this ‘Agathaumas’ using sculpter
and artist Charles R. Knight’s work
as a guide. Unbekonwnst to him,
the species did not exist and was
erroneously based upon incomplete
skeletal material from the ‘Monoclonius.’
Still, it made a spectacular
motion picture dinosaur. (Photos -
First National).
Forrest J Ackerman once owned the “King Kong” brontosaurus built by Delgado. Note the realism
of the steel skeleton and the large bladder for “breathing.” (Photo - Michael Ramsey)
This Pterandon was in the collection of Forrest J Acerman. (Photo - Deborah Painter)
Michael Delgado built the dog suit worn by the human actor in “The Shaggy Dog,” one of Delgado’s
last films. (Photo - Walt Disney Productions)
Delgado had made many friends and
soon found work at William Fox Western
Studio, building props and miniatures.
O’Brien contacted him in 1930 about
working with him on a dinosaur film
RKO had begun, Creation. RKO shelved
the film after about a year but many of
the tabletop jungles and stop motion
dinosaur models that had been built for
it were now used for a new film, King
Kong. By now, Victor, one of Delgado’s
brothers, was also at RKO and the two
of them helped construct the giant full
size Kong head and shoulders, built the
full size, articulated Kong paw that held
Fay Wray, and the articulated toes and
feet of the Pteranodon that attempted to
carry her off Kong’s mountain.
Marcel Delgado also built the
models of the giant ape, several more
prehistoric animals, and the mechanical
Brontosaurus that rose out of the
misty swamp of Skull Island to capsize
the sailor’s makeshift raft. King Kong
proved a sensation when it premiered
in the spring of 1933.
Marcel Delgado was proudest of the Gwangi models he built for that unfished project, and for
“Mighty Joe Young.” (Photo - Gregory Kulon)

This French poster of “King Kong” captures the heart pounding climax. (Photo - Presses Universitaires
de France)
O’Brien and Delgado rushed to
create the special visual effects for the
sequel Son of Kong, that producer Merian
C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
needed to get in the can by Christmas
of that same year. Delgado built three
Sons of Kong over the skeletons of three
of the armatures of Kong.
O’Brien asked Delgado to create
“something new that nobody has ever
seen before”, so he built a dragon like
monster to guard the treasure of Skull
Island. His Styracosaurus, built for King
Kong , and ultimately not used, made its
debut in Son of Kong.
Delgado built a full sized saber
toothed cat for the Merian C. Cooper
production She, and was disappointed
when all that ended up in the finished
film was a stationary cat entombed in ice.
He also created a swordfish for Cooper’s
The Last Days of Pompeii.
Many disappointments followed,
like Gwangi, an ultimately abandoned
Colonial Pictures/RKO Pictures effort,
and MGM’s War Eagles, likewise shelved.
A detailed history of War Eagles by
Dave Conover and Phillip J. Riley is
now available from Bear Manor Media,
with many newly discovered behind the
scenes photos and the final draft of the
screenplay by Cyril Hume.
After World War II ended, Ernest B.
Schoedsack directed Mighty Joe Young
for RKO. “I think Joe Young was my
best ape,” recalled Delgado to historian
George E. Turner. “He was 15 or 16
inches high and the skin was unborn
calf skin which I asked for so it wouldn’t
bristle like the rabbit fur on Kong…. I
made some miniature people for that
and two miniature horses with riders
about a foot high. When the cowboys
were roping Joe Young they used real
riders and cowboys for most of it, but I
had to have two to throw ropes over him
in the foreground. Those horses were
beautiful and you couldn’t tell in the
film that they were miniatures.”
One of Delgado’s black spiders
chases a boy in a sequence in The Black
Scorpion, released by Warner Brothers in
1957. The spider was originally included
in the infamous spider pit sequence
cut from King Kong due to its shocking
qualities and the fact that the giant man
eating spiders drew too much attention
from the giant ape.
More of Marcel Delgado’s later
credits include the dinosaurs from Jack
Harris’ Dinosaurus!, the shaggy dog suit
for Walt Disney’s original The Shaggy
Dog, models for Fantastic Voyage, and
the monsters in Jack the Giant Killer.
Delgado recalled to George E. Turner
that he asked to have his name removed
#755 • MOVIE COLLECTOR’S WORLD • 19
Above: Poor Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) is the prize in a vicious battle between a Pteranodon and
the Eighth Wonder of the World. (Photo - RKO-Radio Pictures)
Below, right: Bob Burns is the proud owner of one of the original Kogns. (Photo-Michael Ramsey)
from the credits for Jack the Giant Killer
because the heads at the special effects
department made some changes to the
models and they did not consequently
measure up to Delgado’s high standards.
Said he in a 1976 interview with Richard
J Schmidt, “(Obie) never complained
about my work, he never told me how
to do it or to change this or that. I’d give
him a model and he’d say ‘fine, Marcel’.
Always. He was a master.”
Marcel Delgado retired in 1966 and
passed in 1976, having had the opportunity
to speak to fan clubs and realize
some of the recognition he too often did
not see earlier in his career.
Marcel Delgado relaxing at home (Photo - Gregory Kulon)