Harry Redmond Jr.

October 15, 1909 - May 23, 2011

Harry Redmond Jr., a special effects artist and producer whose movie career reached back more than 80 years to the dawn of talking pictures, died peacefully in his home in the Hollywood Hills that he and his wife had designed and built more than 60 years ago. He was 101.

Harry grew up in New York where his father, ran Metropolitan studios on Long Island. In 1926 Redmond moved with his family - and with the movie industry - to California and soon followed his father, film and special effects pioneer Harry Redmond Sr., into the "picture business." Starting in the prop department at First National, he moved to RKO Radio Pictures where he transitioned into the special effects field and worked on many of the studio's fondly remembered pictures of the late 1920's and 1930s, including "The Last Days of Pompeii", "She", several Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers pairings, and one of the most legendary films in history, "King Kong".

After his four-year stint at RKO Redmond went independent, creating effects for a remarkable range of movies from such directors as Frank Capra's "Lost Horizon", Orson Welles' "The Stranger", Howard Hawks' "Only Angels Have Wings", Howard Hughes' "The Outlaw", Fritz Lang's "The Woman in the Window" amongst many others . He would often work one-on-one with the director to provide a specific desired effect; in "The Woman in the Window", Redmond and Fritz Lang together worked out the striking transition shot of Edward G. Robinson at the film's end, doing it all in real time, in camera, with no cuts and no post-production work.

While working on "The Prisoner of Zenda" for David O. Selznek he met the love of his life, Dorothea Holt, herself a pioneering production illustrator, who was designing the interiors for "Gone With the Wind" and "Rebecca". They were married in 1940.

When World War II hit, Redmond left Hollywood and traveled to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, to design and build a studio for the Army Film Training Lab. There he had the unexpected pleasure of encountering several technicians who had actually worked with his father at the New York City studios back in the early silent days of single and double reelers.

After the war he resumed his effects career in Hollywood with such films as "A Night in Casablanca" (the last true Marx Brothers movie), "Angel on My Shoulder", "The Bishop's Wife", "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", "A Song is Born" and many others while Dorothea continued in pre-production on "LimeLight", also "The Bishop's Wife" and no less than seven Hitchcock films.

In the early 1950s, Redmond's work on "Storm Over Tibet" began what would become a long and prolific association with producer Ivan Tors, spanning not only Tors' early science fiction features such as "Gog" and "The Magnetic Monster" but also his succession of popular television shows, including "Science Fiction Theater", "Sea Hunt", "Daktari", and more. Having assumed the role of Tors' associate producer for the films "Flipper", "Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion" and "Zebra in the Kitchen", Redmond increasingly began to chafe at the movie industry's skyrocketing "above the line" costs, and retired from films in the late 1960s.

Redmond was preceded in death by his wife, Dorothea Holt Redmond. Redmond was a wonderful family man and will be enormously missed by his family. He is survived by his son Lee Redmond, daughter Lynne Jackson, their respective spouses, three grand-daughters and three great-grandsons, as well as numerous nieces and nephews. A memorial service will be held at Forest Lawn Glendale, at the Wee Kirk O the Heather Chapel on June 21st at 1:30PM.