After the War, Ray began the project of animating several of the classic children's stories from Mother Goose.  Originally it was his intention to make them individual stories, each about 2 to 3 minutes in length.  He secured help from his family in making the films.  His Father devised the wooden armatures used for the puppets while his mother helped create the papier mache bodies as well as create costumes for them.  She also helped Ray with the sets. After animating, Little Miss Muffett, Old Mother Hubbard, The Queen Of Hearts and Humpty Dumpty, Ray decided to combine these stories into one featurette and created an opening segment involving Mother Goose. After the stories were combined, Ray began work on MIGHTY JOE YOUNG with Willis O'Brien. After Mighty Joe Young Ray returned to the Fairy Tales series since his MOTHER GOOSE STORIES proved to be very popular with schools, churches and libraries all over the world.  The other stories were based on more traditional tales from Aesop to the Brother's Grimm. These included LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD, HANSEL AND GRETEL, THE STORY OF RAPUNZEL,  and THE STORY OF KING MIDAS.  Ray began working of another tales based on THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE, it promised to his most ambitious children's story but only a few scenes were shot and the project never completed.  Ray had discovered that it was taking much longer to animate these films than he originally thought and he really wanted to begin working in feature films.  Today these films are a reminder of much more innocent times, the stories are beautifully told with narration since Ray wanted to avoid dialogue for the puppets.  Many will remember the films from the grade school years.  Below are a few images from these wonderful tales.  

Produced by Ray Harryhausen
Associate: Fred Blasalif (Harryhausen)
Costumes: Martha Reske (Harryhausen)

The first in the series, MOTHER GOOSE STORIES presents four classic stories wrapped around by an introduction with Mother Goose.  The stories include LITTLE MISS MUFFET, OLD MOTHER HUBBARD, QUEEN OF HEARTS, HUMPTY DUMPTY.  This is the only film in the series that does not feature narration, instead the words to rhymes scroll across the screen as Ray's three dimensional animation process tells each story.  Originally there were intended to be separate films but with a running time of 2 to 3 minutes each, they work much better in this featurette format. Throughout the entire series the associate credit is listed as Fred Blasalif (Ray's Father using his mother's maiden name for screen credit) and Martha Reske (Ray's mother using her own maiden name for screen credit).  The puppets have no dialogue saving on animation time, instead Ray created several different heads for the models for extreme facial expressions and then would use an 8 frame dissolve from one expression to the next giving the illusion of movement for the change of expression.  All the films were released through Bailey-Film Associates.

 | MOTHER GOOSE STORIES | LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD |
|  HANSEL AND GRETAL | RAPUNZEL |  KING MIDAS |
|  MOTHER GOOSE STORE |