Special effects and animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen remains best known for his still amazing skeleton swordfight sequences in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts, but he originally made his bones (sorry) on his own, animating fairy tales and nursery rhymes on discarded surplus film.

Ray decided he would make his own short films.  Using some out of date 16mm colour Kodachrome stock he had acquired, and with the help of his father and mother, he shot a series of nursery rhymes that included Little Miss Muffet, Old Mother Hubbard, The Queen of Hearts and Humpty Dumpty.

When he had completed all of these stories he lumped them all together under the title The Mother Goose Stories (1946), which he distributed to schools with great success.

 

 
He returned to the theme in the 1950s, around the time that he began to break in to the feature productions that would soon make him famous.

Ray returned to shorts with an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood, which he called The Story of Little Red Riding Hood (1950).  Using the same methods as he used with The Mother Goose Stories the film proved another success with schools and so Ray set out to make what has since become known as the Fairy Tale series, although in fact not all were fairy tales. The series included The Story of Hansel and Gretel (1951), The Story of Rapunzel (1952) and The Story of King Midas (1953), the last of which was completed after his first feature film project.

It couldn’t be more clear from watching these that this was the work Harryhausen was meant to be doing. Though his only significant commercial animation work prior to the Mother Goose tales had been assisting George Pal on some Puppetoons shorts, his own films are expertly done, and stand up well to any animation of the era.
 

 
For more Ray Harryhausen on DM, see here and here. The 2011 documentary Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan is available for viewing by Netflix streaming subscribers. I strongly recommend seeing it.

 
The New Zealand band Mother Goose formed in Dunedin in 1975, with an original line-up of Craig Johnston (Vocals), Marcel Rodeka (Drums), Pete Dickson (Lead Guitar), Kevin Collings (Rhythm Guitar), Steve Young (Keyboards), Denis Gibbins (Bass Guitar). The band mixed bizarre comedy pastiche with rock and roll (think Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band meets Frank Zappa, via The Goodies), and only eighteen months after forming, Mother Goose smashed all attendance records on a tour of Australia and New Zealand. The bands success rested on their talented musicianship and incredible live shows, which led to a music contract, a first album Stuffed, and a single Baked Beans

As drummer, Marcel Rodeka recalls on his website: 

What can you say about Mother Goose? The band really was one out of the bag on all counts. There was never anything like it before and there’ll never be anything like it again. It was a unique piece of rock’n roll, vaudeville, theatre that just seemed to hit the mark wherever it played.

The original concept of the way out costumes, a mad stage performance and pumping rock music was motivated by the desire to stand out from the rest, to make a point to be better than any other local/national band and hopefully take the world on.

At the first rehearsal every band member was asked to turn up with something ridiculous to wear. I went home and dug up a green and red pixie outfit complete with pointy hat that I wore when I was eight years old in a school play. I tried it on and, amazingly, it still fitted if a little tight in the chest!

The early photos of Mother Goose reveal some ridiculous looking outfits that made no sense whatsoever but looked hilarious on. Over time the outfits became a bit more identifiable, a sailor, a pixie, a baby in nappies, a ballerina, minnie mouse and a bumble bee. We also strived to make the music different to anything that was going on at that time. We had all come from local rock cover bands and the idea of creating our own music was really exciting. The early musical ideas came from keyboard player Steve Young, singer Craig Johnston and guitarist Peter Dickson.

For me, the whole thing was a blast. Really, the life and times of Mother Goose could fill a book. But this is not the place for a tell all, warts and all look at nine years of successes and failures, hits and flops, incredible highs and incredible lows, bad management and bad decisions, fantastic beaches, fantastic parties, great songs and not so great songs, band members leaving, record company hassles, wonderful band camaraderie, stadium shows and tiny clubs, relationships and bust ups, overseas tours, rip off managers, awesome gigs, funny gigs, rotten gigs, an enviable lifestyle and the one big adventure that this was. There’s too much to tell…..

 
With thanks to Graham Tarling