THEY MADE MONSTERS!

The names James Messmore and Joseph Damon may not be known today, but back in the 1920s and 1930s the pair designed some of the most amazing early exhibition figures and animatronics (known then as automata) in the United States. They recreated dinosaurs for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, as well as countless other assemblages, such as "The History of Torture" exhibit at the Century of Progress International Exposition (1933-1934) in Chicago.

This article from the men's digest magazine, BOLD (March, 1957). Heck, just for fun, I'll post the entire issue. The Messore & Damon article is near the end.

The following is an abstract from an essay that can be found at Sciencedirect.com:

The Lost Worlds of Messmore & Damon: Science, Spectacle & Prehistoric Monsters in early-twentieth century America

By Chris Manias | September 2016 | Sciencedirect.com

In 1924, the model-making company Messmore & Damon, Inc. of New York unleashed their masterpiece: the Amphibious Dinosaurus Brontosaurus, a moving, breathing, roaring animatronic dinosaur, based on displays in the American Museum of Natural History. Over the 1920s and 1930s, this became the focus of an ever-increasing publicity campaign, as Messmore & Damon exhibited prehistoric automata in department stores, the media, and the Chicago World Fair of 1933–34. These displays were hugely popular and widely discussed, drawing from the increasing public appeal of paleontology. Mixing commercial entertainment with invocations of scientific value, Messmore & Damon's prehistoric creations offer a window into the meaning and popularity of the deep time sciences in early-twentieth century America, and the links between science and spectacle in this period.

Introduction

The early-twentieth century was a time when all things prehistoric became entrenched in the public imagination in the United States and Europe. The remains of huge sauropod dinosaurs were unearthed in the American West in what Paul Brinkman has termed “the Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush,”1 and their mounted skeletons were erected in major museums to great sensation, becoming important means of marketing natural science. Dinosaurs also spread into mass culture, through newspaper stories, popular science works, cartoons, and feature films, like Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur of 1914 and The Lost World of 1925. As W. J. T. Mitchell has argued, this was when the dinosaur became “the totemic animal of modernity,” mixing science, commerce, monstrosity, and wonder.

Other fields saw similar developments, and Constance Clark has highlighted the multiple uses of the “cave man” in American popular and scientific culture over the 1920s, which resonated with debates over evolution, religion, and degeneration, and the tense relations between science and the media during the Scopes trial.3 Both Brinkman and Clark note that the relations between science and spectacle in this period were essential but tense, as “museum paleontologists faced a continuous conflict between enticing visitors by catering to popular tastes and educating them with legitimate scientific content.”

The often tense relations between paleontological science and spectacular display has been well highlighted. However, studies of these dynamics have tended to focus on scientific or museum contexts. The case of Messmore & Damon, Inc. offers an interesting counterpoint. This commercial company constructed a whole menagerie of prehistoric automata and sought to take advantage of the growing appeal of paleontology and prehistory. Messmore & Damon presented dinosaurs and prehistoric animals through ever-evolving displays and in a range of contexts, and these were seen by hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, Canada, and France. Their creations were designed to mix commercial spectacle, novel technology, and narratives of life's development. Although not always successful and often meeting technical, commercial, or publicity hitches, Messmore & Damon's prehistoric spectacles show how explicitly commercial showmen used both scientific and public appeal to push paleontological imagery into the wider domain.

Designing the Dinosaur

The partnership between James Messmore and Joseph Damon began far from paleontology. Messmore was the son of vaudeville performers from Detroit, and moved to New York in the 1900s. Working as a prop man at the Metropolitan Opera, he became a self-taught inventor of animated exhibits, apparently starting with a mechanical monkey, and moving to larger, more complex creations. Damon meanwhile initially worked as a butcher's assistant in Illinois.

Prehistoric shows

The dinosaur blended new technologies, museum science, and consumer culture. However, it posed problems, having not been commissioned by any client, and being too expensive to sell. Later, Messmore confessed “I had no idea what I was going to do with it. My friends said I was going nuts, but I told them I’d at least have a Brontosaurus for a little playmate.

The World One Million Years Ago

By the early 1930s, Messmore and Damon had exhibited their prehistoric animals across eastern North America. Where could they go next? An opportunity for an even more ambitious mix of education and spectacle arose with the Chicago World's Fair of 1933. Initially intended to mark the city's centenary, the fair's remit was broadened to the theme of “A Century of Progress” to increase its national and international appeal.

After the World's Fair

The World A Million Years Ago was a hit within the Chicago World's Fair, and the fair itself was a success, attracting a total of 39 million visitors and extending its run into 1934. To retain a sense of novelty, Messmore & Damon's exhibit was renovated for the second season, moving further toward commercialism. The concession was rebranded “Down The Lost River,” and placed alongside their “History of Torture,” a chamber of horrors display.

Conclusion

In many ways, Messmore & Damon's prehistoric animals show in microcosm how paleontology spread through US culture in the 1920s and 1930s, as it moved across a range of media and genres, including department store displays, parade floats, expositions, merchandizing, theater shows, and even projected film scripts. Notably, these were not simply crude commercial spectacles, but also depended on invoking scientific theories. 

These are examples from "The History of Torture" brochure by Leon Morgan with dioramas by Messmore & Damon that was handed out at the Chicago Century of Progress Intl. Expo:

And this is a page from POPULAR SCIENCE (May, 1933) that shows the animatronic cow mentioned in the article from BOLD magazine.