The pioneering stop-motion animator Willis "Obie" O'Brien first met the 22-year-old, Mexico-born Marcel Delgado at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Needing a sculptor for his upcoming adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's THE LOST WORLD, he managed to convince Delgado to join his team. At first he was reluctant to leave school:
"Mr. O'Brien took an interest in my work and one night he asked me, 'would you like to work in motion pictures?' I told him I would not because I wanted to be an artist and didn't want to lose any time. Every time he saw me he asked again and offered me $75 a week to come to work for him. I always said no, and I don't really know why; I was only making $18 a week but I guess I felt secure. One Friday he asked me to lay off work and visit the motion picture studio. OBie left a pass at the gate and when I went in Obie met me and took me to his little shop. There was a 'phone, some cameras and pictures all around. 'How do you like your studio?' he asked. 'It's yours if you want it.' It was a twenty-year-old boy's dream! So I signed up and worked for the next couple of years building dinosaurs for The Lost World. I made forty-nine or fifty of them and it was all done under cover with no visitors allowed —although some of the studio big shots came in anyhow."
Delgado ended up sculpting 50 dinosaur figures for the movie which was released in 1925. It was a smash hit.
Delgado went on to work on many more projects (all uncredited) including KING KONG, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE BIRDS and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. His last stop-motion figure would be the Tyrannosaurus Rex seen in DINOSAURUS! (Universal, 1960).
Contrary to conventional thought, these models or puppets were extremely fragile and did not hold up well during the thousands of single frame shots needed to complete the action on film. For example, there were two King Kong puppets used during the making of the movie; while one was used, the other was being repaired.
Marcel Delgado passed away on 26 November 1976 at the age of 75.
The armature and what was left of the muscle and skin buildup of the T-Rex from DINOSAURUS! went up for auction at Profiles in History in July 2006. The sale estimate was between $15,000 - $18,000.
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