Harryhausen is a man of great personal as well as professional longevity, and the proof is in The Story of the Tortoise and the Hare, an unfinished fairy tale for which he animated a new scene in 2002. Begun in 1953, Harryhausen only completed three minutes of this personal project before industry work intruded in the form of monster effects for It Came From Beneath the Sea. Tortoise was only one of a half-dozen one-reel children’s films Harryhausen produced independently on spec, just to see if he could do them. Now all his fairy tales, his Mother Goose stories, and never-before-seen items from his personal archives have been gathered in one collection.

All the material is accompanied by filmed introductions from Harryhausen himself. Much of this hasn’t been seen in its complete form for half a century. It’s a long time to wait for such an anthology, and fans are eating it up. “The public reaction has been fantastic,” says DVD executive producer Eric Young. “We’re going to be the Classic DVD of the month in Premiere in May, and Harry Knowles made us his pick of the month.”

The artist has been pining for such an omnibus for years, and the process began thanks to the initiative of Scott MacQueen, long-time archivist and restoration technician. “Ray is an old friend, and he had a number of reels of older films, including his workprints and personal copies,” MacQueen says. “Some were in London, some were out in the garage at his parents’ house in Pacific Palisades. A hunt got done to find out what was in the possession of the distributor that used to run these films. Someone had them extricated from storage at Ray’s behest, where they had been pretty much abandoned at a laboratory. Thankfully they got out of that lab and back into Ray’s hands within a month of the lab going belly-up.”

After sorting through the trove of camera originals, intermediates, release prints, mags and optical tracks, MacQueen took notes on what was viable and what was decayed to make sure they had good coverage. After presenting his report to Harryhausen, they realized a major restoration was in order and MacQueen hit up the AMPAS Film Archive for much-needed funding. “The Academy was very interested,” MacQueen says, “what with Ray being a Lifetime Award-winner and one of the great names in animation. They agreed not only to take the films for archival storage but to underwrite new preservation negatives and to restore the films.”

Fans are eating up the double-DVD anthology Ray Harryhausen: The Early Years Collection.

MacQueen contacted Mike Pogorzelski, director of the Academy Archive, who assigned preservationist Mark Toscano to oversee the operation. One crucial step was blowing up Harryhausen’s 16mm originals to 35mm prints, a job eventually completed by Cineric labs in New York. “I really love 16mm, but the format is dying out,” Toscano says. “Kodak just discontinued another one of their Kodachromes — and the Ektachrome, and the black and white reversal print stock. These films can have a more extended life in 35mm. And also they can be shown more. It’s more expensive, but it seemed worth it.”

Disc One of the DVD contains Harryhausen’s Mother Goose suite, including Little Miss Muffet, Old Mother Hubbard, The Queen of Hearts and Humpty Dumpty. Strung together in one reel, these four charming nursery rhymes with brief intertitles and stock music run the animation gamut from simple to highly sophisticated, as interchangeable character heads provide a variety of expressions. There are also five one-reel fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, Rapunzel, King Midas and The Story Of The Tortoise and the Hare. The fairy tales demonstrate Harryhausen’s increasing sophistication, from magically braiding hair in Rapunzel to a spreading coat of gold enfolding all the King’s possessions in King Midas.

How to Bridge a Gorge and Guadalcanal are wordless demo films from Harryhausen’s enlisted days from 1941-5. Bridge demonstrates exactly what it promises in easy-to-follow detail, and at the time Ray hoped he could sell the technique to the Army as a training tool. Guadalcanal depicts the strategic Pacific island being taken first by the Japanese and then by the Americans. This odd beast is fascinating in how it devotes equal time, and more genuine affection, to the building of the temporary Japanese barracks than to their destruction by U.S. forces at the end of the film. It’s a study of process, devoid of people, and slightly disturbing — surely unintentionally — in its depiction of war as a sandbox adventure with toys and no human casualties.

After the war Harryhausen dabbled in commercial advertising, and two artifacts of that era survive here: a Lucky Strike ad and a series of spots for a Los Angeles subdivision called Lakewood. The Lucky Strike ad features packs of cigarettes in a jaunty choreography, and was done on spec in 1945. The Lakewood commercials feature an animated Key with bowler hat and cigar, pitching a new subdivision “minutes from Los Angeles” with two- and three-bedroom homes available for lease “for as low as $46.98 a month.”