leaving Gwangi trapped in the burning, collapsing building. Shrieking in agony, Gwangi is finally crushed to death by the falling debris, as Tuck, T.J., Lope (with tears in his eyes), and the townspeople look on. Cast James Franciscus as Tuck Gila Golan as T.J. Richard Carlson as Champ Laurence Naismith as Professor Bromley Freda Jackson as Tia Zorina Gustavo Rojo as Carlos Dennis Kilbane as Rowdy Mario De Barros as Bean (as Mario de Barros) Curtis Arden as Lope Production Development The story of Gwangi was originally conceived by Willis O'Brien (1886–1962), the man who created the special effects for the original King Kong (1933). The plot was inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Lost World (1912), with added elements from King Kong (capturing a creature and bringing it to civilization where it runs amok). In O'Brien's scenario, then called Valley of the Mists, cowboys discover an Allosaurus in the Grand Canyon. After finally roping the dinosaur, they put it in a Wild West show but the creature, now called "Gwangi", breaks free and fights lions from the show that have also escaped. After killing the lions, Gwangi goes on a rampage around the town and is run off a cliff by a man in a truck. O'Brien worked on the project at RKO Pictures during most of 1942. The studio cancelled the production, reportedly because of research done that the public did not want to see a picture about dinosaurs. According to Harryhausen the project "didn't get to the shooting stage. They built a series of Dioramas in three-dimensional cardboard cutouts for each set-up. I saw those and I saw a lot of O'Brien's drawings at the time, but that's as far as it got." O'Brien went on to make Mighty Joe Young for RKO instead. In 1949, Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper reported that Jesse Lasky was going to Central America to film scenes for Valley of the Mists with O'Brien, with a script by Richard Landau. However no film resulted. Seven years after O'Brien died in 1962, The Valley of Gwangi was released in 1969. A similar film The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956 United Artists / produced by a Mexican film company and also employing stop-motion effects, but not by Harryhausen), was the only other feature film in the history of cinema to have the unusual story combination of cowboys and dinosaurs. Ray Harryhausen In