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102-573: The prehistoric sea monster that became the Rhedosaurus was initially conceived by the writer Ray Bradbury for his short story " The Fog Horn ", which appeared in the June 23, 1951 issue of The Saturday Evening Post . Prior to deciding to adapt Bradbury's creature from the story and the artwork by James R. Bingham, Ray Harryhausen , and Eugène Lourié went through many draft designs for producers Hal E. Chester and Jack Dietz , who desired to make

204-541: A Plesiosaur . The beast also appears in the second and fourth issues of the 2013 comic book series Dinosaurs Attack! by IDW Publishing . In the latter issue it is shown together with several monsters, including: Gertie the Dinosaur , Godzilla , Anguirus , the Paleosaurus from The Giant Behemoth (1959), Gorgo from its 1961 self-titled film , and Reptilicus from its 1961 self-titled film . Poster art of

306-1022: A Swedish immigrant , and Leonard Spaulding Bradbury (1890–1957), a power and telephone lineman of English ancestry. He was given the middle name "Douglas" after actor Douglas Fairbanks . Bradbury was surrounded by an extended family during his early childhood and formative years in Waukegan. An aunt read him short stories when he was a child. This period provided foundations for both the author and his stories. In Bradbury's fiction, 1920s Waukegan becomes Green Town, Illinois. The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona , during 1926–1927 and 1932–1933 while their father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan. While in Tucson, Bradbury attended Amphi Junior High School and Roskruge Junior High School. They eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934 when Bradbury

408-657: A slush pile , which led to its publication. "Homecoming" won a place in the O. Henry Award Stories of 1947. Bradbury first published The Fireman , a short story about 25,000 words long, in Galaxy Science Fiction in February 1951. Bradbury was asked to extend it by 25,000 words so that it would be published as a novel. Bradbury got the title after the Los Angeles fire chief told him that book paper burns at 451 °F. In UCLA 's Powell Library , in

510-478: A Los Angeles bookstore with British expatriate writer Christopher Isherwood gave Bradbury the opportunity to put The Martian Chronicles into the hands of a respected critic. Isherwood's glowing review followed. Bradbury attributed his lifelong habit of writing every day to two incidents. The first, when he was three years old, was his mother's taking him to see Lon Chaney in the 1923 silent film The Hunchback of Notre Dame . The second occurred in 1932, when

612-563: A Thursday-night conclave at age 16. Bradbury cited Verne and Wells as his primary science-fiction influences. He identified with Verne, saying: "He believes the human being is in a strange situation in a very strange world, and he believes that we can triumph by behaving morally." Bradbury admitted that he stopped reading science-fiction books in his 20s and embraced a broad field of literature that included poets Alexander Pope and John Donne . He had just graduated from high school when he met Robert A. Heinlein , then 31. Bradbury recalled: "He

714-452: A carnival entertainer, one Mr. Electrico, knighted the young man with an electrified sword and intoned: "Live forever!" Bradbury remarked: "I felt that something strange and wonderful had happened to me because of my encounter with Mr. Electrico ... [he] gave me a future ... I began to write, full-time. I have written every single day of my life since that day 69 years ago." At that age, Bradbury first started to do magic , which

816-521: A dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap opera cries, sleep walking , helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction. Bradbury stated that the novel worked as a critique of the later development of political correctness : How does the story of Fahrenheit 451 stand up in 1994? R.B.: It works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness

918-401: A damn good vehicle for advertising" with competitive renewal rates and readership reports and expressed what The New York Times called "understandable bitterness" in wishing "that all the one-eyed critics will lose their other eye". Otto Friedrich , the magazine's last managing editor, blamed the death of The Post on Curtis. In his Decline and Fall (Harper & Row, 1970), an account of

1020-404: A film to be associated with an atomic weapon. The monster and its 1953 film, inspired film monsters such as Godzilla and Gamera and set the template for giant monsters and kaiju in films, including: Them! (1954), Godzilla (1954), The Deadly Mantis (1957), 20 Million Miles to Earth , The Giant Claw (both 1957), The Giant Behemoth (1959), Gorgo (1961), and Gamera,

1122-479: A formative event of his youth: I suppose the most important memory is of Mr. Electrico. On Labor Day weekend, 1932, when I was twelve years old, he came to my hometown with the Dill Brothers ... He was a performer sitting in an electric chair and a stagehand pulled a switch and he was charged with fifty thousand volts of pure electricity. Lightning flashed in his eyes and his hair stood on end. I sat below, in

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1224-487: A full and complete life." In high school, Bradbury was active in the poetry and drama clubs. Planning to become an actor, he became serious about writing as his high-school years progressed. He graduated from Los Angeles High School, where he took poetry classes with Snow Longley Housh and short-story writing courses taught by Jeannet Johnson. The teachers recognized his talent and furthered his interest in writing, but he did not attend college. Instead, he sold newspapers at

1326-532: A game between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia . Both coaches sued Curtis Publishing Co. for defamation, each initially asking for $ 10 million. Bryant eventually settled for $ 300,000 while Butts' case went to the Supreme Court , which held that libel damages may be recoverable (in this instance against a news organization) when the injured party is a non-public official, if

1428-545: A larger collaborative work that would tell the family's complete history, but it never materialized, and according to a 2001 interview, they went their separate ways. In October 2001, Bradbury published all the Family stories he had written in one book with a connecting narrative, From the Dust Returned , featuring a wraparound Addams cover of the original "Homecoming" illustration. Another of Bradbury’s close friends

1530-464: A letter column, poetry with contributions submitted by readers, single-panel gag cartoons , including Hazel by Ted Key , and stories by leading writers of the time. It was known for commissioning lavish illustrations and original works of fiction. Illustrations were featured on the cover and embedded in stories and advertising. Some Post illustrations continue to be reproduced as posters or prints, especially those by Norman Rockwell . In 1929, at

1632-413: A lighthouse or building. The head, which is relatively small in proportion to his body has a single row of spines on being on the back of his head and continues running down from the top of his head to the end of his long, prehensile tail. In the low-budget 1977 film Planet of Dinosaurs , his physical appearance would remain relatively the same, however, this version would be colored brown and smaller than

1734-423: A model out of latex, which he revealed to the two producers. However, everyone, including himself, who saw this model voiced their disappointment with its "babyish" and "kind" appearance. Harryhausen took the model back to his workroom and broke the model apart, recreating it with a stronger, more reptilian head and thicker legs. In his book The Art of Ray Harryhausen , he stated that it gave the beast what he desired

1836-421: A monster film due to the successful 1952 re-release of King Kong (1933). After considering using existing dinosaurs such as an Allosaurus , Harryhausen and Lourié eventually decided to invent a new fictional creature; its appearance later infuriated scientists and students alike upon its release. Harryhausen ultimately made two models based on his concept art before concluding on a fearsome-looking design with

1938-409: A monster film in collaboration with Jack Dietz due to the successful 1952 re-release of King Kong (1933), brought Bradbury into his office to read the outline for a proposed monster film. Bradbury later recalled that upon reading the draft, he mentioned that it strongly resembled his 1951 short story and told Chester that their monsters were evidently the same one. Bradbury's friend Ray Harryhausen

2040-554: A month: their friendship lasted more than 70 years. The Saturday Evening Post The Saturday Evening Post is an American magazine , currently published six times a year. It was published weekly from 1897 until 1963, and then every other week until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influential magazines among the American middle class, with fiction, non-fiction, cartoons and features that reached two million homes every week. In

2142-462: A new fictional one. In an attempt to placate them, director Eugène Lourié told reporters they invented the creature because the crew felt an unoriginal creation would not meet their intention of striking fear into twentieth century theatergoers: "We wanted a brand new monster who looks more frightening enough to throw a large city into a panic. So we concocted a forty-foot rhedosaurus. A more evil-looking, blood-thirsty, powerful creature than [the] thing

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2244-485: A powerful jaw that is capable of tossing cars and allows it to grab humans and eat them (as shown when it eats a police officer while rampaging in New York). Upon being harmed by the armed forces, the Rhedosaurus' s blood is revealed to contain an ancient virus that the human immune system has no protection against once exposed to it. In Planet of Dinosaurs , the Rhedosaurus is a smaller and more defenseless creature and

2346-568: A result, the Post published more articles on current events and cut costs by replacing illustrations with photographs for covers and advertisements. In 1967, The magazine's publisher, Curtis Publishing Company , lost a landmark defamation suit, Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts 388 U.S. 130 (1967), resulting from an article, and was ordered to pay $ 3,060,000 in damages to the plaintiff . The Post article implied that football coaches Paul "Bear" Bryant and Wally Butts conspired to fix

2448-836: A rich theatrical legacy as well as literary. He headed the Pandemonium Theatre Company in Los Angeles for many years, and had a five-year relationship with the Fremont Centre Theatre in South Pasadena. Bradbury is featured prominently in two documentaries related to his classic 1950s–1960s era: Jason V Brock 's Charles Beaumont: The Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man , detailing his troubles with Rod Serling and his friendships with writers Charles Beaumont , George Clayton Johnson , and most especially his dear friend William F. Nolan ; and Brock's The AckerMonster Chronicles! , which delves into

2550-1017: A serial appearing in successive issues. Most of the fiction was written for mainstream tastes by popular writers, but some literary writers were featured. The opening pages of stories featured paintings by the leading magazine illustrators. The Post published stories and essays by H. E. Bates , Ray Bradbury , Kay Boyle , Agatha Christie , Brian Cleeve , Eleanor Franklin Egan , William Faulkner , F. Scott Fitzgerald , C. S. Forester , Ernest Haycox , Robert A. Heinlein , Kurt Vonnegut , Paul Gallico , Normand Poirier , Hammond Innes , Louis L'Amour , Sinclair Lewis , Joseph C. Lincoln , John P. Marquand , Edgar Allan Poe , Mary Roberts Rinehart , Sax Rohmer , William Saroyan , John Steinbeck , Rex Stout , Rob Wagner , Edith Wharton , and P.G. Wodehouse . Poetry published came from poets including: Carl Sandburg , Ogden Nash , Dorothy Parker , and Hannah Kahn . Jack London 's best-known novel The Call of

2652-405: A smaller, brown dinosaur that is easily defeated by a larger Tyrannosaurus that chomped into his head, seemingly killing him. Stock footage of the Rhedosaurus eating a policeman in the 1953 film would appear in the 1990 horror film Gremlins 2: The New Batch , and an image of the creature from the 1953 film was also shown momentarily as an easter egg in the 2008 film Cloverfield , after

2754-514: A study room with typewriters for rent for ten cents per half-hour., Bradbury wrote his classic story of a book burning future, Fahrenheit 451 , which was about 50,000 words long, costing $ 9.80 from the typewriter-rental fees. Fahrenheit 451 was also published in serial form in the March, April and May 1954 issues of Playboy Magazine . Fahrenheit 451 remains a staple in discussions about censorship and dystopian futures. A chance encounter in

2856-407: A time. He later described how he undertook this projection process: "I split the screen in front of the 16mm camera by using a glass with blacked out portions where the model was standing. After photographing one portion, I would rewind the exposed film, black out the already exposed half, and then photograph the blacked out portion of the projection plate. Theoretically, the whole thing would look like

2958-608: A year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which claims 501(c)(3) non-profit organization status. With the January/February 2013 issue, the Post launched a major makeover of the publication, including a new cover design and efforts to increase the magazine's profile, in response to a general public misbelief that it was no longer in existence. The magazine's new logo is an update of a logo it had used beginning in 1942. As of October 2018,

3060-414: Is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal. So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen, you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time—because it's a Greek myth , and myths have staying power. Bradbury recounted when he came into his own as a writer, the afternoon he wrote a short story about his first encounter with death. When he

3162-439: Is easily defeated by a Tyrannosaurus rex that chomps on its head. Upon the release of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), the Rhedosaurus initially received widespread pan from dinosaur enthusiasts, especially scientists and students of paleontology. They considered the creature's design and portrayal in the film to be unrealistic and complained that the filmmakers should have used an actual dinosaur instead of creating

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3264-509: Is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can't say certain things. The homosexual groups don't want you to criticize them. It's thought control and freedom of speech control. In a 1982 essay, he wrote: "People ask me to predict the Future, when all I want to do is prevent it." This intent had been expressed earlier by other authors, most of whom attributed it to him. On May 24, 1956, Bradbury appeared on

3366-556: The New York Herald Tribune , Will Cuppy proclaimed Bradbury "suitable for general consumption" and predicted that he would become a writer of the caliber of British fantasist John Collier . After a rejection notice from the pulp Weird Tales , Bradbury submitted "Homecoming" to Mademoiselle , where it was spotted by a young editorial assistant named Truman Capote . Capote picked the Bradbury manuscript from

3468-473: The 1964 New York World's Fair and wrote the narration script for The American Journey attraction there. He also worked on the original exhibit in Epcot 's Spaceship Earth geosphere at Walt Disney World . He focused on detective fiction in the 1980s. In the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s, he hosted The Ray Bradbury Theater , a televised anthology series based on his short stories. Bradbury

3570-573: The Brown Derby to watch the stars who came and went for meals. He recounted seeing Cary Grant , Marlene Dietrich and Mae West , who, he learned, made a regular appearance every Friday night, bodyguard in tow. Bradbury was free to start a career in writing when, owing to his bad eyesight, he was rejected for induction into the military during World War II . Inspired by science-fiction heroes such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers , he began publishing science-fiction stories in fanzines in 1938. He

3672-659: The New Deal . Garrett accused the Roosevelt administration of initiating socialist strategies. After Lorimer died, Garrett became editorial writer-in-chief and criticized the Roosevelt administration's support of the United Kingdom and efforts to prepare to enter World War II , and allegedly showed some support for Adolf Hitler in some of his editorials. Garrett's positions aroused controversy and may have cost

3774-559: The Post for $ 1,000 in 1897. Under the ownership of the Curtis Publishing Company , the Post grew to become the most widely circulated weekly magazine in the United States. The magazine gained prominent status under the leadership of its longtime editor George Horace Lorimer (1899–1937). The Saturday Evening Post published current event articles, editorials, human interest pieces, humor, illustrations,

3876-516: The Post , Rockwell painted more than 300 covers. The Post also employed Nebraska artist John Philip Falter , who became known as "a painter of Americana with an accent of the Middle West ," who "brought out some of the homeliness and humor of Middle Western town life and home life." He produced 120 covers for the Post between 1943 and 1968, ceasing only when the magazine began displaying photographs on its covers. Another prominent artist

3978-537: The Post' s advertisers. Columnist Art Buchwald lampooned the decision, suggesting that "if the Saturday Evening Post considered you a deadbeat, you didn't have much choice but to either pretend you were still getting the magazine and live a lie, or move out of the neighborhood before anyone found out." These last-ditch efforts failed to save the magazine, and Curtis announced in January 1969 that

4080-420: The Rhedosaurus in the production later partially inspired his monster Ymir in 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). In the original film, the Rhedosaurus is depicted as a massive dinosaur, belonging to the fictional species of the same name. Standing at forty feet in height, and weighing five hundred tons, is mostly quadrupedal behavior, with the occasional bipedal stance when destroying structures such as

4182-550: The Rhedosaurus is briefly shown in the Godzilla Singular Point (2021) episode "Gamesome". The prehistoric sea monster that became the Rhedosaurus was originally conceived by the writer Ray Bradbury for his short story " The Fog Horn ", which appeared in the June 23, 1951 issue of The Saturday Evening Post . At the start of the scripting of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), first-time science fiction film producer Hal Chester , who wanted to make

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4284-503: The coming of age novel Dandelion Wine (1957), the dark fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) and the fictionalized memoir Green Shadows, White Whale (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space . Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Bradbury also wrote poetry which has been published in several collections, such as They Have Not Seen

4386-548: The 1955 film It Came from Beneath the Sea ), a leviathan , and a giant shark but Harryhausen expressed his dislike of these, leading him to "experiment" with other concepts such as an octopus-like alien and a beast akin to a dragon. When the pair decided to make the creature a dinosaur based on the sea beast, Harryhausen said he did not want a "normal" dinosaur such as the Allosaurus , Tyrannosaurus or Brontosaurus , with

4488-431: The 1960s, the magazine's readership began to decline. In 1969, The Saturday Evening Post folded for two years before being revived as a quarterly publication with an emphasis on medical articles in 1971. As of the late 2000s, The Saturday Evening Post is published six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which purchased the magazine in 1982. The magazine was redesigned in 2013. The Saturday Evening Post

4590-436: The February 8 issue would be the magazine's last. Ackerman stated that the magazine had lost $ 5M in 1968 and would lose a projected $ 3M in 1969. In a meeting with employees after the magazine's closure had been announced, Emerson thanked the staff for their professional work and promised "to stay here and see that everyone finds a job". At a March 1969 post-mortem on the magazine's closing, Emerson stated that The Post "was

4692-553: The Giant Monster (1965). Homages to the creature appear in media such as a 1956 issue of the comic book series Batman , the 1970 film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth , and the comic book miniseries Dinosaurs Attack! . Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury ( US : / ˈ b r æ d b ɛr i / BRAD -berr-ee ; August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of

4794-496: The Giant Monster (1965). Homages to the creature appear in media such as a 1956 issue of the comic book series Batman , the 1970 film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth , and the comic book miniseries Dinosaurs Attack! . Since his debut in 1953, the Rhedosaurus has been featured in various entertainment media, including films, comic books, novels, and television programs. With each appearance, artists would slightly change

4896-516: The Stars (2001). The New York Times called Bradbury "An author whose fanciful imagination, poetic prose, and mature understanding of human character have won him an international reputation" and "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream". Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois , to Esther (née Moberg) Bradbury (1888–1966),

4998-481: The Wild was first published, in serialized form, in the Saturday Evening Post in 1903. Emblematic of the Post's fiction was author Clarence Budington Kelland , who first appeared in 1916–17 with stories of homespun heroes, "Efficiency Edgar" and "Scattergood Baines". Kelland was a steady presence from 1922 until 1961. For many years William Hazlett Upson contributed a very popular series of short stories about

5100-511: The alienation of people by media: In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in

5202-523: The authors of EC Comics 's line of horror and science-fiction comics. Initially, the writers plagiarized his stories, but a diplomatic letter from Bradbury led to the company's paying him and negotiating properly licensed adaptations of his work. The comics featuring Bradbury's stories included Tales from the Crypt , Weird Science , Weird Fantasy , Crime Suspenstories , and Haunt of Fear . Bradbury remained an enthusiastic playwright all his life, leaving

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5304-492: The beginning of the Mexican Repatriation , The Saturday Evening Post ran a series on the racial inferiority of Mexicans. In 1954, it published its first articles on the role of the U.S. in deposing Mohammad Mosaddegh , Prime Minister of Iran , in 1953. The article was based on materials leaked by CIA director Allen Dulles . The Post readership began to decline in the late 1950s and 1960s. In general,

5406-578: The character's design. The Rhedosaurus made his first on-screen appearance in Eugène Lourié 's 1953 film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms . In the film, the dinosaur is awakened from its over-100-million-year slumber in suspended animation under the Arctic by an atomic bomb detonation and travels south towards the location of its original home, now New York City , on a devastating rampage. After it creates $ 300 million in damage while wandering around

5508-400: The city, it is ultimately killed on Coney Island by a radionuclide that is directly shot into the wound on its neck created by a bazooka earlier in the film. The Rhedosaurus ' next official appearance would be in the low-budget 1977 film Planet of Dinosaurs . In that film, it inhabited a Mesozoic era Earth analog which a human crew becomes stranded; this time, however, it is

5610-450: The complete archive of the magazine is available online. In 1916, Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer discovered Norman Rockwell , then an unknown 22-year-old New York City artist. Lorimer promptly purchased two illustrations from Rockwell, using them as covers, and commissioned three more drawings. Rockwell's illustrations of the American family and rural life of a bygone era became icons. During his 50-year career with

5712-485: The corner of South Norton Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. In regard to his education, Bradbury said: Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years. So I graduated from

5814-460: The creative people he met were special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen and radio star George Burns . Bradbury's first pay as a writer, at age 14, was for a joke he sold to George Burns to use on the Burns and Allen radio show. Bradbury was fascinated with carnivals from a young age, and they would feature in such works as The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes . He related

5916-445: The decline of general interest magazines was blamed on television, which competed for advertisers and readers' attention. The Post had problems retaining readers: the public's taste in fiction was changing, and the Post ' s conservative politics and values appealed to a declining number of people. Content by popular writers became harder to obtain. Prominent authors drifted away to newer magazines offering more money and status. As

6018-614: The definitive use of Green Town is in Summer Morning, Summer Night , a collection of short stories and vignettes exclusively set in the town. Bradbury returns to the signature locale as a look back at the rapidly disappearing small-town world of the American heartland, which was the foundation of his roots. Bradbury wrote many short essays on culture and the arts, attracting the attention of critics in this field, using his fiction to explore and criticize his culture and society. He observed, for example, that Fahrenheit 451 touched on

6120-416: The escapades of Earthworm Tractors salesman Alexander Botts. Publication in the Post launched careers and helped established artists and writers stay afloat. P. G. Wodehouse said "the wolf was always at the door" until the Post gave him his "first break" in 1915 by serializing Something New . After the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt , Post columnist Garet Garrett became a vocal critic of

6222-429: The fact that the first two letters in the dinosaur's name are the same as his initials are coincidental, despite some people saying the beast's name was partly derived from his. Warner Bros. later gave it the nickname "Herman". Following a few rough sketches of the beast's structure on paper and discussing storyboards for the film, Ray Harryhausen constructed a clay prototype of the Rhedosaurus and then used it to make

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6324-477: The flagship theater for MGM and Fox . There, Bradbury learned how to sneak in and watched previews almost every week. He roller skated there, as well as all over town, as he put it, "hell-bent on getting autographs from glamorous stars. It was glorious." Among stars the young Bradbury was thrilled to encounter were Norma Shearer , Laurel and Hardy , and Ronald Colman . Sometimes he spent all day in front of Paramount Pictures or Columbia Pictures , then skated to

6426-640: The front row, and he reached down with a flaming sword full of electricity and he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose and he cried, "Live, forever!" And I thought, "God, that's wonderful. How do you do that?" ... So when I left the carnival that day I stood by the carousel and I watched the horses running around and around to the music of " Beautiful Ohio " and I cried. Tears streamed down my cheeks because I knew something important had happened to me that day because of Mr. Electrico. I felt changed. And so I went home and within days I started to write. And I've never stopped. Throughout his youth, Bradbury

6528-523: The insights without too much extra comment." He studied Eudora Welty for her "remarkable ability to give you atmosphere, character, and motion in a single line." Bradbury was once described as a " Midwest surrealist " and is often labeled a science-fiction writer. He resisted that categorization, however, defining science fiction as "the art of the possible." First of all, I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451 , based on reality. Science fiction

6630-527: The latter because he did not want his creation to seem similar to his mentor Willis H. O'Brien 's dinosaurs featured in The Lost World (1925). Therefore, Harryhausen and Lourié eventually invented a new fictional giant four-legged creature, with a menacing appearance. Sometime during designing, the creature was dubbed the " Rhedosaurus " by a crew member who Harryhausen suggested may have been Chester, though this remains unconfirmed. He also considered

6732-643: The leg—I respond by writing them down—everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off". An imagined version of Waukegan, Green Town is a symbol of safety and home, which is often the setting for tales of the macabre and the dark fantastic. It serves as the setting of his semiautobiographical classics Dandelion Wine , Something Wicked This Way Comes , and Farewell Summer , as well as many of his short stories. In Green Town, Bradbury's favorite uncle sprouts wings, traveling carnivals conceal supernatural powers, and his grandparents provide room and board to Charles Dickens . Perhaps

6834-503: The library when I was twenty-eight years old. He told The Paris Review : "You can't learn to write in college. It's a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don't." He considered science to be 'incidental' to his writing. He claimed not to be interested in the development of science, but hoped to use it as a form of social commentary and as an allegorical technique. He described his inspiration: "My stories run up and bite me in

6936-487: The life of former Bradbury agent, close friend, mega-fan and Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forrest J Ackerman. Bradbury's legacy was celebrated by the bookstore Fahrenheit 451 Books in Laguna Beach, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. He and his favorite illustrator, Joseph Mugnaini , attended the opening of an addition to the store in the mid-1980s. It closed its doors in 1987, but in 1990, another shop of

7038-499: The magazine still in dire financial straits, Ackerman announced that Curtis would reduce printing costs by cancelling the subscriptions of roughly half of its readers. Those who lost their subscriptions were offered a free transfer to a subscription to Life magazine; Life publisher Time Inc. paid Curtis $ 5M for the exchange, easing the company's mounting debts. The move was also widely seen as an opportunity for Curtis to abandon older and more rural readers, who were less valuable to

7140-412: The magazine was later transferred to the Saturday Evening Post Society; SerVaas headed both organizations. The range of topics covered in the magazine's articles is now wide, suitable for a general readership. By 1991, Curtis Publishing Company had been renamed Curtis International, a subsidiary of SerVaas Inc., and had become an importer of audiovisual equipment. Today the Post is published six times

7242-408: The magazine's final years (1962–69), he argued that corporate management was unimaginative and incompetent. Friedrich acknowledges that The Post faced challenges while the tastes of American readers changed over the course of the 1960s, but he insisted that the magazine maintained a standard of good quality and was appreciated by readers. In 1970, control of the debilitated Curtis Publishing Company

7344-464: The model was part of the picture." The process, later dubbed "Dynamation" by producer Charles Schneer , was an inexpensive and successful technique for Harryhausen and consequently would refine throughout his career, becoming a hallmark of his work. Additionally, Harryhausen designed and supervised the creation of all the large models that the Rhedosaurus destroys in the picture, which Willis Cook assembled. Harryhausen said that his experience utilizing

7446-793: The money to head to New York for the First World Science Fiction Convention in New York City, and funded Bradbury's fanzine, Futuria Fantasia . Bradbury wrote most of its four issues, each volume printed in limited number due to publishing costs. Between 1940 and 1947, he was a contributor to Rob Wagner 's film magazine, Script . In 1939, Bradbury joined Laraine Day 's Wilshire Players Guild, where for two years he wrote and acted in several plays. They were, as Bradbury later described, "so incredibly bad" that he gave up play-writing for two decades. His first paid piece, "Pendulum", written with Henry Hasse ,

7548-400: The most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy , science fiction , horror , mystery , and realistic fiction . Bradbury is best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), and The October Country (1955). Other notable works include

7650-470: The museum people have uncovered." In contrast, critics have mostly praised the Rhedosaurus , especially acclaiming its animation by Ray Harryhausen . Many retrospective commentators have praised this iconic and influential film monster due to it possibly being the foundation of the Atomic Age giant monster genre , the first entirely fictional dinosaur to appear on-screen, and even the first monster in

7752-495: The plaintiff can prove that the defendant was guilty of a reckless lack of professional standards when examining allegations for reasonable credibility. (Butts was eventually awarded $ 460,000.) William Emerson was promoted to editor-in-chief in 1965 and remained in the position until the magazine's demise in 1969. In 1968, Martin Ackerman , a specialist in troubled firms, became president of Curtis after lending it $ 5M. With

7854-644: The popular quiz show You Bet Your Life hosted by Groucho Marx . During his introductory comments and on-air banter with Marx, Bradbury briefly discussed some of his books and other works, including giving an overview of " The Veldt ", his short story published six years earlier in The Saturday Evening Post under the title "The World the Children Made". Bradbury was a consultant for the United States Pavilion at

7956-474: The previous incarnation. In its debut film, the Rhedosaurus is depicted as able to easily adaptable to different environments, having survived in suspended animation for over 100 million years, and equally capable of moving on land and swimming under the ocean. He uses the latter to travel from Baffin Bay to the location that was originally its home millions of years ago, now known as New York . The beast also has

8058-526: The producers' approval and portraying the creature in the film via stop motion animation . The Rhedosaurus is one of the most influential and iconic fictional monsters in the history of cinema. It inspired film monsters such as Godzilla and Gamera and set the template for giant monster and kaiju in films, including: Them! (1954), Godzilla (1954), The Deadly Mantis (1957), 20 Million Miles to Earth , The Giant Claw (both 1957), The Giant Behemoth (1959), Gorgo (1961), and Gamera,

8160-536: The publishing rights for Fahrenheit 451 came up for renewal in December 2011, Bradbury permitted its publication in electronic form provided that the publisher, Simon & Schuster , allowed the e-book to be digitally downloaded by any library patron. The title remains the only book in the Simon & Schuster catalog for which this is possible. Several comic-book writers have adapted Bradbury's stories, particularly

8262-749: The radio show Chandu the Magician , and every night when the show went off the air, he wrote out the entire script from memory. As a teen in Beverly Hills , he often visited his mentor and friend, science-fiction writer Bob Olsen , sharing ideas and maintaining contact. In 1936, at a secondhand bookstore in Hollywood, Bradbury discovered a handbill promoting meetings of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society . Excited to find others who shared his interest, he joined

8364-548: The same name (with different owners) opened in Carlsbad, California. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bradbury served on the advisory board of the Los Angeles Student Film Institute . Bradbury lived in his parents' home until, in 1947, at age 27, he married Marguerite McClure (January 16, 1922 – November 24, 2003). They remained married until her death. Maggie, as she was affectionately called,

8466-472: The scene where the main characters are in the New York Subway . The fictional prehistoric sea monster that the Rhedosaurus is based on first appeared in the short story " The Fog Horn ", featured in the June 23, 1951 issue of The Saturday Evening Post . It later reappeared in a slightly modified version of the story in the third issue of Ray Bradbury Comics (1993), where it has a design akin to

8568-433: The scene, people were saying, 'Oh my God, I'm so afraid.' I hate people like that—I call them the neo- Luddites " and: "In a sense, [computers] are simply books. Books are all over the place, and computers will be, too." He resisted the conversion of his work into e-books , saying in 2010: "We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now." When

8670-823: Was Charles R. Chickering , a freelance illustrator who went on to design numerous postage stamps for the U.S. Post Office. Other popular cover illustrators include artists George Hughes, Constantin Alajalov , John Clymer , Alonzo Kimball , W. H. D. Koerner , J. C. Leyendecker , Mead Schaeffer , Charles Archibald MacLellan , John E. Sheridan , Emmett Watson , Douglass Crockwell , and N. C. Wyeth . Cartoonists have included: Irwin Caplan , Clyde Lamb , Jerry Marcus , Frank O'Neal , Charles M. Schulz , and Bill Yates . The magazine ran Ted Key 's cartoon panel series Hazel from 1943 to 1969. Each issue featured several original short stories and often included an installment of

8772-517: Was "a God-given thing, and I'm so grateful, so, so grateful. The best description of my career as a writer is 'At play in the fields of the Lord'." Bradbury was a close friend of Charles Addams , and Addams illustrated 1946's "Homecoming", the first of Bradbury's stories about the Elliotts, a family that resembled Addams's own Addams Family , transplanted to rural Illinois. Addams and Bradbury planned

8874-418: Was 14. The family arrived with only US$ 40 (equivalent to $ 911 in 2023), which paid for rent and food until his father finally found a job making wire at a cable company for $ 14 a week (equivalent to $ 319 in 2023), allowing them to stay in Hollywood. Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School and was active in the drama club. He often roller-skated through Hollywood in hopes of meeting celebrities. Among

8976-540: Was a boy, he met a young girl at a lake edge and she went out into the water and never came back. Years later, as he wrote about it in " The Lake ", tears flowed from him. He recognized he had taken the leap from emulating the many writers he admired to connecting with his voice as a writer. When later asked about source of the lyrical power of his prose, he replied: "From reading so much poetry every day of my life. My favorite writers have been those who've said things well." He said: "If you're reluctant to weep, you won't live

9078-413: Was a more scarify look, however, after making some test footage he "realized that it still wasn't right" and remade it a third and final time before using it for the film. To portray his stop motion animated model of the giant beast tumulting in a particular setting in the 1953 film, Harryhausen invented a method for screen projection that divided the plates into foreground and backdrop imagery one frame at

9180-554: Was a strong supporter of public libraries, raising money to prevent the closure of several libraries in California facing budgetary cuts. He said "libraries raised me", and shunned colleges and universities, comparing his own lack of funds during the Depression with poor contemporary students. His opinion varied on modern technology. In 1985 Bradbury wrote: "I see nothing but good coming from computers. When they first appeared on

9282-440: Was about 18. Bradbury's favorite writers growing up included Katherine Anne Porter , Edith Wharton and Jessamyn West . He loved the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs , especially his John Carter of Mars series; The Warlord of Mars impressed him so much that at age 12, he wrote his own sequel. The young Bradbury was also a cartoonist and loved to illustrate. He wrote about Tarzan and drew his own Sunday panels. He listened to

9384-513: Was acquired from the estate of Cyrus Curtis by Indianapolis industrialist Beurt SerVaas . SerVaas relaunched the Post the following year on a quarterly basis as a kind of nostalgia magazine. In early 1982, ownership of the Post was transferred to the Benjamin Franklin Literary and Medical Society, founded in 1976 by the Post' s then-editor, Corena "Cory" SerVaas (wife of Beurt SerVaas). The magazine's core focus

9486-496: Was also assigned to work on Chester and Dietz's film by this point and was given a copy of James R. Bingham's artwork of the creature published alongside the story in The Saturday Evening Post . Before adapting Bradbury's sea monster, Harryhausen and director Eugène Lourié had gone through many draft designs for producers Chester and Dietz. They made sketches of an octopus (foreshadowing Harryhausen's work on

9588-500: Was an avid reader and writer and knew at a young age that he was "going into one of the arts". Bradbury began writing his own stories at age 12 (1931), sometimes writing on butcher paper. In his youth, he spent much time in the Carnegie Library in Waukegan, reading such authors as H. G. Wells , Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe . At 12, he began writing traditional horror stories and said he tried to imitate Poe until he

9690-639: Was first published in 1821 in the same printing shop at 53 Market Street in Philadelphia , where the Benjamin Franklin -founded Pennsylvania Gazette was published in the 18th century. While the Gazette ceased publication in 1800, ten years after Franklin's death, the Post links its history to the original magazine. Cyrus H. K. Curtis , publisher of the Ladies' Home Journal , bought

9792-403: Was his first great love. He said that had he not discovered writing, he would have become a magician. Bradbury claimed a wide variety of influences, and described discussions he might have had with his favorite writers, among them Robert Frost , William Shakespeare , John Steinbeck , Aldous Huxley , and Thomas Wolfe . From Steinbeck, he learned "how to write objectively and yet insert all of

9894-586: Was invited by Forrest J. Ackerman to attend the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, which at the time met at Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles. There he met Robert A. Heinlein , Emil Petaja , Fredric Brown , Henry Kuttner , Leigh Brackett and Jack Williamson . Bradbury's first published story was " Hollerbochen's Dilemma ", in the January 1938 number of Ackerman's fanzine Imagination! . In July 1939, Ackerman and his girlfriend Morojo gave 19-year-old Bradbury

9996-487: Was now health and medicine; indeed, the magazine's website originally noted that the "credibility of The Saturday Evening Post has made it a valuable asset for reaching medical consumers and for helping medical researchers obtain family histories. In the magazine, national health surveys are taken to further current research on topics such as cancer , diabetes , high blood pressure , heart disease , ulcerative colitis , spina bifida , and bipolar disorder ." Ownership of

10098-516: Was published in the pulp magazine Super Science Stories in November 1941, for which he earned $ 15. Bradbury sold his first solo story, "The Lake", for $ 13.75 at 22 and became a full-time writer by 24. His first collection of short stories, Dark Carnival , was published in 1947 by Arkham House , a small press in Sauk City, Wisconsin , owned by August Derleth . Reviewing Dark Carnival for

10200-469: Was the only woman he ever dated. They had four daughters: Susan, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra. Bradbury never obtained a driver's license, but used public transportation or his bicycle. He was raised Baptist by his parents, who were infrequent churchgoers. As an adult, Bradbury said he considered himself a "delicatessen religionist" who resisted categorization of his beliefs and took guidance from both Eastern and Western faiths. He felt that his career

10302-544: Was the special-effects expert Ray Harryhausen , who was best man at Bradbury's wedding. During a BAFTA 2010 awards tribute honoring Harryhausen's 90th birthday, Bradbury spoke about having first met him at Forrest J Ackerman's house when they were both 18. Their shared love for science fiction, King Kong , and The Fountainhead was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. These early influences inspired them to believe in themselves and to affirm their career choices. After their first meeting, they kept in touch at least once

10404-596: Was well known, and he wrote humanistic science fiction, which influenced me to dare to be human instead of mechanical." During his young adulthood, Bradbury read stories published in Astounding Science Fiction , and read everything by Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke , as well as the early writings of Theodore Sturgeon and A. E. van Vogt . The family lived about four blocks from the Fox Uptown Theatre on Western Avenue in Los Angeles,

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