Charles H. Schneer, the son of a jeweller, was a renowned producer in the film industry, particularly famous for his collaborations with the renowned animator and special effects wizard, Ray Harryhausen. Together, they created some of the most beloved fantasy and science fiction films that graced the silver screen between 1956 and 1981.
Schneer's journey in the motion picture industry began in 1939 when he entered Columbia in New York as an assistant. He worked there for three years before serving in the U.S. Army Signals Corps Photographic Unit during World War II, producing training films at the Astoria Studio in Queens, New York.
After the war, Schneer joined Sam Katzman's B-unit at Columbia as a producer. It was his original concept of a giant octopus enveloping the Golden Gate Bridge that led to his introduction to Harryhausen and their subsequent joint work on It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955). Despite a minuscule budget, the venture proved to be a notable box-office success.
Their next project together was the seminal science fiction film Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956),which took Harryhausen's stop-motion technique to the next level. Schneer provided original background research by collecting news reports of actual UFO sightings.
By 1957, Schneer had ceased working for Katzman and became the co-founder and president of Morningside Productions, allowing him and Harryhausen to gain more creative and financial control over their projects. Their subsequent ventures were based on mythological themes, rather than being simply 'creature features'.
These included The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958),The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960),and Jason and the Argonauts (1963),which showcased the three-dimensional stop-motion animation process, referred to as "Dynamation". In 1960, Schneer moved to London to form an independent production company, American Films, and produced several features without Harryhausen's involvement, including a biopic of rocket engineer Wernher von Braun.
Schneer and Harryhausen later resumed their collaboration and had further successes with Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) and Clash of the Titans (1981),featuring a brilliant Medusa sequence. Schneer retired in the 1980s, as stop-motion work was somewhat superseded by cheaper computer-generated special effects.
He continued to reside at his Holland Park home in West London until returning to the United States just three years prior to his death in 2005.
