From 2017 to 2018, Aberystwyth University hosted an exhibition about its production.In 1937 Tanganyika territory, Africa, seven-year-old Jill Young is living with her father on his ranch.

Unbeknownst to her widowed father, Jill trades some of her toys, jewelry, and money for the gorilla and names him Joe Young.

The men have captured several lions and are about to leave when Joe Young appears, now 12 feet (3.7 m) tall and weighing 4,500 pounds (2,000 kg).

Visualizing Joe as their big nightclub attraction, Max and Gregg try to rope him, but he throws both men from their horses, breaks free, and attempts to attack them.

On opening night, Joe lifts a large platform above his head, holding Jill playing "Beautiful Dreamer" on a grand piano.

Gregg, Max, Jill, and a friend named Windy devise a plan to get Joe back to Africa using a moving van and cargo ship.

Joe braves the raging fire by climbing an adjacent tall tree, carrying Jill to safety, while Gregg lowers each child by rope to the ground.

Uncredited performances with dialogue: Mighty Joe Young was produced by Arko, a company formed by John Ford and Merian C. Cooper and owned by RKO and Argosy Pictures.

[16][17] Harryhausen was fascinated by the stop-motion animation in King Kong and had experimented with stop-animation films of his own, showing them to O'Brien, to whom he looked up as a mentor.

[20] At first Harryhausen's duties mainly consisted of cutting frames, mounting storyboards, copy typing, and attending story meetings.

[25] Members of the team included O'Brien, Harryhausen, Pete Peterson, George Lofgren, Marcel Delgado, Fitch Fulton, Harold Stine, Bert Willis, and Linwood Dunn.

[43] O'Brien's work on the animation largely involved the planning and preparation, including setting up the background images, while his assistants did most of the stop-motion features.

Despite the increased technical sophistication, the film, like King Kong, features scale issues, with Joe noticeably changing size between many shots.

[70] No locations in Africa were used in shooting the film;[71] instead it was shot in New York City, Niagara Falls, Florida, Scotland, Spain, Austria, and Italy.

[81] Psychologist Joseph D. Miller suggests that from a young age Joe's masculinity is removed by Jill's influence as well as by their brother-sister relationship.

[85] Cooper told film critic Thomas M. Pryor that Mighty Joe Young is about "the effects of civilization on animals transported from native habitats to such an incongruous jungle as a Hollywood nightclub.

[91] Frazier sees Joe Young as a successor to the character of King Kong who, with his power and sexual interest in a white woman, represents "the threat of the black other.

"[92] In contrast to King Kong, Mighty Joe Young "consciously sh[ies] away from potentially polarizing social or political messages."

Unlike King Kong, who is entranced by Ann's beauty, Joe Young doesn't have sexual tension with Jill.

[93] According to Erb, the film portrays Africa as an exotic location, "preserv[ing] to some extent the exploitative impulses inherent in this vision".

[104] Flannery O'Connor, who was living in New York City when the film was released, borrowed aspects of its campaign for her novel Wise Blood.

[105] Also in the novel, the character Enoch Emery watches a film in which an orangutan rescues children from a burning orphanage, reminiscent of Mighty Joe Young.

[101] Once production companies saw its deficiency in the box office, O'Brien struggled to find work in major motion pictures.

[109] Film critic Thomas M. Pryor in his review for The New York Times said that Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, as producer and director "... are endeavoring to make all the world love, or at the very least feel a deep sympathy for, their monstrous, mechanical gorilla.

"[110] A review in Variety had a similar opinion: "Young is fun to laugh at and with, loaded with incredible corn, plenty of humor, and a robot gorilla who becomes a genuine hero.

"[111] Writing for The Daily Express, Leonard Mosley stated that, though Joe is portrayed by an animation model, he "had much more sympathy than any flesh and blood actor in the film.

[74] Aberystwyth University discovered an album in the archive that contained original artwork, more than a hundred stills, and production photographs.

[124] The album was displayed at a free exhibition at the Aberystwyth School of Art and was ran from November 20, 2017, to February 2, 2018, under the direction of professor Harry Heuser.

He presented a history of the film's production and surviving models and artworks held in the foundation's archive before introducing a screening of the movie.

[133] Joe was created with a combination of animatronics, CGI, and a gorilla costume worn by creature performer John Alexander.