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Info About The Father Of The Giant Monster Invasion Movies And With Scream Queen Fay Wray:
King Kong is a Pre-Code 1933 monster/adventure film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. The screenplay was by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman from a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. It stars Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong, and opened in New York City on March 2, 1933 to rave reviews.
The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling ape creature called Kong who dies in an attempt to possess a beautiful young woman. Kong is distinguished for its stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and its musical score by Max Steiner. The film has been released to video, DVD, and Blu-ray Disc, and has been computer colorized.[1] In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It has been remade twice: once in 1976 and again in 2005.
Plot
In New York harbor, Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong); a fierce independent film director famous for shooting animal pictures in remote and exotic locations, has recruited a bunch of macho seamen, but is unable to hire an actress for his newest project. His usual agent, Charles Weston refuses to supply anyone because of the dangerous nature of the expedition, so Carl goes wandering in the streets of New York searching for a suitable girl. He chances upon starving unemployed Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and tries to convince her to join him on the adventure of a lifetime, offering her the lead in his project. Although Ann is apprehensive, she has nothing to lose and agrees.
They set sail aboard the Venture, a tramp steamer, and travel for weeks in the direction of Indonesia, where Denham claims they will be shooting. Despite his ongoing declarations that women have no place on board ships, the ship's first mate, Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) is obviously becoming attracted to Ann. Denham informs Driscoll he has enough trouble without the complications of a seagoing love affair. Driscoll sneers at the suggestion, reminding Denham of his toughness in past adventures.
Denham's reply outlines the theme of the movie he is making: "The Beast was a tough guy too. He could lick the world, but when he saw Beauty, she got him. He went soft. He forgot his wisdom and the little fellas licked him."
After maintaining secrecy for weeks, Denham finally tells Driscoll and Captain Englehorn (Frank Reicher) that they're searching for an uncharted island shown on a map in Denham's possession. Denham then describes something monstrous connected to the island, a legendary entity known to the islanders only as "Kong".
As the Venture creeps through the fog surrounding the island, the crew hears drums in the distance. Arriving at the island's shore, they see a native village on a peninsula, cut off from the bulk of the island by an enormous stone wall. A landing party, including the filming crew and Ann, goes ashore and encounters the natives, who are about to hand over a girl to Kong as a ritual sacrifice.
The native chief spots them, getting a clear look at Ann, and proposes to swap six native women for her. Denham delicately declines as he and his party edge away from the scene, assuring the chief that they will return tomorrow to get better acquainted.
However, later that night, a stealthy contingent of natives captures Ann, takes her back to the wall, where she is presented to Kong in an elaborate ceremony, leaving her tied to columns behind the wall. Soon after, Kong emerges through the trees and is revealed to be a giant gorilla, who carries off Ann deep into the jungle.
The Venture crew returns to the village and open the huge gate on the wall; half of the crew then go after Kong in hopes of rescuing Ann from his clutches. While venturing through the dense jungles, the crew discover that not only does Kong live on the island, but also prehistoric dinosaurs that have somehow escaped extinction and have continued to evolve throughout the centuries, such as enraged Stegosaurus, a territorial Brontosaurus, and a hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex who tries to eat Ann, but Kong fights and eventually defeats it.
Jack, after braving through the many obstacles the island has to offer, rescues Ann and takes her back to the village, but Kong chases after them, breaks through the large door in the wall and rampages through the village, killing many natives. Denham hurls gas bombs at Kong, knocking him out, whereupon he exults in the opportunity presented: "We're millionaires, boys! I'll share it with all of you! Why, in a few months, his name will be up in lights on Broadway! Kong! The Eighth Wonder of the World!"
The next scene shows those last words in lights on a theater marquee. Along with hundreds of curious New Yorkers, Denham, Driscoll and Ann are dressed in evening wear for the gala event. The curtain lifts, and Denham presents a subdued and shackled Kong to the stunned audience. All goes well until photographers, using the blinding flashbulbs of the era, begin snapping shots of Ann and Jack, who is now her fiancé. Under the impression that the flashbulbs are attacking Ann, Kong breaks free of his bonds and escapes from the theater, as the screaming audience flees.
He rampages through city streets, destroying an elevated train and killing several citizens. He looks into windows, his glaring eyes looming in the windows of the wrecked elevated train Kong sees Ann in an upper floor hotel room, he reaches in the window, grabs her, and carries her to the top of the Empire State Building. He gets into a battle with a squadron of military airplanes and despite taking one of them down is wounded by gunfire and falls to his death. Ann is reunited with Driscoll. Below on the street, Denham makes his way through the gathered crowd to look upon the fallen Kong. A police lieutenant says to him, "Well Denham, the airplanes got him." The film ends with Carl Denham's famous reply, "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes...it was Beauty killed the Beast."
Background
Before King Kong hit the silver screen, a long tradition of jungle films existed, and, whether drama or documentary, such films generally adhered to a narrative pattern that followed an explorer or scientist into the jungle to test a theory only to discover some monstrous aberration in the undergrowth. In such films, scientific knowledge could be turned topsy-turvy at any time and it was this that provided the genre with its vitality, appeal, and endurance.[2]
At the turn of the 19th to 20th century, the Lumière Brothers sent film documentarians to places westerners had never seen, and Georges Méliès utilized trick photography in film fantasies that prefigured that in King Kong. Jungle films were launched in the United States in 1913 with Beasts in the Jungle, a film that mixed live actors with lions, a tiger, and other animals. The film's popularity spawned similar pictures, including a few about "ape men" and gorillas. In 1918, Elmo Lincoln starred in Tarzan of the Apes,[2] and, in 1925, The Lost World made movie history with special effects by Willis O'Brien and a crew that later would work on King Kong.[3]
The little-known but recently partially rediscovered Mascot Pictures 1927 movie serial Isle of Sunken Gold may have provided fundamental inspirations for story and character elements of King Kong – it featured shipwrecked sailors on a remote island, and a seafaring hero (Bruce Gordon) clad in white who fights to protect the scantily clad heroine (Anita Stewart) from primitive natives and their deity, a cave-dwelling fanged ape named "Kong."[citation needed]
Production
Development
Concept
Cooper's fascination with gorillas began with his boyhood reading of Paul du Chaillu's Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861) and was furthered in 1929 by studying a tribe of baboons in Africa while filming The Four Feathers. After reading W. Douglas Burden's The Dragon Lizards of Komodo, he fashioned a scenario depicting African gorillas battling Komodo dragons intercut with artificial stand-ins for joint shots. He then narrowed the dramatis personae to one ferocious, lizard-battling gorilla (rather than a group) and included a lone woman on expedition to appease those critics who belabored him for neglecting romance in his films. A remote island would be the setting and the gorilla would be dealt a spectacular death in New York City.[4]
Cooper took his concept to Paramount Studios in the first years of the Great Depression but executives shied away from a project that sent film crews on costly shoots to Africa and Komodo. In 1931, David O. Selznick brought Cooper to RKO as his executive assistant, and, to sweeten the deal, promised him he could make his own films. Cooper began immediately developing The Most Dangerous Game, a story about a big game hunter, and hired his friend and former film partner Ernest Schoedsack to direct. A huge jungle stage set was built and Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray were the picture's stars. Once the film was underway, Cooper turned his attention to the studio's big-budget-out-of-control fantasy, Creation, a story about a group of travelers shipwrecked on an island of dinosaurs. The film had special effects wizard Willis O'Brien on board.[5]
When Cooper screened O'Brien's stop-motion Creation footage, he was unimpressed but realized he could economically make his gorilla picture by scrapping the Komodo dragons and costly location shoots for O'Brien's animated dinosaurs and the studio's existing jungle set. It was at this time Cooper probably cast his gorilla as a giant named Kong, and would have him die at the Empire State Building. The RKO board was wary about the project but gave its approval after Cooper organized a presentation with Wray, Armstrong, and Cabot, and O'Brien's model dinosaurs. In his executive capacity, Cooper ordered the Creation production shelved and put its crew to work on Kong.[6]
Merian C. Cooper wanted King Kong to be more of an ape, but Willis O'Brien wanted King Kong to be more of a human being. A compromise was met with King Kong being made into an apeman. This was Brien's third time creating an apeman, as he had previously created an apeman for his short film The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy and The Lost World.
Script
Cooper assigned recently hired RKO screenwriter and best-selling British mystery/adventure writer Edgar Wallace the job of writing a screenplay and a novel based on his gorilla fantasy. Cooper understood the commercial appeal of Wallace's name and planned to publicize the film as being "based on the novel by Edgar Wallace". Wallace conferred with Cooper and O'Brien (who contributed, among other things, the "Ann's dress" scene) and began work on January 1, 1932. He completed a rough draft called The Beast on January 5, 1932. Cooper thought the draft needed considerable work but Wallace died on February 10, 1932 just after beginning revisions.[2][7] Cooper insisted however that Wallace died having written "not one bloody word," and that he gave the writer a screen credit simply because as producer he had promised him one.[8]
Cooper called in James A. Creelman (who was working on the script of The Most Dangerous Game at the time) and the two men worked together on several drafts under the title The Eighth Wonder. Some details from Wallace's rough draft were dropped, notably his boatload of escaped convicts. Wallace's Danby Denham character, a big game hunter, became film director Carl Denham. His Shirley became Ann Darrow and her lover-convict John became Jack Driscoll. The 'beauty and the beast' angle was first developed at this time. Kong's escape was switched from Madison Square Garden to Yankee Stadium and (finally) to a Broadway theater. Cute moments involving the gorilla in Wallace's draft were cut because Cooper wanted Kong hard and tough in the belief that his fall would be all the more awesome and tragic.[7]
Time constraints forced Creelman to temporarily drop The Eighth Wonder and devote his time to the Game script. RKO staff writer Horace McCoy was called in to work with Cooper, and it was then that the island natives, a giant wall, and the sacrificial maidens entered the plot. When Creelman returned to the script full time, he hated these 'mythic elements', believing the script already had too many over-the-top concepts. RKO head Selznick and his executives wanted Kong introduced earlier in the film (believing the audience would grow bored waiting for his appearance), but Cooper persuaded them that a suspenseful build-up would make Kong's entrance all the more exciting.[9]
Cooper felt Creelman's final draft was slow-paced, too full of flowery dialogue, weighted-down with long scenes of exposition,[9] and written on a scale that would have been prohibitively expensive to film.[8] Writer Ruth Rose (Mrs. Ernest Schoedsack) was brought in to clean things up and, although she had never written a screenplay, undertook the task with a complete understanding of Cooper's style. She streamlined the script and tightened the action. Rather than explaining how Kong would be transported to New York, for example, she simply cut from the island to the theater. She incorporated autobiographical elements into the script with Cooper mirrored in the Denham character, her husband Schoedsack in the tough but tender Driscoll character, and herself in struggling actress Ann Darrow. She rewrote the dialogue to give it some zip and created the film's entire opening chunk showing Denham plucking Ann from the streets of New York. Cooper was delighted with Rose's script, added the Arab proverb seen on the screen at the beginning, and approved the script (now called Kong) for production.[10] Cooper and Schoedsack decided to co-direct scenes but their styles were different (Cooper was slow and meticulous, Schoedsack brisk) and they finally agreed to work separately with Cooper directing the miniature and special effects scenes and Schoedsack directing the live-action scenes.[11]
Pre-production
Casting
Fay Wray
Canadian-born Vina Fay Wray played bit parts in Hollywood until cast as the lead in Erich Von Stroheim's 1928 silent film, The Wedding March. She met Kong co-directors Cooper and Schoedsack when cast as Ethne Eustace in The Four Feathers in 1929. Cooper cast her in 1932 as Eve Trowbridge in The Most Dangerous Game.[12]
After the RKO board approved the Kong test, Cooper decided a blonde would provide contrast to the gorilla's dark pelt. Dorothy Jordan, Jean Harlow, and Ginger Rogers were considered, but the role finally went to Wray who wore a blonde wig in the film and was inspired more by Cooper's enthusiasm than the script to accept the role. According to her autobiography, On the Other Hand, Wray recounts that Cooper had told her he planned to star her opposite the "tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood". She assumed he meant Clark Gable until he showed her a picture of Kong climbing the Empire State Building.[12]
Wray recorded all her screams in one afternoon session during post-production.[13] She appeared in two other horror films released about the same time as Kong, and, as a result, was labelled a "scream queen" by critics and movie-goers.[14] On the film's 50th anniversary in 1983, one New York theater held a Fay Wray scream-alike contest in its lobby,[15] and, two days after her death on August 8, 2004, the lights of the Empire State Building were dimmed for 15 minutes in her memory.[16]
Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot
Michigan native and veteran Broadway and silent film character actor Robert Armstrong played Wray's alcoholic brother in The Most Dangerous Game and, during filming, became a member of the Cooper-Schoedsack inner circle. He was a shoo-in as Denham when Kong was cast.[12] The film's romantic angle (rather than its jungle or animal angle) was played-up after animal films fared poorly at the box office in the early months of 1933. One exhibitor displayed a promotional still of Wray swooning in Armstrong's arms with the caption, "Their Hearts Stood Still...For There Stood Kong! A Love Story of Today That Spans the Ages!". Although the film's romantic subplot belongs to Cabot and Wray, established star Armstrong was chosen for the ad rather than the unknown Cabot.[17] Months later, Armstrong again played Carl Denham in Kong's sequel, The Son of Kong (1933).[18]
New Mexico native Jacques De Bujac was signed by Selznick as a contract player, given the name Bruce Cabot, and met Cooper when auditioning for The Most Dangerous Game. He almost walked out of his Kong audition (mistakenly believing he was trying out as a stunt double for Joel McCrea) but was convinced otherwise and received the role of Jack Driscoll, his first starring role.[19] He was an inexperienced actor and described his participation in Kong as standing in the right place, doing what he was told, and collecting a paycheck.[20]
Other players
German-born Broadway veteran and silent film director Frank Reicher was cast as Captain Englehorn of the SS Venture, Victor Wong as the ship's cook Charlie, James Flavin as Second Mate Briggs, and a host of stuntmen and bit players as the ship's crew. Noble Johnson and Steve Clemente were members of the Cooper-Schoedsack inner circle and cast as the Native Chief and the Witch Doctor respectively while Etta McDaniel played mother of a child she rescues from Kong's rampage. Sam Hardy was cast as a theatrical agent and Sandra Shaw (later Mrs. Gary Cooper) was cast as the New York woman Kong drops to the street from the hotel ledge. Cooper played the airplane pilot and Schoedsack the machine gunner in the film's final scenes.[21]
Models
After the RKO board approved the production of a test reel, Marcel Delgado constructed Kong (or the "Giant Terror Gorilla" as he was then known) per designs and directions from Cooper and O'Brien on a one-inch-equals-one-foot scale to simulate a gorilla 18 feet tall. Four models were built: two jointed 18-inch aluminum, foam rubber, latex, and rabbit fur models (to be rotated during filming), one jointed 24-inch model of the same materials for the New York scenes, and a small model of lead and fur for the tumbling-down-the-Empire-State-Building scene. Kong's torso was streamlined to eliminate the comical appearance of the real world gorilla's prominent belly and butt. His lips, eyebrows, and nose were fashioned of rubber, his eyes of glass, and his facial expressions controlled by thin, bendable wires threaded through holes drilled in his aluminum skull. During filming, Kong's rubber skin dried out quickly under studio lights, making it necessary to replace it often and completely rebuild his facial features.[22]
A huge bust of Kong's head, neck, and upper chest was made of wood, cloth, rubber, and bearskin by Delgado, E. B. Gibson, and Fred Reefe. Inside the structure, metal levers, hinges, and an air compressor were operated by three men to control the mouth and facial expressions. Its fangs were 10-inches in length and its eyeballs 12-inches. The bust was moved from set to set on a flatcar. Its scale matched none of the models and, if fully realized, Kong would have stood thirty to forty feet tall.[23]
Two versions of Kong's right hand and arm were constructed of steel, sponge rubber, rubber, and bearskin. The first hand was nonarticulated, mounted on a crane, and operated by grips for the scene in which Kong grabs at Driscoll in the cave. The other hand and arm had articulated fingers, was mounted on a lever to elevate it, and was used in the several scenes in which Kong grasps Ann. A nonarticulated leg was created of materials similar to the hands, mounted on a crane, and used to stomp on Kong's victims.[24]
The dinosaurs were made by Delgado in the same fashion as Kong and based on Charles R. Knight's murals in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. All the armatures were manufacted in the RKO machine shop. Materials used were cotton, foam rubber, latex sheeting, and liquid latex. Football bladders were placed inside some models to simulate breathing. A scale of one-inch-equals-one-foot was employed and models ranged from 18-inches to 3-feet in length. Several of the models were originally built for Creation and sometimes two or three models were built of individual species. Prolonged exposure to studio lights wreaked havoc with the latex skin so John Cerasoli carved wooden duplicates of each model to be used as stand-ins for test shoots and lineups. He carved wooden models of Ann, Driscoll, and other human characters. Models of the Venture, subway cars, and fighter planes were built.[26]
Live-action scenes
King Kong was filmed in several stages over an eight-month period. Some actors had so much time between their Kong periods, they worked other films. Cabot completed Road House and Wray appeared in the horror films, Dr. X and Mystery of the Wax Museum. She estimated she worked ten weeks on Kong over its eight-month period.
In May–June 1932, Cooper directed the first live-action Kong scenes on the jungle set built for The Most Dangerous Game. Some of these scenes were incorporated into the test reel later exhibited for the RKO board. The script was still in revision when the jungle scenes were shot and much of the dialogue was improvised. The jungle set was scheduled to be struck after Game was completed so Cooper filmed all the other jungle scenes at this time. The last scene shot was that of Driscoll and Ann racing through the jungle to safety following their escape from Kong's lair.
In July 1932, the native village was readied while Schoedsack and his crew filmed establishing shots in the harbor of New York City. Curtiss O2C-1 Helldiver fighter planes taking off and in flight were filmed at a U.S. Naval airfield on Long Island. Views of New York City were filmed from the Empire State Building for backgrounds in the final scenes and architectural plans for the mooring mast were secured from the building's owners for a mock-up to be constructed on the Hollywood soundstage.[27]
In August 1932, the island landing party scene and the gas bomb scene were filmed south of Los Angeles on a beach at San Pedro, California. All of the native village scenes were then filmed on the RKO-Pathé lot in Culver City with native huts recycled from Bird of Paradise (1932). The great wall in the island scenes was a hand-me-down from DeMille's The King of Kings (1927) and dressed up with massive gates, a gong, and primitive carvings. The scene of Ann being led through the gates to the sacrificial altar was filmed at night with hundreds of extras and 350 lights for illumination. A camera was mounted on a crane to follow Ann to the altar. The Culver City Fire Department was on hand to do their job should the set go up in flames from the many native torches used in the scene (the wall and gate were destroyed in 1939 for Gone With the Wind's burning of Atlanta sequence). Kong's rampage through the village was filmed (again, with hundreds of extras) and filming was completed with individual vignettes of mayhem and native panic.
Meanwhile, the scene depicting a New York woman being dropped to her apparent death from a hotel window was filmed on the soundstage using the articulated hand. At the same time, a scene depicting poker players surprised by Kong's face peering through a window was filmed using the 'big head'; the scene was eventually dropped.[28] When filming was completed, a break was scheduled to finish the interior sets and to allow screenwriter Ruth Rose time to finish the script.
In September–October 1932, Schoedsack returned to the soundstage after completing the native village shoots in Culver City. The decks and cabins of the Venture were constructed and all the live-action shipboard scenes were then filmed. The New York scenes were filmed, including the scene of Ann being plucked from the streets by Denham and the diner scene. Following the interior scenes, Schoedsack returned to San Pedro and spent a day on a tramp steamer to film the Driscoll-slugs-Ann scene and various harbor atmosphere scenes. The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was rented for one day to film the on-stage scenes with Kong in chains and the backstage theater scenes following his escape.[29] Principal photography wrapped at the end of October 1932 with the Driscoll-rescues-Ann scene at the top of the Empire State Building. Schoedsack's work was completed and he headed to Syria to film outdoor scenes for Arabia, a project that eventually remained uncompleted.[30]
In December 1932-January 1933, the actors were called back to film the optical effects shots which were mostly rear-screen projections. Technical problems inherent in the process made filming difficult and time-consuming. Wray spent most of a twenty-two hour period sitting in a fake tree to witness the battle between Kong and a T. rex. She was sore for days after. Many of the scenes featuring Wray in the articulated hand were filmed at this time. In December, Cooper reshot the New York woman falling to her death scene. Stunt doubles were filmed for the water scenes depicting Driscoll and Ann escaping from Kong. A portion of the jungle set was reconstructed to film Denham snagging his sleeve on a branch during the pursuit scene. Originally, Denham ducked behind a bush to escape danger but this was later considered cowardly and the scene reshot. The final scene was originally staged on the top of the Empire State Building but Cooper was dissatified and reshot the scene with Kong lying dead in the street and a crowd gathered about him.
Post-production
King Kong was settled upon as the title and the film cut from 125 to 100 minutes with scenes that slowed the pace or diverted attention from Kong deleted. Probably the most infamous deleted scene was what later became known as the "Spider Pit Sequence", where a number of sailors from the Venture survived a fall into a ravine, only to be eaten alive by various large spiders, insects and other creatures. In a studio memo, Merian C. Cooper said that he cut the scene out himself because it “stopped the story”. Aside from some still photographs and pre-production artwork, no trace of it has ever been found. Peter Jackson later did a reimagining of this scene for his King Kong movie, and he also shot another version of the scene for fun using stop-motion animation, which was included among the bonus features of the two-disc DVD of the 1933 original.[31]
Kong's roars and grunts were created by manipulating the recorded roars of zoo lions. For budget reasons, RKO decided not to have an original film score composed but directed composer Max Steiner to simply reuse music from other films. Cooper thought the film deserved an original score and paid Steiner $50,000 to compose it. Steiner completed the score in six weeks and recorded it with a 46 piece orchestra. The studio later reimbursed Cooper.[32] The score was unlike any that came before and marks a milestone in the history of film music. Steiner experimented with a number of new film scoring techniques, such as the use of leitmotifs.[33]
Releases
Premieres
King Kong opened at the 6,200-seat Radio City Music Hall in New York City and the 3,700-seat RKO Roxy across the street on Thursday, March 2, 1933. The film was preceded by a stage show called Jungle Rhythms. Crowds lined up around the block on opening day, tickets were priced at $.35 to $.75, and, in its first four days, every one of its ten-shows-a-day were sold out – setting an all-time attendance record for an indoor event. Over the four day period, the film grossed $89,931.[34]
The film had its official world premiere on March 23, 1933 at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The 'big head bust' was placed in the theater's forecourt and a seventeen-act show preceded the film with The Dance of the Sacred Ape performed by a troupe of African American dancers the highpoint. Kong cast and crew attended and Wray thought her on-screen screams distracting and excessive. The film opened nationwide on April 10, 1933, and worldwide on Easter Day in London, England.[34]
Reception
Variety thought the film a powerful adventure.[35] The New York Times gave readers an enthusiastic account of the plot and thought the film a fascinating adventure.[36] The film's subtextual threat to Aryan womanhood got Kong banned in Nazi Germany.[37]
In 2002, Roger Ebert wrote that the effects are not up to modern standards, but the film remains one "that still somehow works."[38] In 2009, King Kong held an average score of 100% "Certified Fresh" based on 46 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.[39]
Box office
The film made approximately $2 million in its initial release, with an opening weekend estimated at $90,000. As a result, RKO saw a profit for the first time in its five year existence. After the 1952 re-release, Variety estimated the film had made $4 million in cumulative domestic rentals for that year.[40]
Awards and honors
Kong did not receive any Academy Awards nominations. Selznick wanted to nominate O'Brien and his crew for a special award in visual effects but the Academy declined. Such a category did not exist at the time and would not exist until 1938. Sidney Saunders and Fred Jackman received a special achievement award for the development of the translucent acetate/cellulose rear screen – the only Kong-related award.[41]
The film has since received some significant honors. In 1975, Kong was named one of the 50 best American films by the American Film Institute, and, in 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 1998, the AFI ranked the film #43 on its list of the 100 greatest movies of all time.[42]
American Film Institute Lists
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – #43
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #12
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – #24
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
- Kong – Nominated Villain
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
- "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast." – #84
- AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores – #13
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #41
- AFI's 10 Top 10 – #4 Fantasy film
Re-releases, censorship and restorations
King Kong was re-released in 1938, 1942, 1946, 1952 and 1956 to great box office success. Stricter decency rules had been put into effect in Hollywood since its 1933 premiere and each time it was censored further, with several scenes being either trimmed or excised altogether.
These scenes were:[43]
A Brontosaurus eating crewmen in the water, chasing one up a tree and eating him.
Kong undressing Ann Darrow and sniffing his fingers.
Kong biting and stepping on natives when he attacks the village
Kong biting a reporter in New York.
Kong mistaking a sleeping woman for Ann and dropping her to her death after realizing his mistake.
After the 1956 re-release, the film was sold to television and played successfully to huge audiences.
In 1969, a 16mm print, including the censored footage, was found in Philadelphia. The cut scenes were added to the film, restoring it to its original theatrical running time of 100 minutes. This version was re-released to art houses by Janus Films in 1970.[43]
Over the next two decades, King Kong received further photochemical restoration. This was based on a 1942 release print, with missing censor cuts taken from a 1937 print, which "contained heavy vertical scratches from projection."[44]
After a 6-year worldwide search for the best surviving materials, a further, fully digital, restoration utilizing 4K resolution scanning was completed in 2005.[45] This restoration also had a 4 minute overture added, bringing the overall running time to 104 minutes.
King Kong was also, somewhat controversially, colorized in the late 1980s for television.[46]
Home media
King Kong was released on Laserdisc in 1984 by the Criterion Collection, and was the first-ever movie to include an audio commentary.
King Kong had numerous VHS releases of varying quality prior receiving an official studio release. Those included a 60th anniversary edition in 1993 from Turner Home Entertainment, featuring a front cover which, when his chest was pressed, had a sound effect of Kong roaring. It also included the colorized version of the film and a new 25 minute documentary, It Was Beauty Killed the Beast. The documentary is also available on two different UK King Kong DVDs.
In the US, a 2-disc, Special Edition DVD containing the full-digital restoration of King Kong and numerous extra features, was released in late 2005, to coincide with the theatrical release of Peter Jackson's remake. A Blu-ray Disc version of the Special Edition was released in the US in late 2010.[47]
As of 2012, all other worldwide DVD releases contain only the earlier, 100 minute, pre-2005 restoration.[45]
The 1980s colorized version is available on DVD in the UK and Italy.[48]
All Extracts Taken From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_(1933_film)
More Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Wray - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_giant_monster_films
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