King Kong ***** (1933, Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher) – Classic Movie Review 245

Producer-directors Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack’s all-time great fantasy adventure, horror movie and love story is a brilliantly stirring entertainment and an unchallenged masterpiece. A monstrously marvellous monster movie, this original 1933 version is the Eighth Wonder of the Cinema World.

Robert Armstrong stars as Carl Denham, a cocky filmmaker who picks up a pretty, poverty-stricken young woman, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). He easily talks her into starring in a movie he wants to make on a distant tropical jungle island.

Hoving up there on their otherwise all-male ship, they find the restless natives have built a walled encampment on the shore with a huge wooden gate to keep out the monsters in the jungle. They include a T-Rex and, more famously, a giant gorilla, the Mighty Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World. He soon falls for and grabs hold of the lovely Wray, and is peeling off some of her clothes, when First Mate Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) snatches her back.

Kong follows them to the beach, but Denham overpowers him with explosives and talks Captain Englehorn (Frank Reicher) into shipping back the big ape to the States where he puts him on stage for the rich folk of Broadway to gawk at. When an enraged Kong escapes his shackles and goes on the rampage, he chases after Wray and takes her to the top of Empire State Building. There four planes, one of them manned by Cooper and Schoedsack as the pilot and the machine-gunner, try to shoot him down.

There’s no doubt that the 50ft ape is the magnetic star and real hero of the movie, perfectly realized in a stop-motion special effects triumph by magician Willis O’Brien. Kong provides an indelible cinema icon that’s as familiar as Marilyn Monroe’s swooping-up dress.

The picture’s concept by Cooper and Schoedsack is an enduring wonder itself and the storytelling a marvel, with its central idea of the beast being destroyed by beauty vividly brought to life. The production is truly awesome, with its splendidly achieved and still magical-looking, otherworldly mix of vast studio jungles, 15in animated models, matte work and rear projection.

A champion screamer and increasingly sexy, wide-eyed and wild-haired as the movie progresses, the lovely Wray is perfectly cast in the movie she’ll always be remembered for (her memoirs are called On the One Hand). Armstrong and Cabot (clearly reflections of the film’s two real-life directors) make an effective pair of rather complex and unusual heroes. Reicher is ripely entertaining as the skipper.

In a film that abandons dialogue for huge stretches, music maestro Max Steiner and sound effects wizard Murray Speak work up a lather to keep the yarn boiling.

The pretty colorized version is very attractive and appealing but it lacks the original’s poetic magic, which is ultimately Kong’s triumph.

Also in the cast are Sam Hardy, Noble Johnson, James Flavin, Steve Clemente, Victor Wong, Victor Long, Paul Porcasi, Roscoe Ates, Reginald Barlow, Lynton Brent, Barney Capehart, Dick Curtis, Bob Galloway, Dorothy Gulliver, Ethan Laidlaw, Vera Lewis, George MacQuarrie, LeRoy Mason, Etta McDaniel, Dusty Mitchell, Carlotta Monti, Gil Perkins, Russ Powell, Russ Rogers, Russell Saunders, Sandra Shaw, Sul-Te-Wan, Charles Sullivan, Harry Tembrook, Jim Thorpe, Ray Turner, Blackie Whiteford and Eric Wood.

The original story is by Edgar Wallace (who died after only three days of work on it) and Merian C Cooper. The title of King Kong was executive producer David O Selznick’s suggestion. It was remade in 1976 as King Kong and again in 2005 as King Kong. Robert Armstrong and Frank Reicher return for the sequel: The Son of Kong (1933). And there’s a sequel to the 1976 film, King Kong Lives! (1986).

Sadly, Selznick burnt down the great King Kong sets for the spectacular burning of Atlanta sequence when he made Gone with the wind in 1939. If he had been cleverer, he could have turned them into a popular, Disney-style theme park.

King Kong actress Pauline Wagner died on May 2 2014 at the age of 103. She served as Fay Wray’s body double in the original 1933 film, and featured in the climactic scene on top of the Empire State Building. She worked as a contract player at RKO Radio Pictures, when she was asked by producers to help reshoot the crucial scene, as Wray was then working on another film in England.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 245

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