| Collector's Corner January 2006
 King
Kong
- Starring: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce
Cabot
- Directed by: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B.
Schoedsack
- Theatrical release: 1933
- DVD release: 2005
- Video: Fullscreen
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 mono
- Released by: Turner Home Entertainment
"Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty
killed the Beast."
So ends one of film’s classic experiences. It’s
the story of a magnificent creature, the king of his realm, snatched from his home for the
gawking delectation of city dwellers half a world away. What makes the tale powerful
almost three-quarters of a century later is how it draws us to the ape as the tragic hero,
pulling the neat trick of making us forsake our own species as the bad guys. We end up
loving the rampaging behemoth for one simple reason: all he wants to do is protect a
beautiful woman.
The existence of King Kong constitutes a triumph of
wild circumstances over barely surmountable odds played out by two heroic -- if a bit
loony -- world adventurers who had decided that Hollywood was as good a playground as any.
It was actually airplanes that brought King Kong to
life. The director, Merian C. Cooper, had studied at the US Naval Academy, but left in his
senior year. The next year, he enlisted with General "Black Jack" Pershing to go
fight Pancho Villa along the Mexican border. He then became a pilot in World War I, was
shot down by the Germans, and spent time as a prisoner of war. After the war, he stayed on
to help the Polish Army fight the Russian Bolsheviks as a member of the famed Kosciuszko
Squadron. Cooper was again shot down, but the Red Army wasn’t as understanding as the
Germans, and sentenced him to death. He made a heroic escape just as the Polish-Russian
war ended. Cooper received the Virtuti Military, Poland’s highest medal, then made
his way back to the US.
During his time in the Kosciuszko Squadron Cooper met
Ernest Schoedsack, a war photographer. Six-foot-six, athletic, and anxious for adventure,
Schoedsack struck up a lifetime partnership with Cooper. Together, the two traveled to the
wildest areas of the world, filming documentaries that became so popular that Cooper
became the head of production for RKO Radio Pictures, a position that gave him enormous
decision-making power.
One night he had a dream about a giant ape attacking New
York City.
The writing of King Kong is somewhat clouded in
history. The credits go to Merian C. Cooper -- appropriate, since it was his idea; to
Edgar Wallace, an author who, at the time, was more famous than Stephen King is now, which
was good for box office, but who died before filming began and probably added little to
the story; to James Ashmore Creelman, who killed himself eight years later by jumping from
a roof; and to Ruth Rose, Ernest Schoedsack’s wife.
The following seems to be true: Cooper wrote the story,
which David O. Selznick bought for RKO. Rose wrote the screenplay, basing the character of
Ann Darrow on herself and her adventurous travels with Cooper and her husband. She used
their personalities as the templates for the characters of Carl Denham and Jack Driscoll,
and wrote into the script some of the problems they’d run into in Malaysia and
Africa. Cooper wanted to call the film Kong, the Malaysian word for ape, but
Selznick felt it needed to be jazzed up. They settled on King Kong.
RKO, in deep financial straits, needed a low-cost hit.
Cooper brought in three actors -- Robert Armstrong (Carl Denham), Bruce Cabot (Jack
Driscoll), and Fay Wray (Ann Darrow) -- who fit the production like a glove, and who had
the side benefit of being willing to work cheap. He then hired Willis
"O’Bie" O’Brien, the genius -- and I don’t use the term lightly
-- who had created the process that would eventually become known as stop-motion animation
with a series of small films that culminated in the hit The Lost World (1925). His
work would be the visual star of the film -- Kong himself, and all the denizens of Skull
Island, were under O’Brien’s control.
The last piece of the preproduction puzzle was
Cooper’s hiring of Max Steiner to write a symphonic film score. The idea of a
large-scale symphonic score for a science-fiction film now seems traditional, accustomed
as we are to the work of John Williams, James Horner, Howard Shore, and their ilk. But
they wouldn’t have the work they have today if it hadn’t been for Steiner. In
1933, the idea of employing a symphony to accompany an ape was preposterous. Steiner had
already composed music for more than 70 films, but had never had the opportunity to flex
his compositional muscles as he did for King Kong. In fact, most of his credits had
been for stock music not composed for any particular film or scene, but written and
recorded in advance for general use. But Steiner had studied with Brahms and Mahler, and Kong
offered him a challenge; to this day, few film scores have offered music more savage or
more sweet.
The film was completed in January 1933 and the first public
screening was in San Bernardino, California. In one scene, several men were shaken off a
log into a pit full of giant spiders, which viciously devoured them. Many of the audience
ran from the theater, so Cooper pulled the scene. (The footage is lost, but Peter Jackson
has graciously reshot it and put it back into the DVD.)
Other than that, Kong felt like a hit. The word got
out, and MGM offered to buy the film from RKO for an outright profit of $400,000. But
Selznick and Cooper smelled a big hit and decided to keep it. The film premiered in New
York City on March 2 and ended up being the highest-grossing film up till then. It saved
RKO, and made Cooper and Schoedsack rich.
What got audiences through the doors was the promise of a
spectacle. But history has proven over and over that spectacle is not enough for
greatness. What made King Kong both great and a hit, and what has kept audiences
coming back, even overlooking the hokey acting and the obvious artificiality of the
animals, is the depth of its story.
Think about the great special-effects monster films of the
last 25 years: Alien, Jurassic Park,
Predator, The Terminator. All are hostile, violent, and single-minded. Kong is
the king of his little island -- it’s only when he’s attacked that he shows some
muscle. Yet even when he faces looming danger, his instinct is to protect, not destroy. At
the same time, he is capable of being a very dangerous, extraordinarily dominating force
-- both noble and extremely tough. In his own way, Kong is like the archetypal movie hero,
whether a swashbuckler or a gunslinger. He’s just a lot bigger.
I’ll bet Ruth Rose looked at Kong as an
anthropomorphism of her husband and his best friend. How else could she cloak such
tenderness inside such crushing brawn? Whatever caused it, that juxtaposition is what
makes King Kong great.
Kong changes from a king to a tragic figure when we
discover that he’s not invulnerable. Like the WWI soldiers Cooper and Schoedsack
fought with, Kong can’t stand up to gas bombs. With Kong subdued, the smug producer,
Denham, reveals the seed of the tragedy:
Denham: Why, the whole world will pay to see this.
Capt. Englehorn: No chains will ever hold that.
Denham: We’ll give him more than chains.
He’s always been king of his world, but we’ll teach him fear. We’re
millionaires, boys. I’ll share it with all of you. Why, in a few months, it’ll
be up in lights on Broadway: Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World.
"We’ll teach him fear." With these words,
and the subsequent transfer of Kong from Skull Island to the island of Manhattan, the
adventure story becomes a tragedy. No longer king of his island, Kong becomes a problem on
ours, and our solution is to kill him. We recognize, as we sit in the theater, that our
human desire to see a spectacle is part of what causes Kong’s fall. It’s
supremely powerful storytelling.
RKO rereleased King Kong four times between 1933 and
1952, each time making huge amounts of money. After that, the film went to television,
where millions learned about Kong between commercials for bun-busters and Cheerios. Big
screen or small, King Kong has captivated a new audience with each new generation.
After Kong, Cooper and Schoedsack continued to have
fascinating careers. Though technically too old at 48, Cooper joined the Army Air Corps in
World War II and went to China as a Colonel in the Flying Tigers. At the end of the war,
he was promoted to Brigadier General. When he returned to Hollywood, he teamed up with
John Ford to form Argosy Pictures. Ford, possibly the greatest film director of all time,
was sinking into an oblivion of booze and rancor; Cooper brought him back from the abyss,
becoming the only producer that Ford ever really respected. No other producer ever brought
the quality of films out of the cantankerous Ford that Cooper did. The Fugitive,
Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Searchers -- all were produced by Merian C. Cooper.
Schoedsack continued to hitch his star to Cooper’s.
Though he directed a few films outside the fold, most of his best projects were
collaborations with Cooper. The best of the bunch, and worth a rental or a TiVo, is Dr.
Cyclops (1940).
The Kong crew, minus Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot, reassembled
later in 1933 to try to re-create the success of King Kong. Sadly, The Son of
Kong has the whiff of having been rushed to market; fils doesn’t live up
to père. Part of the problem could have been what happened to Willis
O’Brien during the shoot. He came home one night to find that his wife had killed
their two sons, then tried to kill herself. You can imagine the strain on the man and his
friends.
Cooper, Schoedsack, and O’Brien reunited 16 years
later, in 1949, for one more shot at a big-ape hit with Mighty Joe Young, written
by Cooper and Ruth Rose -- a beautiful return to form that can be seen as a loving homage
to the original rather than as a crass rehash.
Ditto for Peter Jackson’s new version of King Kong.
Jackson wisely directs to give today’s viewers the same feelings about Kong -- via
today’s technical effects and better acting -- that people have enjoyed for the last
72 years. He achieves his goal with astonishing CG effects, and by having Ann Darrow
finally quiet down enough to grow to love Kong for his true nature.
To coincide with the 2005 King Kong, Turner Home
Entertainment has released three different versions of the original. If you want
just the film, it comes in a two-DVD set (about $18 USD) that includes a magnificent
restoration. Disc 1 also has a commentary track by Willis O’Brien’s most famous
student, Ray Harryhausen (20 Million Miles to Earth, Jason and the Argonauts),
with Ken Ralston (Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Jumanji, The
Polar Express). Interpolated into this track are recorded interviews with Merian
Cooper and Fay Wray. Disc 2 is a feast for Cooper fans, with an Oscar-worthy short, I’m
King Kong! The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper; a seven-part documentary; and the
original test footage by Cooper and O’Brien, along with Harryhausen’s comments.
For $10 more you can get the Collector’s Edition,
which includes a poster, postcards, and a souvenir program -- or, for the same price, you
can join me by buying The King Kong Collection. Besides the two-disc King Kong,
you also get Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young. The last film of the
group has the extraordinary pairing of sweet, young Terry Moore and a smaller, kinder,
more controllable simian. It also comes with a commentary track by Harryhausen and
Ralston, joined by Ms. Moore.
All of us should thank Peter Jackson, who not only created
a wonderful reminder of what a great movie King Kong is, but also flexed enough
Hollywood clout to get someone to finally release the film on DVD. Given its history in
prior formats -- back in the laserdisc days, King Kong was the first film ever to
feature a commentary track -- I find it amazing that we’ve had to wait for the waning
days of the DVD to get a new version.
Whichever version you buy, you’re in for a treat. Like
all the best films, King Kong envelops our intellects and hits us straight in our
core; his strength fills us with awe, his ruin overwhelms us with sadness, and his
innocent purity makes a permanent mark on our hearts.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
