One of the most important adventure films ever made. King Kong came out of the imagination of two remarkable filmmakers, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack. These two men had made their reputations filming what can only be called sort of documentary films. Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life, was about an amazing caravan of nomads in search of pastures in what was then known as Persia for their cattle. The film had some extraordinary scenes of the hardships that these nomads endured during their migration, Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, was filmed in Thailand and featured a family trying to make a living in the jungle. This film ended with an impressive elephant stamped.
Cooper and Schoedsack eventually ended up working for RKO, where Cooper pushed the studio to make a film about a giant gorilla. Cooper was lucky enough to find Willis O'Brian, a stop motion animation effects technician to implement his idea and with a green light from RKO studio chief David O Selznick, King Kong was born. The rest is they say is history. A few pieces of trivia about this film
The giant gate and wall that the natives of Skull Island use to keep Kong out of their village was eventually repurposed for the escape from Atlanta sequence in Gone With The Wind the wall was burned down as Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh made their escape.
It's well know that the character of Carl Denham the movie producer looking to shoot a film about Kong was modeled after Merian Cooper. Jack Driscoll the sailor who rescues Ann Darrow from Kong was modeled after Ernest B. Schoedsack. Although they never really acknowledged it Ann Darrow might have been based on Marguerite Harrison who had partially financed the making of Grass, and accompanied Cooper and Schoedsack on their expedition in Persia much to their annoyance. Marguerite Harrison was a rather remarkable woman, she had been a spy for the allies during World War I and later went on to found the Children's Hospital School in Baltimore.
RKO's special effects team pushed the limit with what they could be done with camera trickery. For a early 1930's film, a lot of the special effects hold up very well. King Kong has frequently been criticized for the amount of racism in the film particularly in the scenes with the natives of Skull Island. The film has also been cited as a metaphor for racial tensions as the film is about the destruction of the black gorilla by white men.
It’s also well known that during the climatic fight between Kong and the Air Force, the pilot and co-pilot of one of the planes are Cooper and Schoedsack blasting away at Kong. The director Peter Jackson in his 2005 remake and special effects and makeup expert Rick Baker are the pilot and co-pilot in that version.
King Kong was written by Edgar Wallace, James Creelman and Ruth Rose. The running time is 100 minutes.
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