How The Film Came To Be
In 1933, a movie was released that reshaped monster movie history. That movie was King Kong. The concept was thought of by a man named Merian C. Cooper. As a child, Cooper was enthralled by gorillas reading Paul Du Chaillu’s Explorations, among other books. His intrigue grew even more in 1929 after filming baboons in Africa while filming The Four Feathers, after reading W. Douglas Burden’s The Dragon Lizards Of The Komodo, he fashioned a scenario depicting African gorillas fighting Komodo dragons in inter-cut artificial stand-ins for joint shots. He then narrowed the drama 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 for most of the picture and the gorilla would be dealt a spectacular death in New York City in the glorious Empire State Building.
Eventually, he took it to Paramount Studios during the start of The Great Depression and they said they couldn’t afford the costly shoot to film in Komodo or Africa. Cooper came up with a compromise and used some sets already built, without hesitation he cast leading lady Fay Wray with Willis O’Brien taking the huge challenge of creating the creature effects. Using stop-motion footage to film Kong and the dinosaurs, he created some original movie magic ahead of its time, still to this day the special effects are incredible. Cooper then brought British writer Edgar Wallace in to pen the project because he was familiar with the sort of genre as he wrote for mystery/adventure books.
The First Score
The musical score for King Kong was composed by Max Steiner. The studio executives told Steiner to use previous material to mash together a film score but Cooper refused and paid Steiner $50,000 from his own pocket to write the score. The score had a lot of firsts including the first feature-length musical score written for an American talkie film, the first major Hollywood film to have a thematic score rather than background music, among others)
The Plot
King Kong stars Fay Wray as the down-and-out penniless Ann Darrow, who was asked by Carl Denham to join him to film his new film. Denham doesn’t tell his cast and crew that they’re going to the uncharted Skull Island because of the map he acquired. He tells them to be weary of a monstrous legend known as ‘Kong’ by the natives, but when they meet the native islanders all hell breaks loose, and they kidnap Ann to be sacrificed to Kong, who becomes smitten with the blonde.
King Kong happens to be one of the best monster movies of all time because of its production values, versatile film score, acting and special effects. Without a shadow of a doubt you should watch this film that broke box offices!! With its modest budget of $672,000 ($12 million dollars as of 2015) it drew in the crowds of moviegoers to generate a net gross of $2.8 million dollars ($51 million dollars as of 2015).