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and David Raksin, at 92... why is
it these things are all in threes? While all three had a good innings
time-wise, it seems that such things always happen in threes.
Was Miss Wray the last surviving link to
KONG?
Phil Edwards Cinema Arts Pty Ltd 26 Vista Avenue Soldiers
Point NSW 2317 AUSTRALIA Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Phone/Fax
(International Dial) 0011 61 2 49847233 Phone/Fax (Domestic Dial) 02
4984 7233 Website: www.cinemarts.com
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 10:17
AM
Subject: Re: [MOPO] Actress Fay Wray of
`King Kong' Fame Dies
The twentieth century goes fast. What a wonderful rep she
was!!
By
KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK - Fay Wray, who won
everlasting fame as the
damsel held atop the Empire State Building by
the
giant ape in the 1933 film classic "King Kong," has
died, a close
friend said Monday. She was 96.
Wray died Sunday at her Manhattan
apartment, said Rick
McKay, a friend and director of the last film
she
appeared in. There was no official cause of death.
"She just
kind of drifted off quietly as if she was
going to sleep," said McKay,
director of the
documentary "Broadway: The Golden Age."
"She just kind
of gave out."
During a career that started in 1923, Wray
appeared
with such stars as Ronald Colman, Gary Cooper and
Spencer
Tracy, but she was destined to be linked with
the rampaging Kong in movie
fans' minds.
"I used to resent `King Kong,'" she remarked in a
1963
interview. "But now I don't fight it anymore. I
realize that it
is a classic, and I am pleased to be
associated with it. Why, only
recently an entire issue
of a French magazine was devoted to discussing
the
picture from its artistic, moral and even
religious
aspects."
She wrote in her 1988 autobiography, "On the
Other
Hand": "Each time I arrive in New York and see the
skyline and
the exquisite beauty of the Empire State
Building, my heart beats a
little faster. I like that
feeling. I really like it!"
"King Kong"
obscured the other notable films Wray made
during the '30s. They included
adventures "The Four
Feathers" (with Richard Arlen and William Powell)
and
"Viva Villa" (Wallace Beery), Westerns "The Texan"
(Cooper) and
"The Conquering Horde" (Arlen), romances
"One Sunday Afternoon" (Cooper)
and "The Unholy
Garden" (Colman) as well as horror films "Dr. X"
and
"The Mystery of the Wax Museum."
After appearing in Erich von
Stroheim's 1928 silent
"The Wedding March," playing a poor Viennese
girl
abandoned by her lover, a playboy prince, Wray became
a
much-employed leading lady. In 1933, the year of
"King Kong," she
appeared in 11 films, co-starring
with Beery, George Raft, Cooper, Jack
Holt and others.
In 1980, she told of her dissatisfaction with roles
of
that period: "In those days, the female characters
never knew who
their parents were. Leading ladies were
not supposed to be funny but were
supposed to stand
there and look beautiful. That was frustrating as
an
actress."
In her autobiography, the actress recalled that
she
had been paid $10,000 for "King Kong" (budget:
$680,000), but her
10 weeks' work was stretched over a
10-month period. "Residuals were not
even considered,
because there were no established unions to
protect
us," she added.
In "King Kong," she plays an unemployed
actress who
agrees t! o take a job with a movie company that is
going
on location to a mysterious island. Kong is the
huge ape that inhabits a
part of the island.
When the film company discovers him, Kong is
attracted
to Wray and abducts her. But he is eventually captured
and
brought to New York and put on display. Kong
escapes and finds Wray, with
terrifying results, but
eventually meets his death on the Empire
State
Building.
She was proud that "King Kong" had saved RKO
studio
from bankruptcy. Of Kong she wrote: "He is a very real
and
individual entity. He has a personality, a
character that has been
compelling to many different
people for many different reasons and
viewpoints."
She was the guest of honor in 1991 at a ceremony
marking
the 60th birthday of the Empire State
Building, saying that if she were
mayor of New York,
"I would want to run the city from this building
...
and get up every morning to see the sun rise."
Although Kong
ap! peared huge, the full figure was
really only 18 inches tall. Miss
Wray knew him by the
arm, which was 8 feet long.
"I would stand on
the floor," she recalled, "and they
would bring this arm down and cinch
it around my
waist, then pull me up in the air. Every time I
moved,
one of the fingers would loosen, so it would look like
I was
trying to get away. Actually, I was trying not
to slip through his
hand."
By the late '30s, the actress was appearing in
low-budget
films, and she quit working in 1942 to be a
wife and mother. Her first
husband was John Monk
Saunders, who wrote such air films as "Wings" and
"The
Dawn Patrol." She was 19 and he was 30 when they
married. She
discovered he was an alcoholic and a drug
addict, and the marriage became
a nightmare.
After a divorce, she married Robert Riskin,
the
brilliant writer of "It Happened One Night," "Lost
Horizon" and
other Frank Capra films. In 1950, he
suffered a str! oke from which he
never recovered. He
died five years later.
Returning to work in
1953, Wray appeared mostly in
motherly roles in youth-oriented films like
"Small
Town Girl," "Tammy and the Bachelor" and "Summer
Love." In 1979
she played opposite Henry Fonda (news)
in a TV drama, "Gideon's
Trumpet."
She was born Vina Fay Wray on Sept. 15, 1907,
near
Cardston in rural Alberta, Canada. Her parents moved
to the
United States when she was 3, first trying
farming in Arizona, and
eventually returning to Salt
Lake City, where Wray's mother was from.
Later, they
settled in Los Angeles.
As a teenager she haunted
studio casting offices and
won an occasional bit role. Despite her
mother's fears
that the movie crowd was sinful, Miss Wray was
allowed
to accept a six-month contract with Hal Roach at $60
a
week.
Wray had a daughter, Susan, from her first marriage
and
a daughter and son, Victoria and Robert Jr., by
the seco! nd. Sixteen
years after Riskin's death, she
married his physician, Dr. Sandford
Rothenberg.
___
Associated Press writer Bob Thomas in Los
Angeles
contributed to this
report.
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