My Mother’s Romance With King Kong
This month marks the 86th anniversary of the 1933 world premiere of King Kong in New York. Klieg lights swept the skies over Radio City Music Hall and the RKO Roxy across the street, where a combined audience of 9,000 filled every seat, that night and for weeks to come. Two weeks later, the film premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. In both cities the film astounded and delighted the public. Its success saved the RKO studio from bankruptcy and some say it even saved the motion picture industry, reawakening public excitement in movies when the business was struggling to attract audiences in the hard times that had gripped the country.
My mother, Fay Wray, has been inextricably tied to Kong ever since it opened. Playing her signature role, Ann Darrow, the damsel-in-distress who captures King Kong’s heart, is how most people remember her today, even though she starred in over 100 other films with actors like Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, and William Powell—all great, but none, apparently, the equal of the mighty Kong. At times she wished she might be remembered for some of her other roles as well. Yet she grew to appreciate—dare I say love?—Kong, and the role he had played in her life.
“Every time I walk by the Empire State Building,” she once said, “I look up and say a little prayer. A good friend of mine died up there.”