Fay Wray, Beauty to Kong's Beast, Dies at 96

The New York Times ^ | 08/09/2004

[GeneD]

Fay Wray, an actress who appeared in about 100 movies but whose fame is inextricably linked with the hours she spent struggling helplessly screaming in the eight-foot-hand of King Kong, died on Sunday night at her apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. She was 96.

Rick McKay, a friend, announced her death.

The huge success of "King Kong," a beauty-and-the beast film that opened in New York at both Radio City Music Hall and the Roxy in 1933, led to roles for Miss Wray in other 1930's films in which her life or her virtue, or both, were imperiled: "Dr. X," "The Mystery of the Wax Museum," "The Vampire Bat" and "The Most Dangerous Game."

But she was always aware that she would be remembered for the culmination of "King Kong," in which the giant ape from Skull Island carries her to the top of the Empire State Building, gently places her on a ledge, lunges furiously at fighter planes peppering him with bullets and falls to his death from the 102-story skyscraper, his strength and power neutralized by love. "When I'm in New York," the actress wrote in The New York Times in 1969, "I look at the building and feel as though it belongs to me, or is it vice versa?"

The most hazardous part of filming "King Kong," Miss Wray recalled, was the tendency of the giant gorilla hand to loosen its grasp while she was suspended high above the set. When she felt she was about to fall, she implored the director, Merian C. Cooper, to have her lowered to the stage floor to rest a few minutes before being secured once again in the hand and sent aloft.

She spent an entire day recording additional screams, variously shrill and plaintive, that an editor later inserted in the soundtrack — too often, she later emphasized. Asked how she was able to muster such animated cries, she replied, "I made myself believe that the nearest possible hope of rescue was at least a mile away."

Over the years, Miss Wray said, she came to feel that Kong had "become a spiritual thing to many people, including me."

"Although he had tremendous strength and power to destroy, some kind of instinct made him appreciate what he saw as beautiful," she said in a 1993 interview. "Just before he dies, he reaches toward me, but can't quite reach. The movie affects males of all ages. Recently, a 6-year-old boy said to me, `I've been waiting to meet you for half my life.' "

In a 1987 interview, Miss Wray said she had been sent a script for the 1976 remake of "King Kong," in which Jessica Lange played Kong's co-star, because its producers wanted her to play a small role. She said she disliked the script and declined the offer, because "the film I made was so extraordinary, so full of imagination and special effects, that it will never be equaled."

"They shouldn't have tried," she added.

Fay Wray was born on Sept. 15, 1907, on a farm in Alberta, Canada, the daughter of Jerry Wray, an inventor, and his wife, Vina. The couple separated when Fay was 12, and her mother moved to Los Angeles with her five children. As a teen-ager, Miss Wray began acting in bit parts in movies, then won supporting roles.

After graduating from Hollywood High School, she was the ingénue in a half-dozen silent westerns and played the bride in Erich von Stroheim's 1928 silent classic "The Wedding March." Among her prominent sound films were "The Four Feathers" (1929), "Dirigible" (1931), "One Sunday Afternoon" (1933), "Viva Villa!" (1934) and "The Affairs of Cellini" (1934).

Miss Wray was always drawn to writers, as she recounted in her 1989 autobiography, "On the Other Hand." She was just 19 when she married John Monk Saunders, a Rhodes scholar and screenwriter known for films like "Wings" and "The Dawn Patrol." Miss Wray recalled that her husband "had this theme in his life of living dangerously and dying young." He was a womanizer, an alcoholic and a drug addict, and she divorced him, she said, after he injected her with drugs while she slept, sold their house and their furniture and kept the money, and disappeared for a time with their baby daughter, Susan. During the 11 years they were married, Miss Wray and her husband each earned half a million dollars, but nothing was left. Mr. Saunders hanged himself in 1940, at 43.

She was pursued by Sinclair Lewis and had a long romance with Clifford Odets. In 1942, she was married to Robert Riskin, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of "It Happened One Night," "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," and "Lost Horizon." They had two children, Vicki and Robert Jr., who survive her, as does her daughter Susan. Mr. Riskin had a stroke in 1950 and died five years later. In 1971, she married Dr. Sanford Rothenberg, a neurosurgeon who had been one of Mr. Riskin's doctors. Dr. Rothenberg died in 1991.

Miss Wray retired in 1942, but made occasional movies in the 1950's and starred in "Gideon's Trumpet," a 1979 film with Henry Fonda. On television, she starred in a situation comedy, "The Pride of the Family," from 1953 to 1955. In later years, she also wrote plays that were produced in regional theaters.

When Aljean Harmetz of The New York Times visited her in 1989, she found Miss Wray, then 81, a "cheery woman, a mother hen with black leather pumps, pearls at the throat, a splash of bright red lipstick and auburn hair."

Miss Wray said: "I find it not acceptable when people blame Hollywood for the things that happened to them. Films are wonderful. I've had a beautiful life because of films."

[Arthur McGowan]

Three marriages, but no divorces. Weird.

[TracyPA]

Actress Virginia Grey died July 31.

[Lori675]

King Kong one of the best movies ever.

[WIladyconservative]

Oh thank you very much . . . I've had that song stuck in my head since you posted!

_{Micheal Rinney was ill the day the earth stood still . . . .}

[RightWingAtheist]

Especially since Ms. Wray is no longer around to provide an interview for the disc.

They made the same mistake with The Thing-the original movie, which I consider far better than the overpraised John Carpenter film-which they also failed to provide a DVD for on its 50th anniversary. Instead, two years later, they released, without fanfare, a bare-bones DVD with just a ratty old trailer, no commentary, no extras, nothing. Not even a Marvin the Martian cartoon. Now that star Kenneth Tobey is gone, it hurts even more.

[RightWingAtheist]

Peter Jackson says he's remaking his favorite movie because "today's kids" can't stand black and white and are incapable of appreciating stop motion. To which I say-f***'em if they can't appreciate good art. It's that attitude which has resulted in Shakespeare and Byron being replaced by Maya Angelou in schools. If you want to get kids to appreciate the original story, get them to appreciate the original movie. I suspect the REAL reason Jackson wants to do a remake is just plain ego-stroking: Kong is the movie he always wished he had made, and now, he has the chance to make it.

[RightWingAtheist]

Willis O'Brien didn't win the Oscar for King Kong, though-he won it for Mighty Joe Young. And the animation on that film was mostly by Ray Harryhausen.

[MrLee]

I loved 1932's "Vampire Bat". Wasn't she a blonde in that one?

[vetvetdoug]

I remember several screen writers, actors and directors sitting around and discussing the most beautiful actresses they had ever worked with. Minelli (Liza Minelli's father) stated that Fay Wray was the stunningly most beautiful of all and the rest of the men agreed wholeheartedly. After seeing that interview, I paid attention to whenever Fay Wray was on the screen and came to the same conclusion.

[12 Gauge Mossberg]

There's a thread on how some Three Stooges shorts are going to be colorized as well. Hollywood just can't leave well enough alone.

[asgardshill]

Michael Rennie was ill.
The day the earth stood still
But he told us where we stand
And Flash Gordon was there
In silver underwear.
Claude Rains was the invisible man.

Then something went wrong
For Fay Wray and King Kong
They got caught in a celluloid jam
Then at a deadly pace
It came from outer space
And this is how the message ran

Science Fiction - double-feature
Dr X will build a creature
See Androids fighting Brad and Janet
Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet
Oh - at the late night, double-feature
Picture Show.

[lawgirl]

Another friend of Cary's gone. :(

[AnAmericanMother]

Poor Dean Swift! :-(

[Sloth]

I recently read something to the effect of, "Why do they remake the good movies? Shouldn't they re-make the lousy ones and fix whatever was wrong with them?"

Makes a lot of sense.

[Sloth]

From an early (1933) Technicolor film, 'The Mystery of the Wax Museum.'

[xp38]

True. Most remakes do not compare well with the originals. Occasionally there are exceptions. Ben Hur and The 10 Commandments are two of them. Granted the originals were from the silent era. That said I have seen the silent version of Ben Hur and it holds its own with the Heston version and I highly recommend seeking it out.

[RightWingAtheist]

Also The Maltese Falcon; the John Huston version is the third film based on the Hammet story. I also think Hitchcock got it right the second time when he remade his own The Man Who Knew Too Much.

[RightWingAtheist]

Incidentally, I've seen Mystery of the Wax Museum, and it's a good little horror-mystery, with a wonderful perormance by Glenda Farrell as the heroine.

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

"T'was beauty that killed the beast"