King Kong by Edgar Wallace & Draycot M Dell
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Overview: The year 1933 saw the appearance of what is still the most famous of all monster movies, King Kong. The giant gorilla of the title is undoubtedly a triumph of special effects, and the fact that it can startle even the most sophisticated audiences today affirms the very special qualities of the RKO Radio production. Even the lavish Paramount re-make of the story in 1976, aided by all manner of superior technology, is nothing like its equal. As film historian Carlos Clarens has written in hisHistory Of The Horror Film(1967), ‘It took exactly a year to complete the original King Kong at a cost of $650,000, an impressive sum for those days, and most of the money went into the special effects – to this day unsurpassed. . . The picture was an utterly preposterous, utterly enthralling piece of showmanship’
The basis of the story of the giant gorilla, ‘the eighth wonder of the world’, captured in the jungle and brought to New York where it plunges the city into terror and destruction, was conceived by the American documentary film-maker Merian C Cooper while on location in Africa. This outline was then turned into a screen story by Edgar Wallace (1875–1932), the famous English thriller writer then working in Hollywood under contract to RKO. The stop-motion animation, a brilliant technique devised by Willis H O’Brien, brought the monster amazingly alive on the screen. Despite impressive performances by Robert Armstrong, and Fay Wray as the blonde heroine who attracts Kong s affections, it was the colossal ape who stole all the honours in the film. He has since proved to be just the first in a long line of such monsters who have outshone their human co-stars!
Though Merian Cooper’s knowledge of gorilla behaviour contributed a large part to its overall success, it was Edgar Wallace who provided the film with its most dramatic moments and helped produce a milestone in cinema history as important as the “Beauty And The Beast” story in literature. Tragically, though, this prolific writer and larger-than-life character was to die of pneumonia before the picture was completed, and was therefore deprived of the chance – which he would certainly have taken – of novelising the film. As it was, the tale was turned into a novella by one of Wallace’s friends, Draycot M Dell (1880–1936), already a successful adapter of films. Like Wallace, Draycot Dell was a former reporter who had worked on the Daily Mail, later becoming a full-time writer of adventure and thriller books. It was while on the staff of the Mail that Dell met Wallace and, as both men shared a passion for horse racing, they formed a friendship which lasted until Wallace’s death in Hollywood. When King Kong opened in London, it seemed somehow only appropriate that Dell should adapt his late friend’s work and this he did for Cinema Weekly of 28 October 1933. Its inclusion in this anthology marks the first republication of the story in over fifly years, and its very first appearance in book form.
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
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