As you may have heard, the Empire State Building will dim its lights for 15
minutes
this evening in honor of Fay Wray. What follows are two of the three New
York Times
Syndicate pieces I did in January. The wire moved them again yesterday,
updating
them in reference to her passing. I'm working on an appreciation piece for
Friday,
in loving memory of the last legend from Hollywood's golden age.

Love,
T.P.

"The public wants a girl, and this time I'm gonna give 'em what they want!"
-- Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) in KING KONG (1933)

BC-FAY-WRAY-INTERVIEW-PACE-NYTSF
FAY WRAY ON `KING KONG,' VON STROHEIM, HITCHCOCK AND MORE
(ATTENTION EDITORS: To publish this "separate buy'' article it must be
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(ART ADV: Black-and-white photographs of Fay Wray in scenes from "The
Most Dangerous Game'' and "King Kong'' are available on Wieck, on Newscom
or by calling the Syndicate Photo Desk at 212-499-3339.)
2,200 words, plus a 500-word sidebar
By Terry Pace
c.2004 New York Times Regional Newspapers
(Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.)
For seven decades Fay Wray was known as the beauty that killed the beast.
There was a time when she resented it, but in one of her final interviews,
still stunning and vibrant at 96, the "King Kong'' heroine cheerfully
accepted her role as Hollywood's original scream queen and as an icon of
American popular culture.
"I feel very grateful, I really do,'' the actress/author/playwright said
during an interview at her Manhattan apartment, only blocks away from the
Empire State Building, where the lovelorn gorilla met his tragic fate in
the classic 1933 film.
"That one single movie, `King Kong,' has reached millions of people of
all ages, all over the world,'' Wray said, "and audiences are still
fascinated by it today. When we did it I just thought how lucky I was to be
in the movies, where something like this was possible.''
To her legion of admirers Wray embodied the glamour, class and romance of
a bygone Hollywood. A song in the cult musical "The Rocky Horror Show''
(1973) opens with the query, "Whatever happened to Fay Wray?,'' but those
who knew the real Fay Wray will tell you that she had never gone away.
"I think she represents something mythical, something that happens only
in the movies,'' says Rick McKay, a New York-based filmmaker who featured
his friend "Lady Fay'' in his documentary, "Broadway: The Golden Age''
(2003). "When you meet her in person, it's like discovering that Alice in
Wonderland wasn't a fictional character, that she's a real person who's
alive and well and living in a Manhattan high-rise. That's the way it is
with Fay.''
Asked to name her favorite film from her long career, Wray reached back
to the silent era for an acknowledged masterpiece, Erich von Stroheim's
"The Wedding March'' (1928).
"I still love that film,'' the actress said. "Erich Von Stroheim was a
wonderful human being, and he took a chance on me. I was only 19 when I did
the screen test, but he saw something in me. After 75 years it's still one
of the happiest experiences of my life.
"And it was a nice part, wasn't it?''
A native of Alberta, Canada, Wray spent most of her childhood in the
United States, first in Arizona, then in Utah and finally in California.
She made her movie debut at 16 in "Gasoline Love'' (1923), then appeared in
dozens of Hal Roach comedies and a stampede of Westerns opposite such
silent-screen cowboys as Art Acord, Jack Hoxie and Hoot Gibson before "The
Wedding March'' made her a star.
"That one film changed my life,'' said Wray, who played a poor
innkeeper's daughter in pre-World War I Vienna who falls in love with a
roguish nobleman played by von Stroheim, who also directed and co-wrote the
screenplay. "I was full of good feeling for von Stroheim and for myself. He
made me feel very comfortable about the whole experience.''
Often billed as "The Man You Love to Hate,'' the Vienna-born von Stroheim
-- now best-known for acting in Jean Renoir's "Grand Illusion'' (1937) and
Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard'' (1950) -- had a penchant for very long
films and was notoriously extravagant with budgets and indifferent to
shooting schedules. Though he had directed the silent classics "Blind
Husbands'' (1919), "Foolish Wives'' (1922) and "Greed'' (1924), "The
Wedding March'' would be his Hollywood swan song, and in fact the surviving
film is only half of the movie as originally planned. The second half, "The
Honeymoon'' (1928), was released only in Europe, and the only known print
was destroyed in a 1957 fire in France.
"Von Stroheim never got treated correctly in Hollywood,'' Wray said, "but
he made me feel very happy. There was something magical about him, and he
was very kind to people around him. He was a big part of my life, and he
made me feel as though I was part of his life. When I was with him, I
always felt like I was with a good soul.''
One of her last silent films, "The Four Feathers'' (1928), introduced her
to co-directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, making their
fiction debut after becoming famous for exotic nature documentaries. When
they moved to RKO to make sound movies, Cooper thought of Wray for their
biggest project.
"He called me to his office and showed me sketches of jungle scenes,''
Wray recalled, "and he told me, `You're going to have the tallest, darkest
leading man in Hollywood.' Naturally I thought of Clark Gable. But then he
showed me this sketch of a giant ape climbing up the side of the Empire
State Building. He said, `There's your leading man.'''
The 5-foot-3-inch Wray discovered that her 50-foot co-star would be
created through stop-motion miniatures created by Willis O'Brien, the
special-effects wizard behind "The Lost World'' (1925), and then matched to
live footage of the actors. Wray was to play Ann Darrow, a penniless
actress recruited by fast-talking showman Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) to
appear in a sensational jungle film being shot on a mysterious island.
"When Cooper told me the concept,'' she said, "it wasn't the story itself
that hooked me. Instead I got caught up in his excitement and enthusiasm --
he was like a little boy with a new toy. I thought, `Merian Cooper is a
wonderful person, and this might be one of the best things that could ever
happen to me.'
"He told me all about the film,'' she recalled, "and then he took me over
to see the model of the ape, which was only about 18 inches tall. As we
were leaving that day, Cooper said, `I'm thinking of calling him Kong --
King Kong.'''
Wray worked for 22 consecutive hours filming Cooper's first test footage,
without any idea whether the special effects would work.
"When they shot my scenes,'' she said, "Kong wasn't there at all. I just
had to use my imagination, which was exciting and terrifying at the same
time. Acting is all about imagination, that's the joy of it, but nothing
quite like it had ever been done before, so I was a little nervous about
how it would all come together.''
As Kong grows more infatuated with Ann, the giant gorilla handles her
with tender care, clutching her in his paw, removing layers of her tattered
clothing -- in a controversial scene later removed by censors -- and saving
her from a pterodactyl and a Tyrannosaurus rex.
"When my youngest daughter first saw the film,'' Wray recalled, "she
said, `Kong wasn't trying to hurt you at all. He was just trying to protect
you.' And she was right.''
In the film's famous climax, Kong breaks free and, clutching Ann in one
paw, climbs the Empire State Building. When he reaches the top, the ape is
machine-gunned by a squad of circling biplanes and falls to his death, but
not before lifting Ann to safety.
"For the scenes where Kong had me in his hand, they built this big arm
that was about 6 feet long,'' Wray recalled. "It was attached to a lever
that could be raised or lowered. The fingers were flexible, and the crew
would secure them around my waist, then lift me up to the eye level of the
camera. I imagined that I was looking up at this 50-foot gorilla, and then
I would react and scream and struggle until I felt the grip start to
loosen. Whenever I started to slip through, I called out for help. They'd
lower me to the ground, and then we'd start the process all over again.''
Wray's piercing scream became one of the hallmarks of "King Kong.''
"The scream was a product of pure imagination,'' Wray said. "I just had
to imagine what was happening to me, and I imagined that the nearest help
was far away. When I first saw the picture, I thought that the screams were
overdone. But they were an important element of the picture, and I was
delighted with how it all looked. My scenes with Kong were exactly the way
I imagined them.''
Production of "King Kong'' took 10 months, with the shooting schedule
alternating between animation sequences and footage involving the live
actors. Such was the pace of Hollywood in those days that, during breaks
from "Kong,'' Wray completed four other films.
"The best, I think, was `The Most Dangerous Game' (1932), with Leslie
Banks as the big-game hunter who traps Joel McCrea and me on his island and
tries to hunt us down,'' she said. "Robert Armstrong and I did that
together when we weren't working on `Kong.' That was also done for Cooper
and Schoedsack -- we even shot it on the jungle sets for `Kong.'''
The other three films were atmospheric horror vehicles co-starring the
sinister Lionel Atwill: the Technicolor chillers "Doctor X'' (1932) and
"Mystery of the Wax Museum'' (1933), and the Poverty Row quickie "The
Vampire Bat'' (1933).
"Those horror pictures were the parts I was being offered at the time,''
Wray said, "and the scream came into play in almost all of them. People
today call them classics. That amuses me a little, because I had so many
reservations about them when I made them. I thought they were much too
gruesome.''
Released in January 1933, "King Kong'' became a box-office smash, and
Wray went on to such prestigious pictures as "The Bowery'' (1933) with
George Raft, "Viva Villa!'' (1934) with Wallace Beery and "The Affairs of
Cellini'' (1934) with Fredric March. But she found it hard to escape the
ape's looming shadow.
"I went to England in 1934 to do a good picture with Claude Rains called
`The Clairvoyant,''' she said. "I went there to try to escape all of that
... It had more substance than most of the things I had been doing in
Hollywood.
"As soon as I got off the boat,'' she recalled, "a man met me and said,
`Will you please come up to the BBC studios and scream for us?' Then one
day I was walking in Hyde Park and I overheard a Cockney woman tell her
child, `If y' don't behive, I'll 'ave Fye Wrye get King Kong arter yer!'
"I couldn't believe it.''
In 1942 Wray retired from acting to marry screenwriter Robert Riskin,
best known for "It Happened One Night'' (1934) and "Lost Horizon'' (1937).
In 1950, however, Riskin was left paralyzed after surgery to remove a blood
clot from his brain. He died in 1955, by which time Wray had already
returned to the screen to provide for their children, Robert Jr. and
Victoria, as well as her daughter Susan, from her earlier marriage to
screenwriter John Monk Saunders. She made some undistinguished films, and
also worked on television, playing Natalie Wood's mother for one season on
"Pride of the Family'' (1953-1954) and appearing with Keenan Wynn in Roald
Dahl's "A Dip in the Pool,'' a 1958 "Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' drama
directed by the Master of Suspense himself.
"The part was very small, but I found it fascinating,'' Wray said.
"Hitchcock was wonderful to work with, but since it was only a half-hour
drama for television our time together was very short. I thought about how
nice it would have been doing a real picture with him.''
By the early 1960s Wray had largely retired to pursue her first love,
writing. She and novelist Sinclair Lewis had co-written a play, "Angela is
Twenty-Two'' (1938), which later became the film "This is the Life''
(1944). More than 60 years later she still wrote every day, recording her
impressions and thoughts in longhand on stacks of yellow legal pads.
"Fascinating things keep happening to me all the time, so I write
constantly,'' she said. "It's important to me to keep writing. It helps me
appreciate every minute of every day.''
One of her proudest moments occurred in 1985 when her play "The
Meadowlark,'' based on her family's experiences, premiered at the
Barnstormers Theater in Tamworth, N.H.
"My daughter Susan played my mother, and it was an exhilarating
experience,'' she recalled. "When I saw it performed, it seemed so natural
to me. It came from my heart, and it turned out to be a lovely play.''
As she approached her centennial, the actress was putting the finishing
touches on a new book called "Scene by Scene, as Seen by Fay Wray,''
recalling her experiences in Hollywood's golden age. She was also lending a
not-entirely-dismissive ear to "Lord of the Rings'' director Peter Jackson,
who reportedly was wooing her for a cameo in his remake of "King Kong.''
Widowed since the 1991 death of her third husband, neurosurgeon Sandy
Rothenberg, Wray divided her last years between apartments in New York and
Los Angeles. In her writing and in her life alike, she said, her guiding
force is a sense of truthfulness.
"After I did `The Wedding March,''' Wray said, "I started a new picture
in Hollywood every fourth Monday. As long as the picture had value and
truth behind it, I could hold onto that. I still feel that way.
"As long as there's truth in what I do, I can hold onto it.''
SIDEBAR: GIRL OF MY DREAMS: MEETING FAY WRAY
By TERRY PACE
500 words
c.2004 New York Times Regional Newspapers
I was 11 years old when I first fell for Fay Wray, vowing that the
heroine of my all-time-favorite film would remain my lifelong love.
The epiphany occurred on a rainy afternoon in 1974. Switching through my
television channels, I discovered a black-and-white movie miracle called
"King Kong'' (1933), the thrilling, dreamlike drama of a ferocious beast's
ill-fated love for an ethereal blonde beauty.
Looking back, I realize that a majestic 50-foot gorilla and his lady
love, the brave and ravishing Wray, ignited both my imagination and my
sense of mythic romance.
One by one "King Kong'' introduced me to Famous Monsters of Filmland
magazine -- Kong's face graced the cover of my first issue -- to the
astonishing fiction of Ray Bradbury and to the stop-motion animation of Ray
Harryhausen. "King Kong,'' it seemed, had influenced every creative artist
I admired.
In recent years I've been fortunate enough to develop friendships with
Famous Monsters editor Forrest J. Ackerman, as well as both Rays. But
another Wray, the Wray named Fay, remained the elusive center of my "King
Kong'' obsession.
Potential contacts never panned out, and attempts to reach her by mail
invariably failed. Even my colleagues at The New York Times admitted
defeat, insisting that she had become a frail recluse.
Meanwhile I watched "King Kong'' 50 times, devoured her autobiography and
preserved my favorite photo of her as Ann Darrow, hoping that someday an
interview, meeting or direct correspondence would finally take place.
Then, early in 2003, I contacted filmmaker Rick McKay, who had once
interviewed her for Scarlet Street magazine. The two had become close
friends, and Rick knew my work from Scarlet Street. I leapt with joy when
his e-mail asked, "Would you like to interview Fay in person or on the
phone?''
Schedules and other circumstances kept us on hold for a full year, but
patience, persistence and passion ultimately paid off ... and the
experience was well worth the wait.
Armed with a letter of introduction from Mr. Bradbury -- who thanked me
for the honor -- I flew to New York last fall and met "Lady Fay,'' as Rick
lovingly calls her, at her Manhattan high-rise. She had recently turned 96,
but her sparkling eyes and her warm, luminous smile made her seem as
ageless as her films.
I sat at her dining table for a full hour, completely charmed by her
tales. Later we dined at the Plaza, discussing the joys of acting, the joys
of writing and the immortal power of "King Kong.''
"This is what it means to be Fay Wray and the girl from `King Kong,'''
she said as she signed my cherished photo and magazine. "Occasionally
someone special with a name like Terry comes to see me, and he seems to be
such a happy person. It's nice to know that I'm part of his life.''
"Fay has spent her life making memories,'' Rick told me later.
The memory of my happy encounter with "Lady Fay'' is sure to last a
lifetime.
(Terry Pace is the entertainment editor for The Times Daily, a New York
Times Co. in Florence, Ala.)
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Terry Pace
Entertainment Editor
The TimesDaily (A New York Times Co.)
219 W. Tennessee St.
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