Hi!

New KONG director Peter Jackson talks about meeting Fay in the
following article from SciFi.com:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=33122

The text of the article follows below, in case the above link doesn't
work.

John Weber

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Wray's Spirit Lives In KONG

Peter Jackson, director of the upcoming King Kong remake, told SCI FI
Wire that original Kong actress Fay Wray offered current star Naomi
Watts valuable insights into the role, but sadly died before she
could appear in the remake herself. "Naomi does channel Fay Wray a
little bit, because she met Fay as well," Jackson said in a news
conference beamed by satellite from New Zealand in September. "We
organized a dinner, and Naomi and [Jackson's wife and co-writer] Fran
[Walsh] and I met with Fay, and we spent a fantastic evening with her
and asked her lots of questions ... about what it was like to act in
the '30s. Because, obviously, Ann Darrow, who's the character that
we're talking about, ... is an actress in the 1930s, and Naomi was
playing this role, and she had an opportunity to talk to Fay Wray."

Watts plays actress Ann Darrow in Jackson's update of the 1933
classic SF movie, in which Wray played the same character. Jackson
added that they were less interested in what it was like to have
appeared in the original King Kong than they were in Wray's real life
as a Depression-era movie actress. "She was in something like 12 or
13 movies in 1933," Jackson said. "She had a husband who sent her out
to work all the time, because her husband gambled and spent all the
money. ... But she was full of really interesting ... insights
into ... what that world was like. ... I just recognize little bits
of Fay in Naomi's performance, and I think that's deliberate."

Jackson said that he also approached Wray to make a cameo appearance
herself in his King Kong. She refused, at least at first. "My
original ... hope was to have Fay saying the last line in the
film: 'Beauty killed the beast.' ... It's a line that happens when
Kong's body is lying on the street, and there's a crowd gathering
around at the end of the movie, and I was just going to cut to an old
lady as part of the crowd saying that line, and ... my hope was to
have Fay doing that. ... I met her several times, and she was first
all saying 'No. No.' ... I was hoping for a slightly more interesting
response. ... I met her three or four [more] times, and by the time I
met her for the ... last time, which was only about a month before
she died, she squeezed my hand, and she smiled, and she says: 'Never
say never. Never say never.' ... She was warming up to the idea. And
I think she would've probably done it. And we would have just gone to
her hotel in New York and ... put up a blue screen and shot a shot of
her. It would have been all very simple to do. And we were heading in
that direction. But, unfortunately, it wasn't to be."

Wray died on Aug. 8, 2004, at the age of 96. King Kong, which is in
post-production, opens Dec. 14.