Fay Wray, who screamed her way into movie history as the apple of King Kong’s eye, has died. She was 96.
Ms. Wray died Sunday at her home in New York City, according to Rick McKay, a friend. No cause of death was reported.
“She was fairly active up until the end,” said McKay, who directed the documentary “Broadway: The Golden Age,” which included an interview with Ms. Wray. Her last public appearance was at the New York premiere of the film in June.
Ms. Wray was a star of silent as well as sound movies when at age 25 she was cast by director Merian Cooper as Ann Darrow in the 1933 film “King Kong.”
Although she made about 80 movies, her fame as a co-star to a giant ape–she referred to her unrequited lover simply as “Kong”–far outlasted the celebrity she got from her films with Hollywood’s leading men, including Gary Cooper, Ronald Colman, Cary Grant, William Powell and Spencer Tracy.
For many years, Ms. Wray resisted the attention that came to her for her role opposite her “tallest, darkest leading man.”
But she eventually embraced “King Kong” with good humor.
“I’m liking it better now than I did in the beginning, when it seemed to me that it was not Shakespeare,” she told an interviewer in 1994. She called the movie “my greeting card” and said that everyone–even Laurence Olivier–grilled her about how one of the greatest special-effects movies was made.
Well into her later years, Ms. Wray remained surprised by the accolades she got for a performance that she hardly considered acting.
“I yelled every time they said, `Yell,”‘ she said of the role, for which she was paid $10,000 for 10 weeks’ work–good pay for Hollywood in the Depression.
After “King Kong” found a new generation of fans when it became regular fare on black-and-white television in the 1950s, Ms. Wray cheerily succumbed to her fate and even made a tribute to the lovesick gorilla in her 1989 biography, “On the Other Hand: A Life Story,” a playful tribute to the film in which Kong clenches her in his hand (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). In an open letter to the King Kong, she said, “To speak of me is to think of you. To speak to me is often a prelude to questions about you.”
The book party for her autobiography was held at the Empire State Building, the skyscraper that the ape scaled to rescue his writhing beauty from the flashbulb-popping crowd of journalists who were chasing him. His great power weakened by love, unable to swat away the pesky airplanes that were attacking him, King Kong falls to his death.
“The final scene is really moving, where Kong is shot as he stands on the Empire State Building, and clutches his breast, but then stretches out his hand to where I am,” she told an interviewer 1998. “A great piece of acting from that little fellow.”
And Ms. Wray did mean little. King Kong was in reality 18 inches of cloth, metal and rubber brought to life by special-effects genius Willis O’Brien. The only part of the monster that actually was big was the arm and hand that cradled her in many scenes.
After Ms. Wray came to terms with her fame, she once told an interviewer, “Every time I’m in New York, I say a little prayer when passing the Empire State Building. A good friend of mine died up there.”
