KONG, KING OF CARTOONS

In the February 15, 1933 issue of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, the newly-released KING KONG grabbed the headlines with the promise of the financial "answer to [film] exhibitor's prayers. It has everything that any showman could ask for", the story went. "It's a good picture on an entirely new theme, produced masterfully, and offering exploitation and values the like of which have hardly ever been seen in a picture before." KONG was a welcome money-maker in a depression that had just entered its fourth year.

The March 6th issue included a 28-page promotional insert of KING KONG. Printed in metallic colors on a heavier paper stock than the magazine itself, RKO, the studio that produced the picture, pulled out all the stops in showing off their product. It seemed like Kong was being promoted in any media available at the time.

In the style of Feg Murray's "Seein' Stars", cartoonist Fred Morgan drew a strip called "Bits From the Hits!" Mainly a political cartoonist, Morgan took time out enough to draw his impressions of Hollywood, including this panel of King Kong from BROADWAY AND HOLLYWOOD MOVIES (March 1933).

FAY WRAY'S CHAMBER OF HORRORS

The fetching Fay Wray was a busy actress between the years 1932 and 1933. If fact, with the exception of BLACK MOON in 1934 her entire output of horror/thrillers were filmed in those two years:

• DOCTOR X (1932)
• THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932)
• THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933)
• MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933)
• KING KONG (1933)

This issue of BROADWAY AND HOLLYWOOD MOVIES (April 1933) covers two of them in their "Two Pictures of the Month" feature. The unknown author accurately points out that "beyond a doubt she is the most capable actress we know of for the exacting role of a young woman reacting to fear and the menace of horror," and goes on to discuss THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM and KING KONG.

SICK'S KING KONG FANZINE + BONUS

Another humor magazine fighting for its place on newsstands alongside MAD was SICK. It ran for 134 issues for two decades from 1960-1980. Created by Joe "Captain America" Simon, he was the editor until near the end of the 1960's. First published by Crestwood Publications, it was handed over to Hewfred Publications and finally Charlton took over in 1979 with #109.

Like most of the other humor 'zines, SICK would take a poke now and again at movie monsters. This is one example from #112 (October 1976). At this time, Joe Simon's son, Jim, was the editor and Jerry Grandenetti was the Executive Director. Other notable artists that worked on SICK over the years were Jack Davis, Angelo Torres and Dick Ayers. Bob Powell was the Art Director until his death in 1967.

This King Kong "fanzine" was written by Jim Simon and illustrated by Grandenetti and Nonoy Marcelo. The cover for this issue is also by Grandenetti.

BONUS!

Jack Davis was at it again with another one of his humorous takes on the Frankenstein monster -- this from SICK (December 1963).

NEW ARTICLE PUBLISHED!

Hot off the press is the 150th-issue of PREHISTORIC TIMES (Summer, 2024). Included is my article, "The Eighth Wonder of the World: The Making of King Kong". I'm proud to be a part of this excellent magazine that covers all things dinosaur. Order your copy right HERE. I also have an article in PT #148 about the 1925 silent dino-classic THE LOST WORLD. You can order that HERE.

Here's a write-up from the Everything Dinosaur site:

As always, issue 150 of “Prehistoric Times” magazine is crammed full of excellent articles and amazing artwork.  Editor Mike Fredericks wrote to Everything Dinosaur and outlined some of the magazine’s contents. It is 91 years since the first King Kong film hit cinema screens. This famous monster movie had its premiere in the spring of 1933. The film starred Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong. However, the titular character, the giant ape, was to become enshrined in movie folklore. Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack the film grossed over $5 million USD. The stop-motion monsters were created and animated by Willis H. O’Brien. The 1933 King Kong film regularly features in lists of the top one hundred most influential movies of all time.

I invite you to visit my Amazon Author's Page where you'll see all the publications that I've contributed to recently that are available on Amazon.

Thanks, folks, for supporting my work and especially these publications!

MARCEL DELGADO'S LAST SCULPT

The pioneering stop-motion animator Willis "Obie" O'Brien first met the 22-year-old, Mexico-born Marcel Delgado at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Needing a sculptor for his upcoming adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's THE LOST WORLD, he managed to convince Delgado to join his team. At first he was reluctant to leave school:

"Mr. O'Brien took an interest in my work and one night he asked me, 'would you like to work in motion pictures?' I told him I would not because I wanted to be an artist and didn't want to lose any time. Every time he saw me he asked again and offered me $75 a week to come to work for him. I always said no, and I don't really know why; I was only making $18 a week but I guess I felt secure. One Friday he asked me to lay off work and visit the motion picture studio. OBie left a pass at the gate and when I went in Obie met me and took me to his little shop. There was a 'phone, some cameras and pictures all around. 'How do you like your studio?' he asked. 'It's yours if you want it.' It was a twenty-year-old boy's dream! So I signed up and worked for the next couple of years building dinosaurs for The Lost World. I made forty-nine or fifty of them and it was all done under cover with no visitors allowed —although some of the studio big shots came in anyhow."

Delgado ended up sculpting 50 dinosaur figures for the movie which was released in 1925. It was a smash hit.

Delgado went on to work on many more projects (all uncredited) including KING KONG, MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE BIRDS and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. His last stop-motion figure would be the Tyrannosaurus Rex seen in DINOSAURUS! (Universal, 1960).

Contrary to conventional thought, these models or puppets were extremely fragile and did not hold up well during the thousands of single frame shots needed to complete the action on film. For example, there were two King Kong puppets used during the making of the movie; while one was used, the other was being repaired.

Marcel Delgado passed away on 26 November 1976 at the age of 75.

The armature and what was left of the muscle and skin buildup of the T-Rex from DINOSAURUS! went up for auction at Profiles in History in July 2006. The sale estimate was between $15,000 - $18,000.

THE SOUND OF KONG

There are lots of monster movies that I consider favorites, but RKO's original 1933 KING KONG tops them all. I know, there's DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, THE MUMMY and scads of others that are true classics, but none quite compare to the combination of adventure, fantasy and horror that sets this film apart from the rest. While researching material to include in my article on the 90th anniversary of The Eighth Wonder of the World for PREHISTORIC TIMES magazine I came across this article from POPULAR SCIENCE (April 1933) that does a deep-dive on the sound effects for Kong and the various dinosaurs seen in the movie.

Murray Spivak was hired as the sound effects supervisor and his first order of business was creating vocalizations for the "non-human players". He did not want to use anything that people would recognize as typical animal sounds and ended up modifying and mixing known sounds by lowering the pitch or otherwise manipulating them. When completed, he had a completely new sound library of prehistoric "grunts and growls" as he called them.

My article will appear in the summer issue of PREHISTORIC TIMES (#150). I'll give a shout out when it's published.

MY WRITING UPDATE

Fans of King Kong will know that last year was the 90th anniversary of the first (and best) movie featuring the big guy. I was invited by the editor of PREHISTORIC TIMES to write an article celebrating the momentous occasion and I recently completed and submitted it. It will appear in this year's Summer issue (#150). If you are at all interested in dinosaurs and paleontology you owe yourself to check out this very well done, one-of-a-king magazine HERE. PT is also sold at Barnes & Noble.

My second installment of "Fear in Four Colors: The Hideous History of the American Horror Comic" will appear in the next issue of NIGHTMARE ABBEY by Dead Letter Press. The publication date has not been set, but it should be out soon. In the meantime, you can purchase issue #4 with the first installment HERE.

Besides writing daily here at WOM, I've got other writing projects in the hopper this year and will keep you up-to-date with the details.

SMOKIN' MONSTERS: MERIAN C. COOPER

Not a monster himself, but Merian C. Cooper created the greatest monster of them all -- King Kong! Coop was a dedicated pipe smoker and it's hard to find a photo of him without his trusty briar.

See more SMOKIN' MONSTERS HERE.

This article from PHOTOPLAY (July 1933) is a profile on the amazing life and times of Merian C. Cooper up until the release of KING KONG. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

SECRETS OF KING KONG

Last year, KING KONG celebrated its 90th anniversary and is arguably the greatest "giant monster" movie ever filmed (sorry, Godzilla!). Like many other monsters that appeared in the 1930's, Kong has long-enjoyed iconic status along with DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN and THE MUMMY.

What made this film so remarkable is the extensive use of puppet animation, miniature sets and a host of special photographic techniques used behind the scenes. When combined, the viewer is immersed in the action like no other film that came before it (with maybe the exception of 1925's THE LOST WORLD) and holds up very well even today.

In 1991, KING KONG won that year's award by the National Film Registry.

The UK's amateur filmmaking magazine HOME MOVIES AND HOME TALKIES ran from 1932-1934. Luckily, KING KONG was released during that period and they did a nice two-page spread in their June 1933 issue on the "secrets" of many of the effects.

NOTE: The title photo shows master miniature effects maker Willis "Obie" O'Brien and live action cinematographer, Edward Linden.

KING KONG TRADING CARDS (DONRUSS 1965)

Topps wasn't the only trading card company who produced cards during the 1960's Monster Craze. Founded in 1954, in Irving, Texas, Donruss introduced a series of King Kong cards from the original 1933 RKO film in 1965. The cards were a standard 2.5" X 3.5" and were printed in black and white with each reverse a piece of a puzzle that when completed revealed the image of James Bama's box art cover for the Aurora King Kong model kit.

The cards came in a wax pack and included a stick of bubble gum that sold for 5 cents. Typical of most monster card series from this era, the card front was a scene from the movie with a speech balloon (aka dialogue bubble) that contained a typeset gag line and a few that were marked as "Write Your Own". The King Kong cards were no different from the others as the jokes were juvenile and would not stand up to a "LOL!" acronym in common use today.

One of the cards was a photo of the
Aurora monster model.

THE CAMERA THAT FILMED KING KONG

When we we watch monster movies, most of us do so without a critical eye for the technical aspects that go into the making of the film. That's not a bad thing at all, as the sole purpose of a movie is to be entertained (with the exception of those that, to some degree or another, have something to say politically or socially) right? Viewers, though, have at least a peripheral awareness of who the director and screenwriter are, and who are cast in the various roles. After all, we all have our favorite movies, directors and actors.

One movie stands at the top of the heap (or the Empire State Building, if you will) as one of, if not, the greatest giant monster movie of all time. I'm talking about KING KONG (RKO, 1933) of course. After almost a century, Kong still has the awesome power to amaze. Harry Cunningham's armatures and Marcel Delgado's models of the giant ape were a wonder to behold and inspired many a' filmmaker to come, including a then 13 year-old Ray Harryhausen. Max Steiner's rousing score was another reason the film was so exciting.

But without skilled camerawork, the film could have easily looked a lot less than it was. The task went to Edward "Eddie" Linden, cinematographer for RKO. Despite the scope of the film, the studio had only one camera for him to use, a Mitchell Standard. It's possible that Linden used this same camera the same year when he filmed SON OF KONG.

Fast forward 70 years later and a Mitchell Standard movie camera is up for auction in England. Movie lover and camera buff, Sam Dodge, a resident of Washington State, won the bid. Since Mitchells had become rare, he wanted to know more about this vintage camera with the number, "66" stamped into it. He soon received a reply from none other than the Chairman of the archives at the American Society of Cinematographers (see below_ that confirmed that he had not only a rare camera, but one that had a special, provenance -- it was the same camera that Eddie Linden had used to film KING KONG!

Willis O' Brian and unidentified person (studio executive?).