King Kong in Doré Land

Kong-blogging, essay 9 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

Part One, The Backgrounds

 

Compare and contrast:  Gustav Dore's "Satan Walking in the Garden" from Paradise Lost on the left.  A detail of the jungle in King Kong (1933) on the right.

Skull Island is one of the greatest imaginary landscapes ever to grace the movies.  The quality of the production design and set decoration in this section of King Kong (1933) is phenomenal. 

As many have remarked, the backgrounds look like the work of Gustav Doré, the popular 19th century French illustrator and master engraver.  The impression is intentional.  Chief technician Willis O’Brien asked artists Mario Larrinaga and Byron Crabbe to come up with backgrounds in the style of Doré to set the scene on Skull Island.

With his choice of Doré, O’Brien embraced a wild, mysterious, romantic approach.  Doré’s backgrounds often achieve a semblance of great depth through their stylistic use of differently lit planes to give the impression of receding distance.  This contributes to their other-worldly, even primeval, appearance.

Mario Larrinaga and Byron Crabbe sketched hundreds of drawings, marrying O’Brien’s visual ideas with Doré’s style.  O’Brien selected his favorite sketches and worked with Larrinaga and Crabbe to capture them on glass paintings and painted canvas backings.  For a complex scene, the camera might be set up to peer through up to three mounted panes of painted glass and then a final opaque painted canvas.  Between the mounts, the technicians would place additional prop foliage to create even more layers of receding depth.  Like a Doré engraving, the film image presents sharp detail in the foreground then subtly transitions to more impressionistic shapes in the distance.

Log crossing in Gustav Dore's "The Two Goats" from
The Fables of La Fontaine, 1867.

Log crossing in King Kong (1933).

Cave entrance in Gustav Dore's "Daniel in the
Lion's Den," one of his Bible illustrations, 1866.

Cave entrance in King Kong.

A high ledge in Dore's "Satan Overlooking Mt. Nephrates"
from Paradise Lost, 1866.

A high ledge in King Kong.

Part Two, The Foreground

 

Compare and contrast:  Fay Wray and Joel McCrae chased through the jungle in The Most Dangerous Game (1932) on the left.  Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot chased through the jungle in King Kong (1933) on the right.

To keep costs appearing reasonable on the studio balance books, co-producer Merian C. Cooper borrowed much of Skull Island’s foreground from sets prepared for—and charged to the account of—other RKO movies.

The Great Wall that separates the native village from the wilds of Skull Island is a redressed Jerusalem wall from The King of Kings (1927).  Some of the native village huts are leftovers from Bird of Paradise (1932).  But Cooper’s biggest steals of all were from The Most Dangerous Game.

Still in production during Kong’s early shooting days, The Most Dangerous Game was being filmed by Kong co-director Ernest Schoedsack and happened to co-star Kong actors Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong.  Since The Most Dangerous Game took place on a remote jungle island, Cooper realized their settings could be virtually interchangeable.  He looked for serendipitous opportunities to piggy-back his complex ape movie on Schoedsack’s simpler adventure-romance.

Thanks to the combined skills of RKO’s set designers and Willis O’Brien’s technicians,  Kong’s visual mix of borrowed sets and original glass paintings works nearly seamlessly.  It’s so effective, in fact, that it’s now hard to watch The Most Dangerous Game without expecting a Brontosaurus to appear in the misty swamp or for an enraged Kong to appear on the other side of the log that Fay Wray and lead actor Joel McCrae must cross.

A chase through the swamp in The Most Dangerous Game (1932).

A chase through the swamp in King Kong (1933).

Fay Wray and Joel McCrae on the log in The Most Dangerous Game.

Sailors cross the log in King Kong.

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price

Island of Prehistoric Lizards

Kong-blogging, essay 3 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

Part One, Island of Prehistoric Lizards

An unidentified two-legged
prehistoric reptile climbs up the
chasm wall in King Kong (1933).

The rocky coast of Komodo Island, circa 1926.

From Dragon Lizards of Komodo by W. Douglas Burden,
published in 1927.

From Dragon Lizards of Komodo by W. Douglas Burden,
published in 1927.  Photo by Mrs. Burden.

Note article: "Stalking the Dragon Lizard on the
Island of Komodo" by W. Douglas Burden,
The National Geographic Magazine, August 1927.

Part Two, Bringing 'em Back Alive

“The world is getting smaller every year.  I mean it’s becoming too civilized.  I can remember when the world was a grand old place—a place full of unexplored lands, choked with adventure.  In those days, Schoedsack and I used to run away to the ends of the world, confident of finding real motion picture material.  But now, what’s a fellow to do?  Where is he to go?”

                                                                              Merian C. Cooper

                                                                              NBC radio interview

As an independently wealthy explorer and a trustee at the American Museum of Natural History, W. Douglas Burden shared Cooper’s feelings.  He was always on the lookout for adventure.  In the mid-1920s, he heard that P.O. Ouwens, director of the Zoological Museum in Java, was able to confirm the long-standing rumors that there were giant lizards living on Komodo Island.  Hearing this news, Burden felt the call of the wild.

With the backing of the American Museum of Natural History, Burden organized an expedition in 1926, promising to return from Komodo with a living dragon.  Assisted by a herpetologist, a cameraman, his wife, and 15 Malay workers, Burden found the giant monitor lizards (measuring up to ten feet in length) and brought two back for exhibition at the Bronx Zoo.  Unable to adjust to their new environment and life in captivity, the Komodo dragons died behind bars.

In late 1929, Cooper spent time with Burden at the American Museum of Natural History, sharing tales of their incurable romantic love of wild places.  According to Cooper biographer Mark Cotta Vaz in his book Living Dangerously, Burden’s stories of Komodo may have inspired significant elements of the King Kong narrative that was slowly evolving in Cooper’s mind.  Vaz quotes from letters exchanged between Burden and Cooper in 1964 where Burden reminisced about their 1929 discussions:

“…I remember, for example, that you were quite intrigued by my descriptions of prehistoric Komodo Island and the dragon lizards that inhabited it…  You especially liked the strength of words beginning with ‘K,’ such as Kodak, Kokiak Island, and Komodo.  It was then, I believe, that you came up with the idea of Kong as a possible title for a gorilla picture.  I told you that I liked very much the ring of the word… and I believe that it was a combination of the King of Komodo phrase in my book and your invention of the name Kong that led to the title you used much later on, King Kong.”

Furthermore, Burden suggested that Cooper may have picked up on the young wife accompanying the explorer on the voyage and the death of the wild beasts in New York captivity when developing the Kong narrative.

Cooper’s response:

“Everything you say is right on the nose.  Boy, what a memory!”

Of course, the story that was forming in Cooper’s mind at the time wasn’t quite Kong as we now know it.  Cooper seems to have been thinking about shipping gorillas out to Komodo Island and then filming them battling the Komodo dragons.  In 1929, Cooper hadn’t yet realized that there might be ways to capture the wild places within the controlled settings of a modern Hollywood film studio.

Horizontal view of that chasm lizard from King Kong (1933).

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price

From the Gobi Desert to Skull Island

Kong-blogging, essay 2 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

Part One, The Ends of the World

Carl Denham's crew arrives on Skull Island, with cameras ready
to film, in King Kong (1933).

French explorer Paul du Chaillu aims his rifle at a gorilla in
central Africa.  Chaillu's book of his African adventures was an early
favorite of Merian C. Cooper's and may have sparked Cooper's lifelong
fascination with gorillas.

Canadian Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson.  The title of the
Merian C. Cooper biography Living Dangerously was taken
from a Stefansson quote that Cooper took to heart.

Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History
leading one of the Central Asiatic Expeditions into the Gobi Desert
of Mongolia in the 1920s.

Roy Chapman Andrews explores the Gobi Desert, leading his caravan
through muddy gullies.  Andrews:  "Always there has been an
adventure just around the corner---and the world is full of corners!"

An intact Protoceratops skull, discovered by the Andrews team
in the Gobi Desert.

The first-ever-discovered fossilized dinosaur eggs, found by
Andrews' team during the Central Asiatic Expeditions organized
by the American Museum of Natural History.

Part Two, Protoceratops Eggs

The early 1930s were at the tail-end of a major period of adventure and exploration.  Thanks to the great success of their on-site wilderness films Grass and Chang, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack swiftly entered the ranks of the most elite explorer names.  Wild stories about them—many, in fact, true—abounded and helped add to their legend.

Cooper and Schoedsack were known at New York’s famed Explorers Club, the National Geographic Society, and the American Geographic Society—places that celebrated the individualist explorer.  And they were known among the museums and academies that sponsored many explorations, encouraging the image of the scientist-explorer, wearing a fedora and maybe even carrying a bullwhip.

If you could raise the money, you could strike out for the polar regions, the Amazon basin, the islands of the South Pacific, or the jungles of Africa.  The lecture circuit would await on your return.  In his youth, Cooper was inspired by men like Paul Belloni du Chaillu, who confirmed the existence of giant (but not Kong-sized) gorillas in central Africa, and death-defying Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefasnsson (“Men get killed easily when they don’t live dangerously...”).

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City was at the forefront of institutions that championed expeditions to the world’s remote areas.  All sorts of linkages exist between the American Museum of Natural History and the makers of King Kong.  Cooper would meet his friend W. Douglas Burden, a museum trustee and independently wealthy explorer, at the museum to discuss their past adventures and future ambitions.  Burden introduced Cooper to others at the museum.

While I’ve found no direct linkages between Cooper and the museum’s most famous explorer of the 1920s, there’s no doubt in my mind that Cooper was fully aware of the work of Roy Chapman Andrews.  W. Douglas Burden was well acquainted with Andrews and had even hoped to join up with Andrews for a firsthand look at his work in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia.  I’d like to think that Roy Chapman Andrews’ daredevil fossil-hunting expeditions in Mongolia, 1922-1930, served as one more ingredient spicing the Kong stew.

Andrews first explored Mongolia in 1922, leading a team of 40 men, eight Dodge cars, and 150 camels loaded with supplies through the Gobi Desert.  On this and subsequent expeditions, Andrews and his team discovered fossil wonders, most notably including the first-ever-discovered fossil dinosaur eggs (presumed to be Protoceratops eggs).

Pictures of the Central Asiatic Expeditions appear rugged and primitive now but in some ways they were on the technological cutting edge of their time.  They relied on cars for transportation and had movie cameras along to both film their work and to restage any important finds—in order to maximize the promotional value back home.

So in King Kong, when theatrical producer Carl Denham’s crew alights on Skull Island with their film cameras ready to roll, it wasn’t all that different from a Roy Chapman Andrews’ scene in the Gobi Desert.  Same idea—different remote setting.

Carl Denham's team advances into the tribe's village, with cameras
ready to roll, in King Kong (1933).

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price

Dawn on Skull Island

Kong-blogging, essay 1 of 15 blog entries on

Skull Island in King Kong (1933)

Part One, Dawn on Skull Island

Happy anniversary to King Kong, which premiered in New York City 79 years ago on this date:  March 2, 1933.

Skull Island at dawn, before the wild things come out to play:

The fog lifts in the early morning for our first view of Skull Island.
Retouched image from King Kong (1933).

The misty Skull Island jungle at dawn.
Retouched image from King Kong (1933).

Deep shadows still dominate the entrance to Kong's lair.
Retouched image from King Kong (1933).  

Mists and steam inside Kong's cavern on Skull Mountain.
Retouched image from King Kong (1933).

Kong's world, still quiet at dawn.
Retouched image from King Kong (1933).

Shameful confession: Yes, I’ve fiddled with the tones on today’s screen captures and feel very sheepish about my audacity in doing so.  I’ve added touches of color, sharpened some images, and increased some contrasts.  I promise to be more respectful of the original’s integrity for the remainder of this 15-part series.

Part Two, Island Builders

We’ll start in 1932, the year that Skull Island moved from imagination to film through the work of film artists and technicians at RKO Radio Pictures.

Merian C. Cooper was 38 years old in 1932.  A restless adventurer, Cooper had already survived enough adventures to fill several normal lifetimes—he had pursued Pancho Villa on the Mexican border, flown bombers over Germany during World War I, escaped from a Soviet Union prison, feasted with Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, migrated over the Zardeh Kuh mountain range of Iran with the Bakhtiari tribes, and filmed elephants and tigers at close range in Thailand.  The idea of Skull Island began with Cooper.  He imagined a mysterious island in the South Pacific, an enclosed world locked in a prehistoric past and ruled by a mighty gorilla.  Then he searched for the talent needed to transfer the dream to film.

Ernest B. Schoedsack, also 38 in 1932, was Cooper’s friend and film-making partner.  In addition to sharing the Bakhtiari and Thailand film-making experiences (resulting in their classic silent films Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life and Chang), Schoedsack had recently returned from a solo film-making expedition to northwestern Sumatra for his movie Rango.  Schoedsack knew exotic jungle islands first hand.  Along with Cooper, Schoedsack would share producer and director credit for King Kong.

Ruth Rose was 36 years old in 1932 and had been married for five years—to Ernest B. Schoedsack.  She had never written a film script.  But she had fully shared in her husband’s rough-and-tumble globe-trotting life and had developed an ear for how these men talked and how they viewed the world. Rose took Cooper’s fragmentary story ideas—partially and awkwardly developed by writers Edgar Wallace and James Creelman—and fashioned a smooth rising narrative that brought a surprising plausibility to Skull Island.  Her dialogue for the ship’s crew places the audience in a world that is romantic, realistic, and theatrical in equal parts.  It meshes with the Skull Island landscape in a way that intuitively feels right.

Willis O’Brien, at 46 both the oldest in this group and the longest in the film business, was the film magician who could bring Cooper’s vision to film life.  He was the artist most responsible for the island’s physical appearance and the technical genius who grasped how to endow miniature monsters with cinematic power.  O’Brien had one major film success, The Lost World (1925), behind him and 18 years of experience in developing and mastering the art of stop motion animation.

Marcel Delgado, 31 years old in 1932, was an artist with a gift for sculpting.  O’Brien recognized his talents and employed Delgado to create the articulated models of Skull Island’s spectacular inhabitants.  Like O’Brien, Delgado had proved his skills with The Lost World and was ready to show the world that he could transcend that remarkable achievement.

Murray Spivack, at 28 the youngest of this group in 1932, created the aural landscape of Skull Island, fashioning a film soundtrack that had to sound entirely unfamiliar yet believable.  Before King Kong, many people had seen pictures of dinosaurs but they had never heard the dinosaurs.  Now sound had to match picture.  Spivack brought symphonic musical experience and a natural technical curiosity to the challenge.

Max Steiner, 44 years old in 1932, bathed Skull Island with memorable music that shapes the viewer’s understanding of the setting.  Without Steiner’s musical cues, the night-time fogs would not feel as thick and the forest not as primeval—the ferocity of the Allosaurus would drop a notch and Kong would lose a touch of his mysterious humanity.  Our emotional response to the wonders of Skull Island is always filtered through Steiner’s music.

Now let’s bring them out on stage.  Here are our principal island builders.  Many others probably deserve nearly as much credit—art technicians Mario Larrinaga and Byron L. Crabbe, editor Ted Cheesman, production assistant Archie S. Marshek, executive producer David O. Selznick, O’Brien’s ace technical crew and a crowd of others contributed much.  But if I was only allowed to ask seven people to stand on the stage beside Kong, as the gentlemen of the press flashed their pictures, I’d invite Cooper, Schoedsack, Rose, O’Brien, Delgado, Spivack, and Steiner to share with Kong in his moment of triumph.

Reference Sources

The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz

Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Genius by Steve Archer

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner

All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.

... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)

Watch King Kong...

Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.

© 2012 Lee Price