Figure 1

King Kong is an adventure movie directed in 1933

by Merian C Cooper and Ernest Scheodsack.
The story is about a movie director Carl Denham
(Robert Armstrong) who makes wildlife films in
remote locations. He hears about a giant gorilla
named Kong that inhabits an unknown and
undiscovered Island in the Pacific.
He finds his leading lady Ann Darrow (Fay Wray)
wondering the streets of New York and hires a boat
named “Venture” to travel to the location.
While on the boat first mate Jack Driscoll (Bruce
Cabot) falls in love with Darrow.
When they arrive at the Island they come upon a
native village with a huge stone wall around it. The
local natives worship the giant gorilla Kong and one
night kidnap Darrow from the boat to sacrifice her to
Kong.
The crew search the Island to try and rescue
Darrow and encounter Dinosaurs and monsters.
They finally rescue Darrow and capture Kong to
take back to New York where they sell tickets to see
the “Eighth Wonder Of The World”.
Kong breaks loose from his chains and captures
Darrow from her apartment window. Eventually he
is shot down from the Empire State Building by
fighter planes and plummets to his death.
 Figure 2

The inspiration for the story originated from

Cooper’s experience as a child when at 6 years old
he was given a book by his uncle called.
“Adventures and Exploration in Equatorial Africa” by
Paul Du Chaillu.

“Paul Du Chaillu (1831-1903) was the son of a

French trader who was stationed on the West
African coast. In 1855 he was sent by the Academy
Of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia to explore
Africa because of his knowledge of the local
languages and customs. In two expeditions into the
interior, he observed numerous gorillas, brought
back dead specimens, and also
confirmed the existence of African pygmies,
becoming the first European to observe them in real
life.
Du Chaillu sold his hunted gorillas to the Natural
History Museum in London and his cannibal skulls

to other European collections. Later he specialized

in the prehistory of Scandinavia, and died while
doing research in St Petersburg, Russia.” Ostara
Publications: “Adventures and Exploration in
Equatorial Africa” by Paul Du Chaillu. About the
author(2016)
In December 1984 Ronald Haver, a film historian
released Criterion Collection, which was the first
audio commentary on King Kong. Ronald worked
with Copper many times and talks about how
Cooper had always been fascinated by Primates.
Cooper told Haver that “the thing that fascinated
him was the description of tribes of giant apes that
lived somewhere in Africa that sometimes raided
the native villages and carried off screaming native
women into the jungle.” This was something that
stayed with him for the rest of his life and influenced
the story of King Kong.
In Ronald Havers audio he talks about an amusing
piece of trivia in which “some of the live-action
scenes were miniaturized to make the Kong model
look larger; searching for the right screen to project
them on, the filmmakers had a screen made of
condoms, to the horror of the local druggist who
could not understand why they were ordering so
many” (Criterion Commentary)
Haver also talks about King Kong’s fur that seems
to crawl during several scenes; the model was
covered in rabbit fur and the stop-motion animators
moved it with their fingers between every stop
action shot.
 Figure 4

Miniatures made the movements of Kong and the

Dinosaurs possible by using “in-camera”
techniques. Part of the frame was exposed and
then the film run through the camera again to
expose a different part with a different piece of
action. This was all supervised by Wills O Brien.
Stereotypes, sexism and racism are a big factor in
King Kong from quotes in the film such as “they’re
up to some of their heathen tricks”, “blondes are
scarce around here” and “I hear its some kind of
gorilla. Gee, ain’t we got enough of them in New
York?”
America at the time the film was made was going
through an influx of immigration from around the
world. One of the main nationalities that were
coming over were the Chinese which were attracted
to the gold rush happening in California, and the
explosion of low wage agricultural work and factory
work. With the influx of Chinese workers American
and Euro-Americans begun to resent Chinese
workers as they were willing to work for lower
wages.
America started to belittle the Chinese people by
starting rumours and nasty stereotypes, such as
that Chinese food is cheap and horrible thus in the
film the cook is a Chinese man.
 Figure 5

The next is King Kong himself, he’s presented as a

dark, brutal, vicious beast from a mysterious
otherworldly realm. A beast that attacks American
adventurers, New Yorkers and New York itself. It’s
hard not to see the correlations to the racist views
of pre-civil rights America.
Overall King Kong is a film that has a lot of different
meanings and metaphors that the audience can
come up with when watching the film. King Kong
has also influenced lots of techniques and music in
modern cinema and continues to show us a past
view of what society was like back in 1930’s
America.

List of Illustrations:

Figure 1. 1933 Movie Gallery [poster] At:

https://www.barrons.com/articles/a-king-kong-film-
poster-could-fetch-50-000-at-sothebys-
01566416351

Figure 2. The Native Village [Film still] At:

https://medium.com/@PacoTaylor/long-held-
theories-about-skull-islanders-in-king-kong-
movies-are-actually-wrong-part-1-fdbe3583d627

Figure 3. Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial

Africa [Book Cover] At:
https://kentakepage.com/paul-belloni-du-chaillu-
the-africa-zoologist/exploration-and-adventures-in-
africa/

Figure 4. Wills O Brien Animator King Kong(1933)

[Poster] At:
http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/tag/stop-motion-
animation/
Figure 5. Chinese Chef King Kong (1933)[Poster]
At:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Wong_(actor,_
born_1906)
Bibliography:

Website:

Roger Ebert (February 2002) King Kong

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-
king-kong-1933

Brian Eggert (February 2009) King Kong

https://deepfocusreview.com/definitives/king-kong/

Ian Failes (February 2017) How King Kong Movies

changed VFX History over and over again.
https://www.inverse.com/article/28410-king-kong-
visual-effects-hist

Jason Fraley (December 2012) King Kong (1933)

http://thefilmspectrum.com/?p=5407

Ronald Haver (July 2017) Criterion Commentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S42pO3yz2ec