Fay Wray

When I was listening to the Lux Radio Theater show 'Can't Take It With You' this past week, I was reminded of the screen siren Fay Wray - my childhood crush - who was most noted for playing Ann Darrow in King Kong.

She was born on September 15th 1907 to a large Mormon family in Alberta, Canada, the fourth of six children, and the granddaughter of the American and Mormon pioneer, Daniel Webster Jones.

As a child, her father had been working in a Canadian sawmill, but the family moved to America soon after she was born, where her father could find better work than what was available in Alberta. They moved around several more times before finally settling in California, where her parents later divorced.

During her school days, Fay frequently participated in school plays, becoming fascinated by the world of motion pictures, and so once in the city of entertainment, she jumped at the opportunities offered to her, appearing in her first silent film in 1923, at the age of sixteen years old.

She made the successful transition into the "talkie" era when most performers' services were no longer needed because of the sound of their voices on film, and in 1932 she was cast in her first real hit, King Kong.

The role of Ann Darrow had called for a blonde, for contrast against the darkness of Kong, and other actresses were considered for the role. However, Merian Cooper, who had worked with Fay in the 1929 movie Four Feathers, decided instead to cover Fay's brown hair with a blond wig, and cast her as Kong's 'golden woman'.

One of the classic images in cinema history is Kong atop the Empire State Building, holding Fay in his one hand, defying the aeroplanes buzzing around him.

In 2004, Fay was approached by director Peter Jackson to appear in a small cameo for the 2005 remake of King Kong, but she politely declined the cameo. Before filming of the remake commenced, she died in her sleep of natural causes on August 8, 2004, in her Manhattan apartment. Two days after her death, the lights of the Empire State Building were extinguished for 15 minutes in her memory.

Through an acting career which spanned 57 years, Fay attained international renown as an actress in horror movie roles. She was an excellent actress who, in my humble opinion, was never given a chance to live up to her potential, and listening to her old time radio performances on RUSC - especially the Lux Radio Theater shows, really show that!

Happy listening my friends,