Fay Wray
You can't put films down. They have made the world smaller. They have brought nations together. Look how people dress now in Japan. The ladies wore kimonos and now they wear Western-style clothes, don't they? Hollywood's influence is wonderfully strong.
Wood's death seemed incomprehensible. I don't know what happened that night. Something strange happened that night. Very, very odd that she would have just gone into that water. We can wonder, but that is the best we can do. She had such a delicate, vulnerable quality.
When we were making KONG, I went into the sound room and made an aria of horror sounds. I was in charge of it; there was no one there to listen to me. I was totally in charge of what I wanted to do.
When the script came I was absolutely appalled! I thought it was a practical joke.
When the picture was finished, they took me into the sound room and then I screamed more for about five minutes just steady screaming, and then they'd cut that in and add it.
When my daughter and her husband went to China many years ago-they were one of the first groups to go there-she was introduced as the daughter of the woman from KING KONG. Oh, my! They got a good, strong reaction!
When it was over my daughter said, 'Oh, I felt so sorry for him - he didn't want to hurt you, he liked you.' That was Victoria. When you visualize him up there on top of the Empire State Building, you do feel sorry for him.
When I was involved with Clifford Odets, I decided it was high time for me to write, too. He had written two failures after I knew him, but when I had been with him he told me he had the "formula" and that he could do it over and over.
When I talk about Hollywood, I have a different view than most people. It is not a chintzy place! It is not "Tinseltown" at all! A lot of talent, an enormous amount of talent went through this town and made a strong, strong imprint on film-and that will always remain.
When I did try to express myself it came out pretty tinny, but even so they could understand what I was saying. That turned out to be a plus.
Well, the Empire State was about 40' high in the studio. King Kong was a little model about 2' high, and the scenery that he worked in was in proportion to his size.
We were living in New York, because Robert Riskin had been working for the government for a few years making documentary films-propaganda films-and we were living at the Ritz Hotel.
They were very considerate, I must say. Every time I felt I was about to slip out of these fingers and would yell for help, they'd let me down and re-organize things.
They moved him with animation, you know, stop-motion. And then they had a huge rubber arm with a steel cable in side large enough to hold me.
There were shots of Kong pulling at my clothes, but only in horizontal and never from above. Never from above.
There was a little tiny doll model used for when King Kong was holding me.It was about 3" long. I couldn't tell the difference when I would go to see the day's work, it was blended that well.
There was a friend of my husband, John Monk Saunders, who was in charge of the sound department, which was a kind of reassuring thing.
There is a theater in Africa where they only show two films every day of the year - KING KONG and THE MARK OF ZORRO. Both of those are just running all the time. One night KING KONG, one night THE MARK OF ZORRO and together on Sunday.
There is a lot of strength and intelligence in Hollywood.
THE WEDDING MARCH was such a lovely film. It was just the greatest joy, like heaven had picked me up and made me happy. It was very rough sometimes, though, because Eric von Stroheim was a hard taskmaster. But, I enjoyed that. I respected him so much.