# Have you seen King Kong (1933)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 5, 2012, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066 "2012-12-05T13:47:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/81 "2012-12-07T04:24:16Z")
I have seen it many times. I own a copy. One of my favorite films. Carl Denham is first class bastard. Man: The airplanes got him in the end. Carl: No, twas beauty that killed the beast Me: Actually Carl, I think this is all your fault. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/82 "2012-12-07T04:43:47Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > I have seen it many times. I own a copy. One of my favorite films. > > Carl Denham is first class bastard. > > Man: The airplanes got him in the end. > > Carl: No, twas beauty that killed the beast > > Me: Actually Carl, I think this is all your fault. That’s something PJ got right in his version of King Kong: Jack Black _was_ Carl Denham. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/83 "2012-12-07T05:16:19Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > When I was growing up it was on WOR channel 9 in New York all the time, usually on _Million Dollar Movie_, often twice in a row. Later, they broadcast it, along with _Son of Kong_ and _Mighty Joe Young_, on Thanksgiving, because they couldn’t compete with the parades and Football that ran on the big stations. This was almost certainly my exposure as well ( I’m not quite 46 ). For some reason _Son of Kong_, _Mighty Joe Young_ and the “glory” that was _Godzilla vs. King Kong_ all seemed more ubiquitous in my possibly shaky memory ( but see below ), but I’ve definitely seen the original several times. All before third grade ( when we moved out of NYC ) and never since. Odd that. I’ve never really thought about it, but I’ve never seen the original as an adult. I believe the SF Bay Area’s great Creature Features w/ Bob Wilkins showed several of those ape films, but I don’t recall seeing the original on that program. My only current memory is from NYC. ---
**Author:** ![Tixenfleaz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9a140/32.png) [@Tixenfleaz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tixenfleaz)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/84 "2012-12-07T05:36:33Z")
Own it, love it, and watch it several times a year. Even after factoring in the age, I still consider it one of the best movies of all time. It’s a pretty hard nosed flick. The deaths are brutal, and they don’t attempt to make Kong very sympathetic. Hell, he pulls a terrified blonde out of her room and then throws her to her death at one point. And yet you end up feeling sorry for him anyways. Don’t care much for the remakes, though I wanted to. They take a force of nature and turn him into a schmaltzy, love-besotted anti-hero. (I still don’t get why the village wall has giant doors, however. Those must’ve been a bitch to hang.) ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/85 "2012-12-07T05:42:23Z")
> [@Tixenfleaz](#): > > (I still don’t get why the village wall has giant doors, however. Those must’ve been a bitch to hang.) I don’t remember the details, but in King Kong vs. Godzilla the big guy comes into the village to save them from the giant octopus. Maybe they opened the door for him in circumstances like that. But it seems like he could have just climbed over the wall anyway so I don’t even see the wall as doing that much good. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/86 "2012-12-07T12:47:17Z")
> [@Corcaigh](#): > > Oh? I seem to remember the show I saw they didn’t realise they’d marked Kong’s fur until they watched the whole sequence and realised what was causing the rippling. > > But that was on the BBC so probably a different source material. 😉 According to _The Making of King Kong_ by Orville Goldner and George El. Turner (1975) (Goldner was one of the effects crew on the original Kong, so he knew whereof he spoke): > [@](#): > > “Kong was eighteen inches high,” Delgado says. “The skeleton was made of high-tempered dural and I gave him muscles that react, which is why Kong looks alive instead of stiff. I was given pruned rabbit fur to cover him with and I was never satisfied cwith that because I knew it would show the fingerprints of the animators.” (p. 58) > [@](#): > > Kong’s fur, as Delgado had predicted, proved to be a problem in animation. Cooper and Schoedsack were appalled when some RKO executives joined them in viewing animation rushes. Their hearts sank as they watched the hair of Kong’s head and shoulders ripple with each touch of the animator’s fingers. The unwelcome effect was emphasized by artful backlighting. > > “Hey, Kong is mad!” one of the officials cried delightedly as Kong roared his defiance. “Look at him bristle!” p. 131 Marcel Delado was the chied model maker, who’d worked with O’brien for years, and certainly wouldn’t have kept quiet about any misgivings. Goldner and Turner’s book was republished in what was advertised as an “expanded”: edition as _Spawn of Skull Island_ several years ago, but that edition severely reduced the sizes of many of the originally full-paged illustrations, and reproduced them badly. I think they may have left some material out, too. The added material doesn’t make up for it. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/87 "2012-12-07T13:31:10Z")
Is their any record of what ever became of the original rabbit fur Kong model? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/88 "2012-12-07T13:43:55Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > Is their any record of what ever became of the original rabbit fur Kong model? There were multiple armatures built and used for the film. One was re-used for _Son of Kong_. Over the years most vanished. One of them was on display at a place called _Movie World_ in California when I was a kid. I never got out there, but there were pictures in _Famous Monsters of Filmland_. It had long ago lost the fur and the foam rubber musxcles, and was just a bare skeleton\*. It’s now in the possession of film historian Bob Burns: > **[Props - King Kong Armature](http://hollywoodlostandfound.net/props/kingkong.html)** \*Animation models have a surprisingly short lifetime, and begin to fall apart almost after the film is finished, it seems. When I saw pictures of Harryhausen’s models through the years, they were frequently spalling and peeling. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/89 "2012-12-07T13:52:29Z")
Christies auctioned off what was claimed to be an armature a couple of years ago. I don’t think it’s the Burns one. It might be one of the other Kong armatures said to have been made > **[Christie’s Original Prop “King Kong” Stop-Motion Armature – High Resolution...](https://www.originalprop.com/blog/2009/09/23/christie%e2%80%99s-original-prop-%e2%80%9cking-kong%e2%80%9d-stop-motion-armature-high-resolution-photography/)** > > There has been significant interest in the King Kong stop-motion armature that is scheduled to be auctioned in Christie’s “Pop Culture” auction event on November 24, 2009 at South Kensignton, as re… This Christie’s site says that it’s the armature used for the Empire State Building scenes: > **[King Kong, 1933](https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-king-kong-1933-5270732/?)** > > King Kong, 1933 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/90 "2012-12-07T14:00:00Z")
More discussion than you probabnly want on armatures from Kong: > **[The Classic Horror Film Board-Status of the original O'Brien Armatures?](https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/status-of-the-original-o-brien-armatures-t34396.html)** > > I haven't had a chance to view all the topics and see if this information has been covered already. But, I've seen a lot of the armatures from Kong an ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/91 "2012-12-07T14:24:16Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > I believe the SF Bay Area’s great Creature Features w/ Bob Wilkins showed several of those ape films, but I don’t recall seeing the original on that program. Bob Wilkins never showed anything anywhere near that good. A lot of movies that showed up later on MST3K, I saw previously on Creature Features (“Horror of Party Beach” was definitely one) ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/92 "2012-12-07T16:07:26Z")
Thought this Youtube [link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cpFuZb_Mq0w) would be relevant. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2012, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/93 "2012-12-07T23:46:45Z")
Seen it, loved it, own it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2012, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/94 "2012-12-08T00:35:00Z")
“Hattie McDaniel’s sister in a coconut bra.” Now there’s where you bring your A game to bar trivia night. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2012, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066/95 "2012-12-08T00:42:50Z")
I saw the full-length (or fuller-length than shortened… whatever…) version as a kid, and I remember being absolutely terrified by all the jungle scenes, particularly with everybody falling to their deaths and getting stomped on by Kong. And, in Faye’s case, stripped. Once they got back to the US, the movie kinda screeched to a halt. But, still, a great movie. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-seen-king-kong-1933/643066.md?page=4)