Gongs were big in silent movies, where the physical action of striking the gong effectively conveyed the idea of “Loud Noise”. (It also gave a pretty clear cue, if someone was providing live sound effects)
So there are obvious gongs in Thief of Bagdad (1924) and Metropolis (1925)*
As mentioned above, here’s a big gong atop the Giant Wall in King Kong (1933) used to summon the beast. The next year they used another gong to open the same wall, redressed (although it was a different gong) in She (1934)
At the end of the opening to TV’s original Mickey Mouse Club there was a gag with Donald Duck striking a gong. They had a series of different gags that they rotated:
*Metropolis also has steam whistles (indicating the End of Shift) for the same reason
In the Flash Gordon movies, Ming the Merciless had a gong that told his dancing girl(s) when to stop. When I saw this, I said in my best Chuck Barris voice “Aw, Ming, you ras-cule! Why’d ya *do *that? I thought she was doin’ just fine!”
I haven’t seen the movie in years, but I think Wang the Perverted in ***Flesh Gordon ***had a gong in his palace too.
All of the movies produced in England by “The Archers” — Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger — opened with an enormous gong being struck by a costumed POC. Like MGM and the lion roar.
Harryhausen must’ve liked them. Not only is there one in [b" Seventh Voyage of Sinbad**, as I mentioned above, there’s one in Golden Voyage of S8inbad, too, in the fight-with-the-statue-of-Kali scene
Another movie with a joking reference to the Rank Organization intro appears in the 1950 British film “The Happiest Days of Your Life”. About 17 minutes in a character loudly strikes a small gong, and is admonished with the line, “A tap, Gossage. I said a tap. You’re not introducing a film.”
Also about 20 minutes before the end of the Robert Altman movie A Perfect Couple, a character strikes a gong at the end of the song “Let the Music Play”.
