Fay Wray was born on 15 September 1907. She lived long enough to meet Naomi Watts who played Ann in King Kong (2005). But she died (at the age of 96) before they started shooting.
I’m not a huge fan of King Kong. To me, it’s a lot like Citizen Kane: important and ground-breaking, but not something I want to experience anymore. So I don’t even associate Fay Wray with it. I think of Doctor X and The Most Dangerous Game. But she starred in a lot of films. She started working during the silent era. But her career took off in the early days of sound film when they still made films fast.
Through the very early 1930s, Wray was under contract with Paramount. Two films (one silent, one sound) that she starred in with Gary Cooper are lost, which is hard to believe. She was rarely the lead actor in films of this era. In fact, she was often not even the top female actor. But she always had meaty roles.
I know her for her post-Paramount period. But it isn’t clear to me how she managed to avoid the studio system. She was working for different studios. For example:
- 3 August 1932: Doctor X (Warner Bros)
- 16 September 1932: The Most Dangerous Game (RKO Radio Pictures)
- 18 February 1933: Mystery of the Wax Museum (Warner Bros)
- 7 April 1933: King Kong (RKO Radio Pictures)
This was the period where she made her most memorable films. Of course, she gets two homages in 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show with the songs “Midnight Double Feature Picture Show” and “Don’t Dream It.”
Fay Wray has a notable (but not starring) role in Mystery of the Wax Museum. And since it is one of my favorite films — combining His Girl Friday with House of Wax — I figured we would watch it today. Note that it is one of the few films to use two-color Technicolor so it looks weird to us today.
Fay Wray publicity photo via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.
