Fay Wray & Bruce Cabot have a guest in King Kong (1933, dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack)

King Kong (1933, dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack)

Merian C. Cooper had been working on a script about the discovery of a giant ape on a remote island, but he couldn’t think of a good ending. He wanted a “chariot race”, a la Ben Hur - a climax that would nail audiences to their seats. He found his chariot race while in New York when he glanced up and saw a plane flying close to the city’s skyscrapers. 

“I immediately saw in my mind’s eye a giant gorilla on top of the building and I thought to myself, if I can get the gorilla logically on top of the mightiest building in the world and then have him shot down by the most modern of weapons, the airplane, then no matter how great he was in size that gorilla was doomed by civilization. And I remember saying aloud to myself, ‘Well, if that isn’t a chariot race, I don’t know what is.’”

-excerpted from James Sander’s Celluloid Skyline

King Kong (1933, dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack)