Fay Wray

Canadian-born Fay Wray was brought up in Los Angeles and entered films at an early age. She was barely in her teens when she started working as an extra. She began her career as a heroine in westerns at Universal during the silent era. In 1926 the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers selected 13 young starlets it deemed most likely to succeed in pictures. Fay was chosen as one of these starlets, along with Janet Gaynor and Mary Astor.

Fame would indeed come to Fay when she played another heroine in Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March (1928).

She continued playing leads in a number of films, such as the good-bad girl in Thunderbolt (1929).

By the early 1930s she was at Paramount working with Gary Cooper and Jack Holt in a number of average films, such as Master of Men (1933).

She also appeared in such horror films as Doctor X (1932) and Vampire Bat (1933).

In 1933 Fay was approached by producer Merian C. Cooper, who told her that he had a part for her in a picture in which she would be working with a tall, dark leading man.

What he didn't tell her was that her "tall, dark leading man" was a giant gorilla, and the picture turned out to be the classic King Kong (1933). Perhaps no one in the history of pictures could scream more dramatically than Fay, and she really put on a show in "Kong". Her character provided a combination of sex appeal, vulnerability and lung capacity as she was stalked by the giant beast all the way to the top of the Empire State Building. That was as far as Fay would rise, however, as this was, after all, just another horror movie. After "Kong", she began a slow decline that put her into low-budget action films by the mid '30s.

Along with Ginger Rogers and actress Marie Blake (Blossom Rock), she was a bridesmaid in Jeanette MacDonald's 1937 wedding to Gene Raymond.

In 1939 her 11-year marriage to screenwriter John Monk Saunders ended in divorce, and her career was almost finished.

In 1942 she remarried and retired from the screen, forever to be remembered as the "beauty who killed the beast" in "King Kong".

However, in 1953 she made a comeback, playing mature character roles, and also appeared on television as Catherine, Natalie Wood's mother, in The Pride of the Family (1953).

She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6349 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.

She is referenced twice in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). During the Floorshow, Frank says, 'Whatever happened to Fay Wray/that delicate, satin-draped frame/as it clung to her thigh, how I started to cry/cause I wanted to be dressed just the same'; and in the opening song: 'then something went wrong/for Fay Wray and King Kong/they got caught in a celluloid jam'.

She was offered a cameo role in King Kong (1976), a remake of her most famous film (King Kong (1933)), but turned down because she did not like the script.

Was guest of honor in 1991, at the 60th birthday of the Empire State Building in New York City.

Miss Wray was originally offered the role of the elderly Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic (1997), which she turned down.

Referenced in the 1998 song "Are You Jimmy Ray?" by Jimmy Ray.

In January 2003, a 95-year-old Fay Wray was awarded the "Legend in Film" Award at the Palm Beach International Film Festival when she appeared there in person to celebrate Rick McKay's film Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There (2003), which she also appeared in. In addition to her honor, McKay's film was honored with the Audience Award "Best Documentary" of the festival by unanimous vote. Adrien Brody and Robert Evans won awards in addition to Wray and McKay at the same festival.

On August 10, 2004, two days after her death, the lights on the Empire State Building in New York City (scene of the climax from her most popular film, King Kong (1933), were dimmed for 15 minutes in her memory.

For the remake of King Kong (2005), director Peter Jackson wanted Fay to say the closing line of the film. Since she died before it was done, the line went to Jack Black.

Pictured on one of four 51¢ Canadian commemorative postage stamps honoring "Canadians in Hollywood" issued 22 May 2006. Others honored in this set are John Candy, Lorne Greene and Mary Pickford.

Her image appears on the cover of the 2012 music CD Electro Swing V.