GOODBYE TO FAY WRAY
Variety reports beautifully:
She appeared in more than 70 features, but her name will be forever associated with the climactic scene in the 1933 ‘King Kong’ in which the giant ape from Skull Island carries her to the top of the Empire State Building, gently places her on a ledge, lunges furiously at fighter planes peppering him with bullets and falls to his death from the 102-story skyscraper, his strength and power neutralized by love.
‘She was a naturally gracious and witty person who charmed everyone who met her. She thought filmmaking was magical and loved being a part of the history of Hollywood,’ said her daughter, former Writers Guild West prexy Victoria Riskin.
Wray was born on a farm in Alberta, Canada, and moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. She began acting in bit parts in movies, then won supporting roles.
After graduating from Hollywood High School, she was the ingenue in a half-dozen silent Westerns and played the bride in Erich von Stroheim’s 1928 silent classic ‘The Wedding March.’
Among her prominent sound films are ‘The Four Feathers’ (1929), ‘Dirigible’ (1931), ‘One Saturday Afternoon’ (1933), and ‘Viva Villa!’ and ‘The Affairs of Cellini’ (both ’34).
Her damsel-in-distress depictions led to roles in other 1930s films in which her life, her virtue or both were imperiled: ‘Dr. X,’ ‘The Mystery of the Wax Museum,’ ‘The Vampire Bat’ and ‘The Most Dangerous Game.’
She declined the offer to play a small part in the 1976 remake of ‘King Kong,’ in which Jessica Lange was Kong’s co-star, because she disliked the script and felt a remake could never equal the impact of the original.
In her 1989 autobiography, ‘On the Other Hand,’ she described her many romances with writers, including her first husband, John Monk Saunders, whom she married when she was just 19. A Rhodes scholar and screenwriter known for films including ‘Wings’ and ‘The Dawn Patrol,’ he was a womanizer, an alcoholic and a drug addict. She divorced him, she said, after he injected her with drugs while she slept, sold their house and their furniture and kept the money and disappeared for a time with their baby daughter. Saunders hanged himself in 1940 at 43.
She was pursued by Sinclair Lewis and had a long romance with Clifford Odets. In 1942, she was married to Robert Riskin, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of ‘It Happened One Night,’ ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town’ and ‘Lost Horizon.’ He suffered a stroke in 1950 and died as a result five years later. After Riskin’s death, she married Sanford Rothenberg, a neurosurgeon who had been one of Riskin’s doctors. Rothenberg died in 1991.
Wray retired in 1942 but made occasional movies in the ’50s and co-starred with Henry Fonda in 1979 telepic ‘Gideon’s Trumpet.’ She starred in sitcom ‘The Pride of the Family’ from 1953-55. In later years, she also wrote plays that were produced in regional theaters.
Although for a long while she resented the way ‘King Kong’ dominated people’s view of her abilities and the way it skewed her career, she eventually came to appreciate both the film’s and her places in cinematic history. ‘I find it not acceptable when people blame Hollywood for the things that happened to them. Films are wonderful. I’ve had a beautiful life because of films,’ she said.
Besides daughter Victoria, she is survived by daughter Susan and son Robert Riskin Jr.
Courtesy of Variety
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