Talk:King Kong (1933 film)

Where's Willis?

So little is Willis O'Brien mentioned in this article, even though he was the main force responsible for the success of the film. This should be rectified. O'Brien pioneered dozens of techniques in this film that would not be bested for thirty years or more. Here he is treated almost as an incidental contributor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.189.193 (talk) 08:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Recent script rewrites

SoniaSyle has recently vastly rewritten the section about the writing of this film, replacing the version found in the 1975 book, The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner (who actually worked on the picture) and George Turner (a highly regarded film historian), Ballantine Books, with a fundamentally different one sourced to a much more recent tome (2005) by one Ray Morton, King Kong: the history of a movie icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson (lack of caps sic). Goldner, as I said, was a member of the 1933 original's crew while Turner had access to several other then-surviving participants; indeed, the original film is the entire subject of their book (admittedly, other more-or-less directly related films are discussed). Morton, on the other hand, seems to have written about the property as a whole. See also this description of Edgar Wallace's contributions, or more accurately, the lack thereof. As indicated there, no less than Merian C. Cooper has stated flatly that Wallace actually wrote nothing of Kong. Note that the article still retains the dates of when he arrived in Hollywood and "began" to work on Kong and his death, little more than one month apart. Given little dispute of the cause (pneumonia, some say complicated by diabetes, which Goldner/Turner described as rendering him an invalid, and certainly took some significant amount of time to kill him), Cooper's denial that Wallace wrote so much as "one bloody word" seems plausible, to say the least, and I submit for discussion that the previous version should be restored. --Tbrittreid (talk) 22:54, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Restorations

The section ":Re-releases" includes this: "In 1956, censorship rules were relaxed (movies were then competing with television) and all the film's cut scenes were restored except that of Kong removing Ann's dress. The scene could not be found. After the 1956 re-release, the film was sold to television and played successfully to huge audiences. In 1969, a print of the "Ann's dress" scene was found in Philadelphia, restored to the film, and released to art houses by Janus Films in 1971." It has long been consistently reported that the exised scenes were all considered lost, then found and restored at the same time, and certainly none of them were seen on US television until the 1980s. Only the last sentence bears a cite, and it is to a work on "Pre-code Hollywood" not specifically about this film; I strongly suspect it does not support anything but that last sentence itself. Can someone find one (or more) of those other sources that give the other version? I'll be looking myself, but I don't have access to much to check, hence this request. --Tbrittreid (talk) 22:35, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Plot too short?

I know that here on wiki we try and prevent plots being too long and complex but it strikes me that this one is currently too short by Good+ quality standards that we want to achieve. Stabby Joe (talk) 01:12, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

The plot section was eviscerated by a since-(re)banned editor, who also decided (unilaterally) that anything "old" as a source for the rest of the article, and their contents, is b-a-a-a-a-d. As to the plot section, it is not only too short, it reads like a second-grade primer. I lol every time I see the current travesty, since all those terrible details were deleted but "a police lieutenant" left standing!--Reedmalloy (talk) 12:11, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Copyright status

When does the copyright expire in the US?173.58.64.64 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

Well, there were remakes in 1977 and 2005, which were under the production and/or permission of RKO's successor companies. Both remakes probably constituted renewals of the copyright by default. So, it'll be a really long time. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 22:42, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

"Apeman Creature?"

I never thought of Kong as an "apeman creature." I've always thought of him as an impossibly-sized gorilla. Where's the source for this assertion? Jfulbright (talk) 14:23, 15 August 2011 (UTC)