Miscellany
- In the 1933 version of King Kong, Cooper and co-director Ernest B. Schoedsack appear at the end, piloting the plane that finally finishes off Kong. Cooper had reportedly said, "We should kill the sonofabitch ourselves."
- Cooper personally cut a scene in King Kong in which four sailors are shaken off a rope bridge by Kong, fall into a ravine, and are eaten alive by giant spiders. According to Hollywood folklore, the decision was made after previews in January 1933, during which audience members either fled the theater in terror or talked about the ghastly scene throughout the remainder of the movie. However, more objective sources maintain that the scene merely slowed the film's pace. Legend has it that Cooper kept a print of the cut footage as a memento, although it has never been found.
- In the 2005 remake of King Kong, upon learning that Fay Wray was not available because she was making a film for Cooper at RKO, Carl Denham (Jack Black) replies, "Cooper, huh? I might have known."
- Cooper claimed that he got the idea for King Kong after he had a dream that a giant gibbon was terrorizing New York City. When he woke, he recorded the idea and used it for the film.
- On 4 April and 11 April 2007, Turner Classic Movies aired six films that had been produced by Cooper at RKO but had been out of distribution for over 50 years. According to TCM host Robert Osborne, Cooper had agreed to a legal settlement with RKO in 1946, after accusing RKO of not having given him all the money due him from his RKO producer's contract in the 1930s. The settlement gave Cooper complete ownership of six RKO titles—Rafter Romance (1933) with Ginger Rogers, Double Harness (1933) with Ann Harding and William Powell, The Right to Romance (1933), One Man's Journey (1933) with Lionel Barrymore, Living on Love (1937), and A Man to Remember (1938). According to an interview with a retired RKO executive that was used as a TCM promo for the premiere, Cooper allowed the films to be shown in 1955–56 in a limited re-release, and only in New York City.
Read more about this topic: Merian C. Cooper
Famous quotes containing the word miscellany:
“The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded,—the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and love what is simple and beautiful; independence and cheerful relation, these are the essentials,—these, and the wish to serve,—to add somewhat to the well-being of men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character; after the highest, and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)