King Kong (1933)
Warner Bros. DVD - 2005
Warner Bros. DVD Box Set - 2005
Warner Bros. BRD - 2010
Warner Bros. BRD - 2014
Warner Bros. BRD - 2017
I’m King Kong! The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper - 57:02
Directed by Kevin Brownlow and Christopher Bird, Produced by Patrick Stanbury, Narrated by Alec Baldwin, Music by Carl Davis, Presented by Turner Classic Movies
This documentary premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado on September 3, 2005. It first aired on TCM later that year on November 22, the same day that WB included it on their first King Kong DVD release in the run-up to Peter Jackson's remake.
At just under an hour, this is a streamlined but expansive look at the life and accomplishments of Merian C. Cooper (1893-1973), the director of King Kong. Throughout the documentary, we get to hear snippets of Cooper reflecting on his life via archived audio. There are also lots of onscreen interviews with entertainment figures like Fay Wray, Ray Harryhausen, Ray Bradbury and Terry Moore, as well as men who served with Cooper in the armed forces. They all speak of him in laudatory terms.
The documentary begins with Cooper’s early years, getting expelled from the US Naval Academy and later serving as a bomber pilot during World War I. It then examines his time as part of a volunteer flight squadron supporting the Polish Army against the Soviets, which led to Cooper spending months in a Soviet POW camp before staging a daring escape with several others.
It then proceeds to Cooper’s return to the US and his career as a filmmaker. His collaborations with Ernest Schoedsack get the spotlight here with particular attention paid to King Kong. It also covers his return to service as an Air Force colonel during World War II and his later film collaborations with director John Ford.
The last part of the documentary is devoted to Cooper’s landmark 1952 film This Is Cinerama, the ultimate combination of his passions for film, aviation and larger-than-life showmanship. It was the first movie to utilize the Cinerama widescreen format, the footage recorded with three synchronized cameras and projected onto an extra-wide theater screen to envelop the audience’s peripheral vision. For a 4x3 TV special produced in 2005, it does a very effective job of presenting the Cinerama footage in a way that emphasizes what audiences in 1952 would have experienced. It’s the perfect way to wrap up this captivating biography of Merian C. Cooper.
