King Kong

Posted by admin on May 10, 2011

“I dare do all that becomes a man.” ~ Shakespeare

In 1899, the great uncle he was named for gave six-year-old Merian C. Cooper a book by Paul Du Chaillu entitled Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa. It mesmerized the boy. In 1903, Orville and Wilber Wright flew at Kitty Hawk and ten-year-old Merian then became equally spellbound by aviation. These events (and the not unimportant detail that he’d been born a timid child in a manly family), pushed him to embrace a life of derring-do—one that even fictional characters have had a hard time besting.

If it was distant, difficult, and dangerous, Merian C. Cooper was up for it.

Eschewing fighter planes in WWI, Cooper chose to be a bomber pilot. On one raid, the Germans shot holes through his plane, piercing the neck of his friend in the rear seat and setting the engine on fire. As flames filled the cockpit and Cooper, sans parachute, prepared to jump, he turned and saw that the man he thought was dead had opened his eyes. Cooper climbed back in and set the plane into a precipitous dive hoping to burn up all the fuel. It worked. Then with hideously burnt hands, he used his elbows and knees to maneuver his kite to the ground. Though captured, both men survived – although a death certificate signed by Blackjack Pershing was received by Cooper’s parents.

After the war, Cooper became involved in the burgeoning industries of aviation and film. No adventure, whether to the remotest parts of the world or in the most ostentatious offices of big business, scared him. He jumped into everything without reserve.

When he asked Fay Wray to star in his new movie, he told her he was going to get her the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood. She was thrilled, hoping that her dreams of working with Cary Grant were about to come true.

Her leading man was, in fact, extraordinarily tall and dark—but he wasn’t Grant.

In his lifetime, Merian C. Cooper was a founding member of Pan Am Airlines; John Ford’s partner in most of the famous director’s movies; a WWII pilot and chief of staff for General Claire Chennault of the China Air Task Force; the man who paired Fred with Ginger; and first suggested that a Broadway actress named Katherine Hepburn should be given a screen test. He also did Busby Berkeley one better by putting dancing girls on airplanes (see Dancing Down to Rio as an adrenaline-charged example).

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, Creator of King Kong [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [MP3 CD] http://tinyurl.com/3njmccv