Canadian-born Fay Wray was brought up in Los Angeles and entered films at an early age. She was barely in her teens when she started working as an extra. She began her career as a heroine in westerns at Universal during the silent era. In 1926 the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers selected 13 young starlets it deemed most likely to succeed in pictures. Fay was chosen as one of these starlets, along with Janet Gaynor and Mary Astor. Fame would indeed come to Fay when she played another heroine in Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March. She would continue playing leads in a number of films, such as the good-bad girl in Thunderbolt. By the early 1930s she was at Paramount working with Gary Cooper and Jack Holt in a number of average films, such as Master of Men. She also appeared in such horror films as Doctor X and The Vampire Bat. In 1933 Fay was approached by producer Merian C. Cooper, who told her that he had a part for her in a picture in which she would be working with a tall, dark leading man. What he didn't tell her was that her "tall, dark leading man" was a giant gorilla, and the picture turned out to be the classic King Kong. Perhaps no one in the history of pictures could scream more dramatically than Fay, and she really put on a show in "Kong". Her character provided a combination of sex appeal, vulnerability and lung capacity as she was stalked by the giant beast all the way to the top of the Empire State Building. That was as far as Fay would rise, however, as this was, after all, just another horror movie. After "Kong", she began a slow decline that put her into low-budget action films by the mid-'30s. In 1939 her 11-year marriage to screenwriter John Monk Saunders would end in divorce, and her career would be almost finished. In 1942 she remarried and retired from the screen, forever to be remembered as the "beauty who killed the beast" in "King Kong". However, in 1953 she made a comeback, playing mature character roles and also appeared on television as Catherine, Natalie Wood's mother, in The Pride of the Family. She continued to appear in films until 1958 and television into the 1960s.



King Kong (1933): $10,000.00

Referenced in the 1998 song "Are You Jimmy Ray?" by Jimmy Ray. She had a daughter, 'Susan Riskin', by her first marriage to the writer John Monk Saunders and two children, 'Robert Riskin Jr' and Victoria Riskin, by her second marriage to the writer Robert Riskin. Best remembered as the girl held in the hand of RKO's King Kong (1933). In January 2003, a 95-year-old Fay Wray was awarded the "Legend in Film" Award at the Palm Beach International Film Festival when she appeared there in person to celebrate Rick McKay's film Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There (2003), which she also appeared in. In addition to her honor, McKay's film was honored with the Audience Award "Best Documentary" of the festival by unanimous vote. Adrien Brody and Robert Evans won awards in addition to Wray and McKay at the same festival. Despite leaving Canada at an early age, she often visited Cardston, Alberta, her hometown. On August 10, 2004, two days after her death, the lights on the Empire State Building in New York City (scene of the climax from her most popular film, "King Kong") were dimmed for 15 minutes in her memory. Buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, 6000 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, California. This cemetery is near downtown Hollywood just blocks from Hollywood and Vine Streets. The cemetery is behind the Paramount Studios, surrounded by many businesses, and is easy to miss for first-time travelers. Her brother, J. Vivian Wray, suffered from a mental disorder and was confined to a sanitarium. He escaped and apparently committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a streetcar in Stockton, California, on June 4, 1928. She spent time with and became friends with Peter Jackson, a major fan, while he was in the process of developing his remake of 'King Kong'. Before she passed on, Wray also met and became friendly with Naomi Watts, whom she also approved to play the part that Wray originated, 'Ann Darrow'. Pictured on one of four 51¢ Canadian commemorative postage stamps honoring "Canadians in Hollywood" issued 22 May 2006. Others honored in this set are John Candy, Lorne Greene, and Mary Pickford. Described Kong as her "little man". Sideline: playwright ("Angela Is Twenty-Two" and "The Meadowlark"). Gothic metal band Type O Negative wrote a song about her called, Fay Wray Come Out and Play.