Fay Wray & King Kong (1933): The Making of the Original Scream Queen — RKO, Damsels in Distress, and Hollywood's Impossible Spectacle

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The first in our October Halloween series: four weeks of classic Hollywood's darker, stranger, and more monstrous stories. Fay Wray was already one of Hollywood's busiest young leading ladies when RKO cast her in King Kong . She had risen from Hal Roach shorts and the WAMPAS Baby Stars to Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March , then made a name in the fast, precarious world of early-1930s pictures. This episode follows Wray from her poverty-stricken childhood in Canada and early years in Hollywood through the silent era, Paramount, multiple leading lady roles, The Most Dangerous Game , and the extraordinary production that put her in the hand of a giant ape. Alongside Wray's story is the…