~
Kim Basinger tried out for the role of Dwan for her first film audition and Melanie Griffith did a screen test for the role. According to her autobiography, De Laurentiis approached Britt Ekland for the role but she turned him down. Fay Wray was offered a cameo in the film, however, she refused the role because she didn't like the script. (link below).
They met Peter Wynne-Willson who was on tour with Pink Floyd as the band’s lighting designer, performance artist Ellie Klein, lived with Swiss photographer Robert Frank. They entertained John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York and in San Francisco they hung out with blues musicians Michael Bloomfield and Mark Naftalin of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. All of this is delightfully documented in Artful Living (link below). After the two married in 1971, Lange left college to pursue a more bohemian lifestyle, traveling in the United States and Mexico in a minivan with Grande.
Side 2:
B2 - Kong Hits The Big Apple - 2:32
B3 - Blackout In New York / How About Buying Me A Drink - 3:20
B4 - Climb To Skull Island - 2:17
B5 - The End Is At Hand - 1:41
B6 - The End - 4:22
Companies, etc.
Record Company – Warner Bros. Records Inc.
Record Company – Warner Communications Inc.
Copyright © – Dino De Laurentiis Corporation
Pressed By – Capitol Records Pressing Plant, Winchester
Credits:
Composed By, Conductor – John Barry
Engineer [Recording, Mixing] – Dan Wallin
Producer – Federico De Laurentiis, John Barry
Notes:
"----<" etched in run-outs denotes a Capitol, Winchester pressing.
Includes a poster.
Reprise Records, a division of Warner Bros. Records Inc.
Copyright (c) 1976 Dino De Laurentiis Corporation
Made in U.S.A.
Barcode and Other Identifiers
Matrix / Runout (A run-out, etched): MS-1-2260 WWI #2 ---<
Matrix / Runout (B run-out, etched): MS-2-2260 WWI ----<
King Kong (1976) ~
Styrous® ~ Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Today is the birthday of Jessica Lange, born on April 20, 1949, in Cloquet, Minnesota. As I have loved the original 1933 King Kong film with Fay Wray (links below) my whole life, I had to see the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis remake of the action-adventure classic. The bonus was, it was my introduction to Jessica Lange.
Her role as Dwan, in the "Beauty and the Beast" love story, won her the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year and made her a star!
The film's production values were terrific; the special effects with dinosaurs (a favorite subject of mine (link below),
giant snakes, etc., were great and it
was a lot of fun. At one point Kong puts Dwan (Lange) under a waterfall, filmed in Brazil,
dunks her into a pool then blows on her to dry her off; a bit racey (link below). Lange's role is basically the typical "brainless
beauty"; she's a great actress and she fit the bill perfectly! She was gorgeous and I fell totally
in love with her.
But
I would discover many years later that in reality, she actually has a
brilliant mind behind those beautiful looks.
Jessica Lange is the 13th actress to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, having won two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, along with a Screen Actors Guild Award and five Golden Globe Awards. Additionally, she is the second actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress after winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress,
the third actress and first performer since 1943 to receive two Oscar
nominations in the same year, the fifth actress and ninth performer to
win Oscars in both the lead and supporting acting categories, and tied
for the sixth most Oscar-nominated actress. Lange holds the record for
most nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film. She is the only performer ever to win Primetime Emmy Awards in both the Outstanding Supporting Actress and Outstanding Lead Actress categories for the same miniseries. Lange has also garnered a Critics Choice Award and three Dorian Awards, making her the most honored actress by the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association. In 1998, Entertainment Weekly listed Lange among the 25 Greatest Actresses of the 1990s. Not bad for a "brainless" beauty!
Lange was not the only consideration for the lead role of Dwan; Meryl Streep, Bette Midler, Farrah Fawcett, Bo Derek (who turned it down), and, would you believe, Barbra Streisand were in the running.
In a 2008 interview with David Letterman, Meryl Streep
revealed that she auditioned for the role of Dwan. De Laurentiis turned
to his son, describing Streep as "Troppo brutta per King Kong" ("Too
ugly for King Kong"). Not knowing Streep understood the language, she
responded in perfect Italian that she was very sorry to have
disappointed him, and left De Laurentiis stunned (link below).
Roman Polanski, Michael Winner, and Sam Peckinpah were offered the chance to direct, but all of them turned it down.
Ray Harryhausen
was considered to provide the stop-motion effects for Kong. Harryhausen
turned it down as he felt that 12 months wasn't sufficient time to
deliver on such a detailed shoot.
Trivia
In a Time magazine cover story on the production, Dino De Laurentiis said "No one cried when Jaws
died, but when the monkey dies, people are gonna cry. Intellectuals are
gonna love Kong. Even film buffs who love the first Kong are gonna love
ours. Why? Because, I don't give a crap."
At a breakfast press conference held on the Paramount
backlot to celebrate the launch of the film's principal photography, de
Laurentiis promised to "blow away" members of the media by unveiling
both of his "stars" - blonde newcomer Lange and the giant mechanical ape
created to play the title role. Lange gamely posed in a huge rubber
gorilla "hand," but disappointed photographers when she refused to
scream for them.
For shots of Kong holding Jessica Lange,
the filmmakers built giant hydraulic gorilla arms. The hands were six
feet across, and the arms weighed 1,650 lbs. (750 kg.) each. They
weren't ready until shooting was well underway. When they were finally
built, De Laurentiis
was invited to the set to witness a test. He walked into the studio,
and a giant arm extended in his direction. Then the middle finger slowly
uncurled and extended itself. De Laurentiis broke up. So did the arm;
it was frozen, finger up, for a week (link below).
date & photographer unknown
King Kong and A Star is Born were the subject of a popular industry joke at the time. Kong producer Dino De Laurentiis and Star is Born producer Jon Peters
encounter one another at a Hollywood party and begin to argue about
which film will be a bigger hit. After a few rounds of back-and-forth de
Laurentiis says "I forgot, your monkey, she sings!" (referring to Streisand).
A Star is Born poster
For the first six weeks of pre-production, in late 1975, De Laurentiis had Rick Baker and Carlo Rambaldi construct competing Kong concept suits. Rambaldi designed his to fit African-American Albert Popwell,
who was originally cast as Kong, while Baker single-handedly designed
his with himself in mind as Kong. When Baker and Rambaldi presented
their semi-finished suits to De Laurentiis, he chose Baker's over
Rambaldi's, which he called a "disaster". At the beginning of November
1975, several contemporary sources reported
complaints from African-American actors, who were called to Dino's Los Angeles, California,
office, and asked to perform the characteristics of a gorilla, in a
casting call for the title role. The production decided that casting an
African-American as a gorilla would be racially insensitive. PC thirty-five years ago!
In his 1989 autobiography It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here..., Charles Grodin
recounts that his character was originally going to survive the
picture, and that De Laurentiis was already planning a sequel and asked
him if he would be interested in reprising the role. But when a test
audience didn't like the scene in which Kong tried to stomp on Fred
Wilson (Grodin) and misses, it was re-edited to make it look like Wilson
was squashed.
When Dwan explains how she came to be on the yacht that sank, she mentions that her friend Harry was going to take her to Singapore
to put her in a movie. She also mentions that when the yacht sank,
everyone but her was below deck, watching the 1972 adult movie Deep Throat. It's mentioned more than once, indicating that Dwan was going to star in a pornographic movie, and that "Harry" was Harry Reems, the star of Deep Throat (link below).
Deep Throat poster
The score for the film was written by John Barry; it was typical Hollywood
music and it was ok. My favorite section is, Sacrifice - Hail To The King, which is the entrance of Kong to
claim his bride. It is wonderfully and totally over the top Hollywood "jungle drama"!
Rotten Tomatoes as well as many other film critics have not been very kind in their reviews of the film:
"King Kong represents a significant visual upgrade over the original, but falls short of its classic predecessor in virtually every other respect."
I
don't care what the critics might have said, I love the film! As well
as the jungle effects, it nicely chronicles the "smash hit" Kong becomes
in The Big Apple when Kong destroys an elevated train (the Astoria El in Queens, New York was used). The filming of the New York City
climax scene was filmed in June 1976, with a casting call for 5,000
extras. Over 30,000 people showed up, (link below).
The ancestry of Jessica Lange
is German, Finnish and Dutch; her father was a teacher and traveling
salesman; the family moved dozens of times in her youth, which probably
sent her on the trajectory her life took. In 1967, she received a
scholarship to study art and photography at the University of Minnesota, where she met and began dating Spanish photographer Paco Francisco Grande.
The
history of their lives together is right out of a romantic adventure
film. For eight years from 1968 to 1976, Lange lived the life of the
artiste bohémien. They met Russian show-business photographer Maurice Seymour, she got tear-gassed in Paris during the 1968 student revolution. She drank in cafes with fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld before he was famous (Lagerfeld favored high heels and furs for his daily outings). Lange pantomimed in Washington Square Park in New York City for loose change and she had a romantic relationship with Mikhail Baryshnikov.
During filming, tabloids speculated that Jeff Bridges and Lange were having an on-set affair. The rumors were false; Lange was in a relationship with Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Bridges was engaged to Susan Geston (Susan Bridges). Lange and Bridges have remained friends since making this film (link below).
They met Peter Wynne-Willson who was on tour with Pink Floyd as the band’s lighting designer, performance artist Ellie Klein, lived with Swiss photographer Robert Frank. They entertained John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York and in San Francisco they hung out with blues musicians Michael Bloomfield and Mark Naftalin of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. All of this is delightfully documented in Artful Living (link below). After the two married in 1971, Lange left college to pursue a more bohemian lifestyle, traveling in the United States and Mexico in a minivan with Grande.
Jessica Lange & Paco Grande
photo: Paco Grande
The couple then moved to Paris, where they drifted apart. While there, Lange studied mime theatre under the supervision of Étienne Decroux and joined the Opéra-Comique as a dancer. She later studied acting at HB Studio in New York City.
A great bonus of the album is that it includes a gigante 23" X 46" poster that catches the scene when Kong is enraged at the theft of his "Bride" . . .
Tracklist:
Side 1:
Side 1:
A1 - The Opening - 2:13
A2 - Maybe My Luck Has Changed - 1:48
A3 - Arrival On The Island - 2:33
A4 - Sacrifice - Hail To The King - 7:04
A5 - Arthusa - 2:18
A6 - Full Moon Domain - Beauty Is A Beast - 4:21
A7 - Breakout To Captivity - 4:07
A2 - Maybe My Luck Has Changed - 1:48
A3 - Arrival On The Island - 2:33
A4 - Sacrifice - Hail To The King - 7:04
A5 - Arthusa - 2:18
A6 - Full Moon Domain - Beauty Is A Beast - 4:21
A7 - Breakout To Captivity - 4:07
Side 2:
B2 - Kong Hits The Big Apple - 2:32
B3 - Blackout In New York / How About Buying Me A Drink - 3:20
B4 - Climb To Skull Island - 2:17
B5 - The End Is At Hand - 1:41
B6 - The End - 4:22
Companies, etc.
Record Company – Warner Bros. Records Inc.
Record Company – Warner Communications Inc.
Copyright © – Dino De Laurentiis Corporation
Pressed By – Capitol Records Pressing Plant, Winchester
Credits:
Composed By, Conductor – John Barry
Engineer [Recording, Mixing] – Dan Wallin
Producer – Federico De Laurentiis, John Barry
Notes:
"----<" etched in run-outs denotes a Capitol, Winchester pressing.
Includes a poster.
Reprise Records, a division of Warner Bros. Records Inc.
Copyright (c) 1976 Dino De Laurentiis Corporation
Made in U.S.A.
Barcode and Other Identifiers
Matrix / Runout (A run-out, etched): MS-1-2260 WWI #2 ---<
Matrix / Runout (B run-out, etched): MS-2-2260 WWI ----<
John Barry – King Kong (Original Sound Track)
Label: Reprise Records – MS 2260
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Winchester Pressing
Country: US
Released: 1976
Genre: Classical, Stage & Screen
Style: Soundtrack, Score, Theme
Label: Reprise Records – MS 2260
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Winchester Pressing
Country: US
Released: 1976
Genre: Classical, Stage & Screen
Style: Soundtrack, Score, Theme
Viewfinder links:
Net links:
Rotten Tomatoes ~ reviews
YouTube links:
"Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness,
those are life-altering lessons."
~ Jessica Lange
If you're really in the process of photographing,
you are absolutely aware. You are looking.
