Wray, Fay (1907—)

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Wray, Fay (1907—)

Canadian-born American actress best known for her performance as the giant ape's love interest in King Kong . Born Vina Fay Wray on September 15, 1907, in Alberta, Canada; daughter of Joseph Wray; educated at Hollywood High School, Hollywood, California; married John Monk Saunders (a playwright and screenwriter), in 1928 (divorced 1939); married Robert Riskin (a screenwriter), in 1942 (died 1955); children: (second marriage) Susan, Robert, Victoria.

Selected filmography:

Blind Husbands (1919); Gasoline Love (1923); The Coast Patrol (1925); Lazy Lightning (1926); The Man in the Saddle (1926); The Saddle Tramp (1926); The Wild Horse Stampede (1926); Loco Luck (1927); A One Man Game (1927); Spurs and Saddles (1927); The First Kiss (1928); The Honeymoon (1928); Legion of the Condemned (1928); The Street of Sin (1928); The Wedding March (1928); The Four Feathers (1929); Pointed Heels (1929); Thunderbolt (1929); Behind the Makeup (1930); Border Legion (1930); Captain Thunder (1930); Paramount on Parade (1930); The Sea God (1930); The Texan (1930); The Conquering Horde (1931); Dirigible (1931); The Finger Points (1931); The Lawyer's Secret (1931); Three Rogues (Not Exactly Gentlemen, 1931); The Unholy Garden (1931); Doctor X (1932); The Most Dangerous Game (The Hounds of Zaroff, 1932); Stowaway (1932); Ann Carver's Profession (1933); Below the Sea (1933); The Big Brain (Enemies of Society, 1933); The Bowery (1933); King Kong (1933); Master of Men (1933); Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933); One Sunday Afternoon (1933); Shanghai Madness (1933); The Vampire Bat (1933); The Woman I Stole (1933); The Affairs of Cellini (1934); Black Moon (1934); The Captain Hates the Sea (1934); Cheating Cheaters (1934); The Countess of Monte Cristo (1934); Madame Spy (1934); Once to Every Woman (1934); The Richest Girl in the World (1934); Viva Villa (1934); White Lies (1934); Woman in the Dark (1934); Alias Bull Dog Drummond (Bull Dog Jack, 1935); The Clairvoyant (Evil Mind, 1935); Come Out of the Pantry (1935); Mills of the Gods (1935); Roaming Lady (1936); They Met in a Taxi (1936); When Knights Were Bold (1936); It Happened

in Hollywood (1937); Murder in Greenwich Village (1937); Once a Hero (1937); The Jury's Secret (1938); Navy Secrets (1939); Smashing the Spy Ring (1939); Wildcat Bus (1940); Adam Had Four Sons (1941); Melody for Three (1941); Not a Ladies' Man (1942); Small Town Girl (1953); Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953); The Cobweb (1955); Queen Bee (1955); Hell on Frisco Bay (The Darkest Hour, 1956); Crime of Passion (1957); Rock Pretty Baby (1957); Tammy and the Bachelor (Tammy, 1957); Dragstrip Riot (1958); Summer Love (1958); "Gideon's Trumpet" (television, 1980).

Selected writings:

(with Sinclair Lewis) Angela Is 21 (1939); (film, with Sinclair Lewis and Wanda Tuchock) This Is the Life (1944); (autobiography) On the Other Hand: A Life Story (1989).

One of six children, Fay Wray was born in 1907 near Cardston on her father's ranch in Alberta, Canada. She was a young child when her family moved first to Arizona and then Salt Lake City, Utah, so that her father could find better employment. After they relocated in California, her parents divorced, which created financial difficulties for the family. Wray was raised in Los Angeles and attended Hollywood High School, where she became interested in acting.

Wray and her mother began visiting casting offices, and at age 13, after many unsuccessful attempts to get into the movies, she finally received her first role in a comedy called Blind Husbands in 1919. She took small parts and worked as an extra in films for the next several years, in addition to participating in her high school's annual Hollywood Pilgrimage Play. Wray's break came in 1926 when director Erich von Stroheim selected her to star in his film The Wedding March. Described by Richard Lamparski as "a choppy but memorable silent film with some splendid photography," it was released in 1928 and transformed Wray into a star. That same year, she married playwright and screenwriter John Monk Saunders.

Although Wray had doubted she would have a career in the "talkies," throughout the 1930s she starred in film after film with such leading men as Gary Cooper, William Powell, Richard Arlen, Jack Holt, Ronald Colman, and Fredric March. However, it would be the 1933 film King Kong, with a gargantuan ape as her co-star, which secured her cinematic immortality. Wildly popular and financially successful when it was released, the film has since attained the status of a pop-cultural phenomenon. Although Wray later claimed that she had no idea about the plot of the film before signing the contract, she reportedly has quipped, "They told me I was going to have the tallest, darkest, leading man in Hollywood."

From the mid-1930s, Wray began starring in a series of low-budget action pictures, while continuing her own work as a playwright and Broadway actress, though without great success. In 1939, she and Saunders divorced. Wray retired in 1942 when she married her second husband, screenwriter Robert Riskin (who wrote It Happened One Night). She remained in retirement until the death of her husband in 1953, when she made a comeback as Jane Powell 's mother in Small Town Girl. The sale of King Kong to television in the 1950s introduced Wray, and her screams, to a new generation of fans. It also provided her the opportunity to make several films and episodic appearances on television programs such as "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Perry Mason" in the mid-to-late 1950s, after which she again retired. She spent her time traveling and enjoying her cliff-side home in the Brentwood district of Los Angeles until 1980, when she came out of retirement to appear in the television movie "Gideon's Trumpet." Although Wray wrote several plays and stories that were largely unsuccessful, she also published her autobiography, On the Other Hand, in 1989. She continues to receive fan mail—mostly from adolescent boys—generated by repeated showings of King Kong.