March 2, 2018

On March 2, 1933—85 years ago today—the cinematic heavyweight King Kong premiered at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall. One of the most famous monster movies in film history, King Kong then opened to much fanfare three weeks later at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. King Kong the giant ape—billed as the “eighth wonder of the world”—then proceeded to climb cinema screens across the country and around the world. The movie has captured audiences’ imaginations ever since, and it remains a classic adventure story and a masterpiece of animation and trick photography. King Kong was re-released numerous times, inspired a few sequels, and was remade in 1976 and 2005.

King Kong looms over the Manhattan skyline while holding tight to lead actress Fay Wray in the classic monster movie King Kong. The film premiered 85 years ago today on March 2, 1933. Credit: Radio Pictures

The title of the film is the name given to a giant ape called Kong who lives on remote Skull Island. An American film producer leads an expedition to capture the animal and return it to New York City to be put on exhibition. After violent confrontations on the island between the ape and the film crew, the Americans capture Kong and transport him to New York City. There he escapes and goes on a destructive rampage through the city.

King Kong (1933) theatrical release poster. Credit: Radio Pictures

King Kong is actually a variation of the fairy tale about Beauty and the Beast. The ape falls in love with a young woman who accompanies the expedition to Skull Island. On the island, Kong saves the woman from attacks by prehistoric animals. In New York, he kidnaps her and carries her to the top of the Empire State Building, where he is killed by fighter airplanes. The film producer in the movie observes, “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.”

In King Kong, Fay Wray played the young woman, and Robert Armstrong played the film producer. The co-directors were Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack. Willis H. O’Brien supervised the film’s highly praised special effects. King Kong was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 1991.

A sequel to King Kong, called Son of Kong, appeared in December 1993, and a similar motion picture, Mighty Joe Young, came out in 1949. Kong crossed the Pacific to Japan to take on another popular movie monster in 1962′s King Kong vs. Godzilla. Kong battled a robot giant ape and other monsters in the 1967 Japanese film King Kong Escapes. Returning to Hollywood, Kong rattled turnstiles again in the 1976 remake, King Kong, a film that featured the World Trade Center towers in place of the Empire State Building in the film’s climactic end scene. Few people remember the 1986 sequel, King Kong Lives, but 2005′s King Kong remake was another smash at the box office. Another sequel, Kong: Skull Island, appeared in 2017. A Godzilla vs. King Kong remake is in the works for 2020.

December 21, 2017

Eighty years ago today, on Dec. 21, 1937, the animated motion picture Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered before a star-studded audience at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, California. The first full-length animated feature produced by a studio, Snow White achieved instant critical success. The film also began a lengthy popular run with its wide release in 1938. The Walt Disney Company movie revolutionized animation with its brilliant visual effects. Snow White ranks among the most popular motion pictures ever made.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Credit: © Walt Disney Productions

Tickets to the 1937 Carthay Circle Theatre premiere of Snow White were among the hardest to get at that time in Hollywood. The elite list of attending stars—all taking an unfamiliar back seat to Walt Disney and his wife, Lillian—included Milton Berle, George Burns, Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, and 9-year-old Shirley Temple. Many thousands of people gathered outside the theater to be a part of the event.

In January 1938, after Snow White premiered at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, The New York Times described the film as “sheer fantasy, delightful, gay, and altogether captivating.” Since then, millions of people around the world have agreed and continue to agree with that critical opinion, and the film remains a popular challenger to such recent animated Disney hits as The Lion King, Aladdin, and Frozen.

To mark the classic film’s 80th anniversary, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs returned for a brief run in select cinemas. Department stores issued Snow White-themed clothing lines. Numerous figurines, jewelry, plates, and other collectibles featured Snow White waking with Prince Charming’s kiss, and television’s Disney Channel ran a nostalgic 80th anniversary program that included a rousing rendition by the popular rock group Fall Out Boy of the Dwarfs’ song “Heigh-Ho.” And, of course, Disney Stores across the country are overflowing with Snow White-themed items for the Christmas shopping season.

Disney adapted Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs story from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, a famous collection of German folk tales published in the early 1800′s. The film tells how the beautiful Snow White triumphs over the evil plotting of the Wicked Queen with the help of seven dwarfs who live in a forest. Each of the seven dwarfs has a distinct comic personality that matches his name—Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, and Sneezy. The young woman eventually marries the handsome Prince Charming.

At the time the movie was made, Disney was taking a huge gamble in creating a feature-length cartoon. The expensive film took four years to make, and there were predictions that it would fail with a public accustomed to short cartoons. But the movie was an immediate international success. Disney received a special Academy Award for “a significant screen innovation.” The award consisted of the traditional Oscar statue and seven miniature statuettes.