Wray's parents separated shortly after the family relocated again, to Lark, UT, where her father had found work in a copper mine.
FAY WRAY KING KONG MOVIE
As a young girl, Wray enjoyed trips to the local movie theater and made her stage debut as Mrs. Immigrating to the United States after World War I, the Wrays settled in Salt Lake City, UT, where Joseph Wray worked as a night watchman. The harsh Canadian winters eventually drove Vina Wray to the brink of a nervous breakdown while she recovered in a sanitarium, her children were farmed out to local families. At the time, she was the youngest of the four children of rancher and saw mill proprietor Joseph Herber Wray and his wife, Elvina Marguerite Jones, a former school teacher. Though she appeared in all manner of movies, from dramas and comedies to horror films and the early Westerns in which she had performed her own stunts, Fay Wray was resigned to the fate of being remembered principally for just one role, as well as for the honor of being cinema's first bona fide scream queen.
Living well into her nineties, Wray turned down the offer to contribute a cameo appearance to director Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of "King Kong" shortly before her death from natural causes in late 2004. An iconic figure in cult film circles, Wray eventually turned her back on performing to enjoy frequent public appearances as herself.
The death of her second husband, screenwriter Robert Riskin, drove the aging actress back to work in character parts, including a comical turn as an affluent hypochondriac in "Tammy and the Bachelor" (1957). Her reputation with the major studios undermined by her marriage to brilliant but unstable writer John Monk Saunders, Wray divorced, remarried and retired on her own terms in 1942. By the time the Canadian native was cast in the role of Ann Darrow, human inamorata of the eighth Wonder of the World, Wray was already a successful Hollywood actress whose previous leading men included William Powell, Gary Cooper and Fredric March. I looked around surprised – how could they not know who she was? I tentatively raised my hand and said, “I’d love to do it.Gripped in the giant hand of "King Kong" (1933) in a simulated New York City on the RKO backlot, Fay Wray emitted screams of terror that reverberated throughout a nation stunned by the Great Depression. There was complete silence from Rob and Tom following Steve’s offer. Ear Founding Publisher Steve Eastman mentioned that George Cleveland of the Barnstormers in Tamworth had called to offer up an interview with Fay Wray, who was in town because her daughter, Susan Riskin, was starring in a play that Wray had written, “The Meadowlark.” His uncle, Francis Cleveland (and son of President Grover Cleveland, if you can believe it!) was presenting the premiere production of this story of Wray’s early childhood at the theater. I vividly remember our weekly editorial meeting that July 1985. I got the interview because my co-workers at the time, Rob Burbank and Tom Eastman, didn’t know who she was – they were either too young or just not old movie buffs. Each time, I smile to myself knowing that I had the treat of sitting with her for several hours and hearing first-hand about the original “King Kong,” her career, her family, and her very busy life.
With the third remake of the movie, Universal’s “King Kong,” released last weekend and now making the country go, well, bananas, Fay Wray is back in the news.Įven though she passed away at age 96 in August 2004, she can be seen often on entertainment shows these days when the first RKO movie and her role are highlighted.
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