Featuring more than 100 roles across silent films and television, the screaming captive of the giant gorilla in King Kong, Fay Wray was born on September 15, 1907, near Cardston, Alberta, Canada.
Wray made her film debut in Gasoline Love in 1923. Five years after she got her first significant role in The Wedding March, the film she considered her best.
“I still love that film. Erich von Stroheim was a wonderful human being, and he took a chance on me. I was only 19 when I did the screen test, but he saw something in me. After 75 years, it’s still one of the happiest experiences of my life. And it was a nice part, wasn’t it?” she said.
After that, she took roles in a number of horror movies, and with them Wray gained a reputation for having the best scream; that reputation got her the famous role in King Kong and the nickname Scream Queen, which she actually didn’t like.
When asked how she felt about being called the first Scream Queen, she said, “I do NOT like it at all, would you?”
Wray starred across various genres, but her role as Ann Darrow in King Kong overshadowed her other work. In addition to her acting career, Wray wrote some plays for theatres.
In 1989, she published her autobiography, On the Other Hand.
“What does it matter that many people think King Kong was my only film? Again and again, I hear: “I saw your film.” “Your movie was on television the other night.” Kong does not erase the fact that I did many other films, but it is a fact that Kong is the most widely known, the most enduring. And considering the improvement in tape and laser, it is likely to go on shaping and enhancing the state of wonder in young people and old,” from On the Other Hand autobiography.
Wray passed away at age 96 in August 2004. Two days after her death, the lights of the Empire State Building were dimmed for fifteen minutes in her honor.
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