Kong '76: “Time” Magazine Gets on the Dino Gravy Train
De Laurentiis Knew How to Play the Media
Each December we are reminded that, in 1976, Dino De Laurentiis resurrected King Kong. That was 46 years ago, and the flick still has its fans (including me).
This year, in fact, you can upgrade to a new DVD 4k version of the flick.
In 2021, King Kong saw it’s first Blu-Ray release via Shout Factory.
How big was Dino De Laurentiis’s 1976 production of King Kong? Big enough for the October 25th, 1976 issue of venerable TIME magazine to feature Jessica Lange on the cover and a virtual King Kong promotional feature inside.
Incidentally, the article’s opening photo montage includes a four-photo series of Lange in Kong’s hand culminating—inexplicably—in a full-blown, breast-baring “wardrobe malfunction” more explicit than anything in the film. The photos were set-up and taken especially for TIME by their own photographer.
(She addressed this — via grimace — during a visit to The Jimmy Kimmel Show included at the very end of this collection of interviews posted by Jim Avey on his KING KONG: The Movie (1976) Facebook page, which you’ll want to join if you dig Dino’s Kong.)
Here are some of the more interesting passages from the seven-page cover story, which hit newsstands well before King Kong was released.
Note this careful wording in an opening page editor’s note that described the difficulty in getting an interview with “Gorilla-mime Rick Baker, who stood in for the 40-ft. ‘audioanimatronic’ Kong in scenes that were shot in miniature.”
Just those few scenes where the robot could not be used, right?
After a gee-whiz description of the “3,100 ft. of hydraulic hose and 4,500 ft. of electrical wiring” inside robo-Kong, the article goes on to state (with a straight face) that “it is impossible to tell in the finished product where [robo-Kong’s] work ends and that of the more mobile and manageable representations of Kong take over.”
There’s a macabre bit of foreshadowing in a passage describing Kong’s assault on the World Trade Center: “That final destructive binge could be seen—and lines in the script lightly suggest it—as a projection of Western fears of what might happen if the Third World should develop its potential power and strike back.”
And, finally, here is, word for word, a classic De Laurentiis quote as printed and immortalized by TIME magazine:
“No one cry when Jaws die,” Dino says, his voice rising in passion as he develops his theme. “But when the monkey die, people gonna cry. Intellectuals gonna love Konk; even film buffs who love the first Konk gonna love ours. Why? Because I no give them crap. I no spend two, three million to do quick business. I spend 24 million on my Konk. I give them quality. I got here a great love story, a great adventure. And she rated PG. For everybody.”
For many, it’s the Christmas and Hanukkah season. For Kong nerds like me, it’s also Dino Kong season. More to come …
Alas, I remember this article and all the attendant Hoo-hah all too well. But as a card carrying member of the Willis O’Brien Fan Club, I couldn’t get past the Robo-Kong, much less Baker’s substantial contribution. I never forgave Dino for quashing the other remake in the works from Universal, which probably wouldn’t have met my expectations either.
I am curious to see Kong 76 now, since the sum of the parts might well be greater than the whole…