Word: hollywoodism
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...think all Americans have a close relationship to their fabulous invention, Hollywood. But for obsessionists, as always, that relationship is more intense...
Harryhausen with a model of Kong in chains KURT KRIEGER/CORBIS I was into big monsters long before I'd seen "King Kong" or even heard of Willis O'Brien. My brother and I shared a passion for the work of Ray Harryhausen, the second great Hollywood master of stop-frame (also called stop-motion) animation. Now almost entirely supplanted by digital modeling and animation, the technique was expensive and difficult. A flexible model of the creature-protagonist was placed in a miniature set in front of a locked-down camera. The model was moved a fraction of an inch...
Fortunately the version available on VHS and cable is the reconstituted original release print, without the cuts made for the 1938 rerelease. Kong's premiere in '33 made it a "pre-Code" film. The Hollywood Production Code, administered by the Hayes Office, was a self-imposed set of rules devised by the studios after the 1915 Supreme Court declaration that movies were "capable of evil, having power for it." The ruling made prior censorship by local government boards legal; expensive prints could - and would - be seized by local sheriffs and police departments...
...following decade the outraged (and self-serving) newspaper reactions to the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, the death of Wallace Reid and the murder of William Desmond Taylor prompted fears in Hollywood that there would be more legislation, and setting up the Hayes office was an attempt to make sure that didn't happen...
...just the look that makes this happen. There is also the music. Max Steiner, who wrote it, was a consummate Hollywood professional with credits stretching from "Gone With the Wind" to "Casablanca," from "The Big Sleep" to "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." There's no space to do him justice here; suffice it to say that his score for "Kong" is unprecedented...