King Kong as Literary Hero

How far the mighty have fallen! And I’m not talking about King Kong toppling off the
summit of the Empire State Building. I’m referring to the afterlife of the great British
novelist Edgar Wallace.

No one climbed higher than Wallace in the literary
world of the 1920s. At one point his publisher
estimated that one out of every four fiction books
sold in England came from his pen. His biographer
Neil Clark tells us that no 20th century author had
more stories turned into films. His fans crossed all
boundaries and borders, and included Clark Gable,
King George V and Adolf Hitler (who allegedly
owned a complete set of Wallace’s crime stories).
Some 50 films based on his stories were made in
Germany alone!

His output was as prodigious as his fame. When
Wallace died at age 1956, he left behind more than
170 books. At the high point of his career, he wrote
faster than his fans could read. During the course
of 1924 and 1925, he released 18 novels, but in
1926 he released another 18 in just 12 months.
Surely supply had now exceeded demand? Yet
Wallace never saturated the market, at least not
during his lifetime. By one estimate, he eventually sold 300 million copies of his books!

And today? Almost everything Edgar Wallace wrote is out-of-print. His celebrated novel
The Green Archer, which spawned two popular movie serials, doesn’t even rank among
the top 2 million bestselling books on Amazon. Alongside Alfred Hitchcock, Graham
Greene, and John Buchan, Wallace deserves credit for inventing the modern British
thriller, but even dedicated fans of the genre won’t recognize his name.

I don’t expect a Wallace revival any time soon, and for the simplest reason of all.
Readers don’t have a clue where to start in the huge stack of books he left behind.
He was, in the apt words of one critic, "The Man Who Wrote Too Much."

Yet there’s one thing on Wallace’s resume that everbody knows about: King Kong.
At the very end of his life, the prolific English storyteller brought his talents to
Hollywood. His last major project was, in his words, a "big animal play" he wrote
for director Merian C. Cooper, a World War I hero turned to movie-making.

Sad to say, this towering achievement of Wallace’s career
has been disputed by posterity. Wallace didn't live long
enough to see the release of King Kong, and Cooper later
tried to take credit for the story. "Not one single scene, nor
line of dialogue in King Kong was contributed by him," the
former aviator insisted. But Wallace’s surviving 110-page
film treatment puts the lie to that claim. In fact, all the most
memorable ingredients of the story—from the “Beauty and
the Beast” angle to the climb atop the Empire State Building
—came from Edgar Wallace.

Wallace never got the chance to write the novelization of
King Kong, but only because he died too soon. That
responsibility fell to Delos Lovelace, a hack writer who
didn't do justice to Wallace’s story. The end result is that
the work that should have immortalized Edgar Wallace's
reputation, and perhaps inspired readers to check out his
other books, dilutes his legacy. Indeed, he must share
credit for the one novel that he would have made much better on his own.

You probably know the story. Not many plots from the early 1930s are still familiar to
media-drenched pop culture fans in the current day, but the big ape that climbed to the
top of the tallest building in New York has achieved mythic status. The film has been
remade every generation, and two more reboots are in the works as I write. King Kong
has also spawned comic books, toys, board and video games, a musical, a Japanese
anime series, and a theme park ride. Oh, yes, and a lot of rip-offs (anyone want to play
some Donkey Kong?). Given all this, how can you not know the story?

But for those of you who have been hiding on someplace even more remote than
Skull Island for the last 80 years, here’s a quick summary. Moviemaker Carl Denham
heads off with cast a crew to an island somewhere to the west of Sumatra. Here he
hopes to film an adventure movie with actress Ann Darrow, and maybe get footage of
the mysterious creature Kong, rumored to live there. But Denham gets more than he
bargained for—not just the gigantic ape, but a host of other prehistoric creatures.
Kong takes a fancy to Ann Darrow, and carries her off to his mountain lair. Twelve
crew members are killed in the pursuit, but Denham and his formidable first mate
Jack Driscoll manage to rescue Darrow and capture King Kong.

They bring him back to New York for display as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” But
he escapes during his Broadway debut, abducts Darrow again, carrying her to the top of
the Empire State Building. Military planes shoot him down from the summit of the
skyscraper, but not before he puts down the actress who lured him to his doom. When
a police officer praises the aviators who killed King Kong, Denham demurs in the final
lines of the story: “It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

That’s a gripping story, whether told on film or in print. And if Wallace had lived,
the novelization of the film script would probably rank as one of the great horror
classics of the era. Alas, Delos Lovelace’s efforts did not do justice to the majesty of
tale—or to the rich psychological currents implicit in Wallace's plot. The spark of
genius behind King Kong was the notion that this mammoth ape could be a
sympathetic leading man. The folks who gave us Godzilla or Jurassic Park weren't
capable of that leap of the imagination. And when King Kong is reaching out for the
pestering planes trying to shoot him down from the Empire State Building, I suspect
that somewhere in the rapidly-beating hearts of the excited audience members is the
hope that beast will prevail over man-made machine. After all, as the adage goes: All
the world loves a lover.

But the novel is clumsy, written without poetry or grace, and terribly lopsided. While I
was approaching the end of the book, I even wondered whether I hadn’t been given a
faulty edition. I was almost finished, and only 25 pages remained, but the story was
still dealing with the pursuit of Kong on Skull Island. Could the novelist really finish
that episode, bring King Kong to New York, put him on display on Broadway, follow
his escape, climb and tragic fall in the few pages left?

As it turned out, that’s exactly what Lovelace does. The slow pacing of the early chapters
is now thrown aside, and the most memorable scenes in the entire story are tossed off
in a few paragraphs. This is something I expect from an amateur author, who finds that
the word count is running too high, so the ending is rushed and trivialized.

And even when Lovelace slows down for description, he commits high school level
errors—for example, check out the glaring mismatch between subject and modifying
clause in this sentence:

"Monstrous beyond conception, as hairy as any of the simian creatures of an African
jungle whom he resembled in all but size, the fact that he picked his way with a slow
almost human caution, made him all the more incredible"

But even if you fixed the grammatical error here, you’re still left the "incredible,"
"monstrous beyond conception" clichés.

I am left hoping that some more skilled author will do a remake of the book, just as
directors have remade the film version of King Kong. In the meantime, if you want to
read a great book version of a horror movie, stick with Dracula and Frankenstein.
Those novels do not disappoint. As for the mighty Kong, he may tower over the other
film villains just as he rose above the Manhattan skyline in his shining moment; but—
alas!—his book never gets off the ground.

Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to Listen to Jazz from
Basic Books.

Publication Date: August 28, 2016

This is my year of horrible reading.
I am reading the classics of horror fiction
during the course of 2016, and each week will
write about a significant work in the genre.
You are invited to join me in my annus
horribilis. During the course of the year—if
we survive—we will have tackled zombies,
serial killers, ghosts, demons, vampires, and
monsters of all denominations. Check back
each week for a new title...but remember to
bring along garlic, silver bullets and a
protective amulet. Ted Gioia

My Year of Horrible Reading

Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker

Week 2:
T he Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson

Week 3:
T ales of Mystery & Imagination
By Edgar Allan Poe

Week 4:
Carrie
By Stephen King

Week 5:
The Passion According to G.H.
By Clarice Lispector

Week 6:
T ales
By H.P. Lovecraft

Week 7:
T he Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty

Week 8:
The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill

Week 9:
N ausea
By Jean-Paul Sartre

Week 10:
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson

Week 11:
G host Stories of Henry James
By Henry James

Week 12:
Interview with the Vampire
By Anne Rice

Week 13:
A merican Psycho
By Bret Easton Ellis

Week 14:
L ast Stories and Other Stories
By William T. Vollmann

Week 15:
G host Stories of an Antiquary
By M.R. James

Week 16:
R osemary's Baby
By Ira Levin

Week 17:
T he King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers

Week 18:
Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier

Week 19
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe

Week 20
The Dark Eidolon
by Clark Ashton Smith

Week 21
O ff Season
by Jack Ketchum

Week 22
B ooks of Blood, Vols. 1-3
by Clive Barker

Week 23
The Silence of the Lambs
by Thomas Harris

Week 24
T he Orange Eats Creeps
by Grace Krilanovich

Week 25
S trange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Week 26
P sycho
by Robert Bloch

Week 27
F ledgling
by Octavia E. Butler

Week 28
D emons by Daylight
by Ramsey Campbell

Week 29
T he Complete Short Stories
by Ambrose Bierce

Week 30
P et Sematary
by Stephen King

Week 31
O ur Lady of Darkness
by Fritz Leiber

Week 32
G rendel
by John Gardner

Week 33
W hite is for Witching
by Helen Oyeyemi

Week 34
T he Wasp Factory
by Iain Banks

Week 35
K ing Kong
by Edgar Wallace