Despite a long, versatile career, Canadian-born actress Fay Wray is indelibly etched on the public mind as the shrieking heroine in the grasp of a giant ape climbing the Empire State Building in the film King Kong (1933). For 40 years she acted in 78 motion pictures as well as on the Broadway stage and television. She also co-authored a play with Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis. Although she proved her acting ability in such films as The Affairs of Cellini (1934), opposite Frederic March, she was doomed to be typecast as the champion screamer and bedeviled heroine. In the 1950s she played in the television series Pride of the Family as the wife of Paul Hartman and mother of Natalie Wood. "When I'm in New York," she once said with a laugh, "I look at the Empire State Building and feel that it belongs to me—or vice versa."

Further Reading:

Parish, James Robert, and William T. Leonard. Hollywood Players: The Thirties. New Rochelle, New York, Arlington House, 1976.

Ragan, David. Movie Stars of the '30s: A Complete Reference Guide for the Film Historian or Trivia Buff. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1985.