Famus Monsters of Filmland issue #125 features one of the most iconic images in Hollywood movie poster history. This painting is the work of John Berkey who also did artwork for Orca, The Towering Inferno, Star Wars, and many other sci-fi films. There’s a great writeup about the story behind this painting on the Kong Is King website, so if you like reading about how posters get made, I would highly recommend checking it out.
There were MANY versions of this iconic image produced with variations to Kong’s face, the airplanes, Dwan, and the buildings. The original sketches actually had the beast climbing the Empire State building, but that evolved to having him straddling the twin towers of the World Trade Center–or is he leaping from one to the other?
“Twas beauty killed the beast.” A popular quote from the film starts off the article.
Original concept sketches and a cool photo of Dino De Laurentiis and Forrest J. Ackerman.
Jessica Lange has the best seat in the house.
If only I had my time machine working.
Okay, this ad has nothing to do with King Kong but it’s always fun to see old Mego advertisements.
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“Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen. Those chains are made of chrome steel.” All month long, I will be showing off King Kong collectibles from my personal collection in a series called KONGTOBER, so if you’re a fan of King Kong and movie monsters, I think you’re going to like what you see.
Do you have the straw set that, as you sipped King climbed the twin straw?
I don’t–I’ve been looking for one of those for years!
Nice one, Brian. I love the 77 King Kong. Not so much the movie (which is okay) but all of the promotions for the movie featured that amazing painted art.
For example, the Burger Chef set of King Kong glasses and accompanying promotional material are just awesome.
Pax
God, this takes me back to when I was a kid and I was terrifed of magazines like Fangoria, or even just the old Mad Magazines where they would put in shots of old movie monsters with funny speech bubbles above the heads.