The year was 1976, and John Wayne was cheesed but good at King Kong.
The gargantuan ape with a fatal penchant for blonde starlets was all the rage at Paramount, and for good reason. The studio had sunk 24 million (equivalent to 124 million in 2022) into the John Guillermin-directed remake, and desperately needed it to hit the box-office jackpot when it opened in December. Though studios have huge marketing departments that, when professionally run, know how to manage multiple releases at once, Wayne felt the film that was to be his big-screen swan song, "The Shootist," was getting ignored by Paramount's advertising team. And it was all because of that big, stupid monkey.
The Duke Vs. King Kong
According to Scott Eyman's "John Wayne: The Life and the Legend," Wayne groused to his former secretary and then present companion Pat Stacy, "Those people are putting all their damn time into King Kong.
The gargantuan ape with a fatal penchant for blonde starlets was all the rage at Paramount, and for good reason. The studio had sunk 24 million (equivalent to 124 million in 2022) into the John Guillermin-directed remake, and desperately needed it to hit the box-office jackpot when it opened in December. Though studios have huge marketing departments that, when professionally run, know how to manage multiple releases at once, Wayne felt the film that was to be his big-screen swan song, "The Shootist," was getting ignored by Paramount's advertising team. And it was all because of that big, stupid monkey.
The Duke Vs. King Kong
According to Scott Eyman's "John Wayne: The Life and the Legend," Wayne groused to his former secretary and then present companion Pat Stacy, "Those people are putting all their damn time into King Kong.
- 8/22/2022
- by Jeremy Smith
- Slash Film
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