Born on this day in 1893: a documentary filmmaking innovator, producer of King Kong and Son Of Kong and co-inventor of Cinerama, the extraordinary Merian C. Cooper.
While well aware that Cooper, with director Ernest B. Schoedsack and special effects genius Willis O'Brien created a sensation with King Kong in 1933, the more I delved into Cooper's astounding career as world traveller/adventurer, fighter pilot, aviator and producer, both in silents and talkies, of feature films and documentaries for David O. Selznick/RKO Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and John Ford's Argosy Productions, as well as his forming of Pioneer Pictures to develop and champion the use of three-strip Technicolor in live action movies (starting with the RKO musical short subject La Cucaracha), the more mightily impressed I was.
While King Kong was Cooper's most famous production, he also made history at RKO Radio Pictures by teaming Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers on FLYING DOWN TO RIO, arranging Katharine Hepburn’s screen test and beginning his 20+ year association with John Ford. Cooper's keen interest in Technicolor would eventually lead to its showcasing in the feature films Becky Sharp and Gone With The Wind.
There is so much to Cooper's work across varied fields of endeavor, it is tough to determine just where to begin! A good place to start is the following outstanding Photoplay Pictures documentary, I'm King Kong! The Exploits Of Merian C. Cooper, produced by Patrick Stanbury and directed by Kevin Brownlow and Christopher Bird for Turner Classic Movies, which explores the breadth and brilliance of Cooper's transitions from aviator to documentarian to Hollywood movie producer and co-inventor of Cinerama.
Wikipedia elaborates:
Merian Caldwell Cooper (October 24, 1893 – April 21, 1973) was an American aviator, United States Air Force and Polish Air Force officer, adventurer, screenwriter, film director, and producer.
Cooper was the founder of the Kościuszko Squadron during the Polish–Soviet War and was a Soviet prisoner of war for a time. He was a notable movie producer, and got his start with film as part of the Explorers Club, traveling the world and documenting adventures.
He was a member of the board of directors of Pan American Airways, but his love of film always took priority.
Cooper was one of the first bomber pilots in World War I. After the war, he helped form the famous Kosciuszko Squadron in battle-torn Poland. He then turned his attention to producing documentary films that chronicled his hair-raising encounters with savage warriors, man-eating tigers, nomadic tribes, and elephant stampedes.
He returned to military service during World War II, serving with General Claire Chennault in China, flying missions into the heart of enemy territory and then changed the face of film forever with Cinerama, the original “virtual reality.” He is also credited as co-inventor of the Cinerama film projection process. Cooper's most famous film was the 1933 movie King Kong. He was awarded an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 1952 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
The first "giant ape" movie, extending concepts animator Willis O'Brien showcased in the 1925 epic The Lost World, was unprecedented and a box-office sensation, very much influenced by Cooper's world travels and the two documentaries he produced with cinematographer Ernest B. Schoedsack. For more info, by all means read The Making of King Kong by George E. Turner and Dr. Orville Goldner).
The two King Kong films weren't just massive box office hits, they profoundly influenced one of Willis O' Brien's key successors as a master of stop-motion animation in the action/adventure/fantasy genre, Ray Harryhausen.
Mr. Harryhausen worked with Willis O'Brien on the stop-motion wizardry in Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1948 film Mighty Joe Young,
As a filmmaker, technology enthusiast and special effects designer, Cooper was on the advance guard and a key developer of the three-projector widescreen process, Cinerama. He directed the 1952 documentary This Is Cinerama.
New digital restorations of epic films produced using the process were presented at New York City MoMA in January 2018 as part of Cinerama Day. This included The Story of Cinerama: An Illustrated Lecture, presented by the Cinerama, Inc., digital restoration team of David Strohmaier and Randy Gitsch.
Mr. Strohmaier's 2002 documentary Cinerama Adventure accompanies the restored version of This Is Cinerama, completed by Cinerama, Inc. in 2017.
The Best Of Cinerama (1963), comprising segments from Cinerama movies shot in Rome, Paris, Vienna, Athens, Brazil, Japan, Africa, Israel and New Orleans. would be the last project Merian C. Cooper worked on. As David Strohmaier, Cinerama and 70mm champion, describes in the following piece, the restorations can be exceedingly painstaking albeit rewarding work, bringing modern digital technology together with the expertise of those who worked for Cinerama.
Cooper, the intrepid explorer-adventurerer-filmmaker-inventor-aviator-special effects designer has been celebrated by a terrific article, Distant, Difficult And Dangerous: The Life of Merian C. Cooper, penned by Mitch Hemann for the Norman Studios website, as well as an outstanding book by Mark Cotta Vaz, Living Dangerously: The Adventures Of Merian C. Cooper.
And, for more on Cinerama, there's the Cinerama movie theatre in the Belltown district of Seattle.
