Profile of Fay Wray on Famous Like Me

Fay Wray (September 15, 1907 – August 8, 2004) was a Canadian-American actress, who was born Vina Fay Wray on a ranch near Cardston, Alberta, Canada. Her family moved to the United States when she was three. Although Wray's autobiography discusses her Mormon parentage and makes it clear that she was an ethnic Mormon, she was apparently never baptized as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Wray's family lived in predominantly Mormon communities in Alberta, Arizona and Salt Lake City, Utah before settling in Los Angeles, California, where she got her first film work in Hal Roach comedy shorts and in low-budget westerns in the early 1920s.

Wray gained media attention when she was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926, which landed her a contract at Paramount Pictures.

In 1928, director Erich Von Stroheim cast Wray as the main female lead in his troubled production of The Wedding March, which sent Hollywood in a buzz for its high budget and production values. It was a massive failure (due to the fact that it was silent in a world of new talking pictures), but it gave Wray her first lead role. He also was romantically interested in the lovely Wray, and arranged a rendezvous in Hollywood, but she changed her mind and never showed.

She is best remembered for her role as Ann Darrow, the blonde seductress of a gigantic, prehistoric gorilla in the classic horror/adventure film King Kong (1933), although she never produced the piercing scream for which she was famous. She died her dark hair blonde for the role. That scream emanated from actress Julie Haydon, and it was dubbed to Wray.

Wray also appeared in over a hundred other films, mostly in the 1930s, including The Four Feathers (1929), Doctor X (1932), The Most Dangerous Game (1932), The Vampire Bat (1933), and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). She also appeared in Viva Villa, The Texan, The Conquering Horde, and One Sunday Afternoon. Later in her career, Wray appeared in Small Town Girl, Tammy and the Bachelor, and Summer Love.

Wray was married to John Monk Saunders, Robert Riskin, and Dr. Sanford Rothenberg. She is the mother of Susan Saunders, Victoria Riskin and Robert Riskin Jr.

Her autobiography, On the Other Hand (ISBN 0312022654), was published in 1988.

Wray has a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. She received a posthumous star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto on June 5, 2005.

Wray died at her apartment in Manhattan, New York at the age of 96 of natural causes on August 8, 2004, and was interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

Filmography

• Gasoline Love (1923) (short subject)
• Thundering Landlords (1925) (short subject)
• No Father to Guide Him (1925) (short subject)
• The Coast Patrol (1925)
• Sure-Mike (1925) (short subject)
• What Price Goofy (1925) (short subject)
• Isn't Life Terrible? (1925) (short subject)
• Chasing the Chaser (1925) (short subject)
• Madame Sans Jane (1925) (short subject)
• Unfriendly Enemies (1925) (short subject)
• Your Own Back Yard (1925) (short subject)
• Moonlight and Noses (1925) (short subject)
• Should Sailors Marry? (1925) (short subject)
• WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1926 (1926) (short subject)
• One Wild Time (1926) (short subject)
• Don Key (A Son of a Burro (1926) (short subject)
• The Man in the Saddle (1926)
• Don't Shoot (1926) (short subject)
• The Wild Horse Stampede (1926)
• The Saddle Tramp (1926) (short subject)
• The Show Cowpuncher (1926) (short subject)
• Lazy Lightning (1926)
• Loco Luck (1927)
• A One Man Game (1927)
• Spurs and Saddles (1927)
• A Trip Through the Paramount Studio (1927) (short subject)
• The Honeymoon (1928) (unreleased)
• The Legion of the Condemned (1928)
• Street of Sin (1928)
• The First Kiss (1928)
• The Wedding March (1928)
• Thunderbolt (1929)
• The Four Feathers (1929)
• Pointed Heels (1929)
• Behind the Make-Up (1930)
• Paramount on Parade (1930)
• The Texan (1930)
• The Border Legion (1930)
• The Sea God (1930)
• Captain Thunder (1930)
• The Conquering Horde (1931)
• Three Rogues (1931)
• The Slippery Pearls (1931) (short subject)
• Dirigible (1931)
• The Finger Points (1931)
• The Lawyer's Secret (1931)
• The Unholy Garden (1931)
• Hollywood on Parade (1932) (short subject)
• Stowaway (1932)
• Doctor X (1932)
• The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
• The Vampire Bat (1932)
• Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
• King Kong (1933)
• Below the Sea (1933)
• Ann Carver's Profession (1933)
• The Woman I Stole (1933)
• Shanghai Madness (1933)
• The Big Brain (1933)
• One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
• The Bowery (1933)
• Master of Men (1933)
• The Clairvoyant (1934)
• Madame Spy (1934)
• The Countess of Monte Cristo (1934)
• Once to Every Woman (1934)
• Viva Villa! (1934)
• The Affairs of Cellini (1934)
• Black Moon (1934)
• The Richest Girl in the World (1934)
• Cheating Cheaters (1934)
• Woman in the Dark (1934)
• Come Out of the Pantry (1935)
• Mills of the Gods (1935)
• Bulldog Jack (1935)
• White Lies (1935)
• When Knight Were Bold (1936)
• Roaming Lady (1936)
• They Met in a Taxi (1936)
• It Happened in Hollywood (1937)
• Murder in Greenwich Village (1937)
• The Jury's Secret (1938)
• Smashing the Spy Ring (1939)
• Navy Secrets (1939)
• Wildcat Bus (1940)
• Melody for Three (1941)
• Adam Had Four Sons (1941)
• Not a Ladies' Man (1942)
• Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953)
• Small Town Girl (1953)
• Hell on Frisco Bay (1955)
• The Cobweb (1955)
• Queen Bee (1955)
• Rock, Pretty Baby (1956)
• Crime of Passion (1957)
• Tammy and the Bachelor (1957)
• Summer Lovers (1958)
• Dragstrip Riot (1958)
• Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's (1997) (documentary)
• Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There (2003) (documentary)

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