My Side By King Kong!

Everybody's got a story, and as it turns out King Kong has a big one as related in My Side by King Kong. This 1976 farcical little "autobiography" is told from the point of view of the giant ape and as one might suspect his perspective on the whole caper is quite different. Walter Wager was a writer who wrote spy thrillers, but he's just a lowly sailor on the U.S.S. Venture when he met Stanley Harold Kong and became his friend. We learn that his dad was a gorilla named Arthur Kong, and his mother was Rose Saperstein from Philadelphia. 
 

To give you a sense of what this book is all about here are a some of my favorite passages.

"A funny thing happened to me on the way to the Empire State Building, as you may have heard. Here is the whole story: what happened before the movie, the truth about the picture crowd, how I was ripped off, and what I did after that fall off the building -- which was, by the way, filthy."

"To keep history straight, its name was Zumdum Island. The first thing that Mom said when she got a good look at the place was...well...unprintable. The second thing was a terrible scream, and the fourth (remember no thirds) was This is some dump. The faithful natives changed this just a bit to Zumdum, and it has remained that ever since."

"The people who lived there hadn't invaded and they weren't savage at all. They were a road company for Porgy and Bess shipwrecked en route from Chicago to Dallas."

"She [Fay Wray] was one of the most dedicated, decent, and respected stars of that marvelous era. She never beat her servants, abused Fatty Arbuckle, or went to orgies unless there were two separate sets of dishes."

"Bruce Cabot was more than met the eye. J. Edgar Hoover had personally selected him -- picked him over Pat O'Brien and Bing Crosby -- to make this journey into the unknown."

"There's one thing I can tell you about the Empire State Building. That first step is a bitch."

That's just a few of the insights given by Stan as he tells how he didn't kill any natives (that was Willis O'Brien's model's handiwork as was the train attack in NYC) and he only wanted to show Ann Darrow his etchings. He did reprise his role in King Kong vs. Godzilla, but he had no paw in the sequel Son of Kong. He continued to live in the United States and made money in yoghurt. He served eight years in the California legislature and even six in the U.S. Senate. He married a few times and claimed to have eighty-three children.

This is a salty bit of fluff and a quick run read. It would have made a wild Mel Brooks movie of that era.  Recommended to all Kong fans. 

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