11/8/2022 0 Comments King kong costume![]() During this production, Leisen apparently asked Visart to design a number of costumes under his and Banton's supervision. In 1932, Leisen was frantically busy with the production of The Sign of the Cross designing costumes and sets with Travis Banton and acting as assistant director. It appears that Leisen groomed her to take his place as he started to direct his own films and began to extract himself from DeMille's unit. Visart became Leisen's protégée working behind the scenes at Paramount studios with her mentor Leisen some time before she was credited for doing so. In 1929, Visart met designer Mitchell Leisen who was working for DeMille at this point and they became romantically involved. DeMille, and subsequently spent a lot of time with the DeMille family who were apparently very fond of her. Visart, born in 1909, was sent to Hollywood School for Girls in 1920 where she became great friends with Katherine DeMille, adopted daughter of Cecil B. It's also true that Visart spent most of her life in New York. ![]() Fay Wray herself however in her autobiography in 1989, disputed the Walter Plunkett costume credit for this film, stating that her costumes were made by: ".a young woman from New York, I regret that I do not remember her name because there was a rightness to everything she did." Although Visart was born on the East coast and raised in Chicago, it's possible that Wray who fifty-six years later couldn't recall her name, also confused the two cities. Relatively little has been written about costume designer Natalie Visart, and none of the accounts of her career appear to associate her with the film King Kong. giving rise to Denham's closing words: "it was Beauty that killed the Beast". primeval swamps.three-horned monsters that should have died ten million years ago.then in the man-made mountains of New York. through dangers that Man can only dream about nfronting. The giant ape falls under the spell of Ann's innocent golden looks, an infatuation which in the words of Closeup Magazine, causes him to battle for her. The stage is then set for the film's key theme. Denham directs Ann, who appears as a shimmering innocent from another era, to look up and to imagine she's seen something terrible that she can't get away from, he tells her: "Scream Ann, Scream for your life!". The suspense and drama is taken up several notches however when Denham puts Ann in front of a camera for the first time and she appears on deck dressed in what she describes as: "the prettiest" of the 'Beauty and Beast' costumes. According to the story, prior to the screen-test scene on the ship, fictional film director Carl Denham keeps the leading lady's purpose deliberately vague. The 'old Arabian proverb' shown at the film's outset reads: And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. After all, for most of the subsequent film Wray as Ann was to appear dishevelled, distraught and filthy having been dragged through the jungle or forced to scale the skyline of New York. Cooper knew that by dressing Wray in the medieval-style costume of a fairy princess, he could emphasize her innocence and illustrate the freshness of her beauty. Executive producer David O'Selznick had apparently wanted to cut the scene from the film, but Cooper stood firm. Cooper used it to firmly establish the film's 'Beauty and the Beast' theme. ![]() The fact that this scene was the only one in the whole film to merit a customized design indicates its importance. Cooper, has therefore set this record straight. Bison Archives' discovery of Visart's design, signed by the artist and approved by the director Merian C. Although historians generally agree that it is the only costume specifically 'designed' for the film, the others being hired from Western Costume, it has, until now, been wrongly attributed to Walter Plunkett, who became head of RKO wardrobe department in September 1932 three months after shooting of the film's live action scenes had begun. This costume design for Fay Wray as Ann Darrow in the famous screen test/'Scream' scene on the boat to Skull Island in King Kong, 1933 is significant on several counts. ![]()
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