Various Artists, King Kong Artwork
“To understand King Kong, you need to know Merian Coldwell Cooper. Nearly every story element of the original film is reflective of some aspect of Cooper’s life leading up to his creation of the iconic movie. His passions—aviation, exploration, adventure filmmaking—are all incorporated into King Kong. You can argue about the extent to which the final screenplay evolved through contributions by Edgar Wallace, James Creelman, Ruth Rose, as well as a host of uncredited RKO scribes, but it’s clear that virtually everything in Kong got there by way of Cooper. (There’s a great memo from James Creelman to Cooper, in fact, where the overworked scribe—he was also writing The Most Dangerous Game—laments that Cooper’s suggested addition of a giant wall, island tribe and sacrificial rites were just too much for the plot to handle. Cooper “relieved” him soon after.)
Kong´s effects, music, sound; none of these aspects of the film were the direct work of his hands, but Cooper’s force of personality, bullheadedness and sheer refusal to take no for an answer ultimately made Skull Island a real place in the minds of film lovers across multiple generations.” -John Mitchlig, The Kong Files, kingiskong.net