I hope the long Kong Files hiatus will be forgiven. In addition to losing my web page designer (who seems to have vanished into thin air), there was the matter of a certain new Peter Jackson film being released, and a fantastic couple of days in New York where I was able to meet a lot of the actual people behind the online nicknames that have become so familiar here on KiKn. It was a genuine treat to spend time with so many like-minded “Kong-philes,” and I wear proudly my “Kongflies” t-shirt (you had to be there…).

In the first part of my look at the John Berkey posters for Dino DeLaurentiis’s Kong I promised to reveal some long-unseen images related to the epic images, so, without (much) further ado, let’s get started on the pictures.

As noted in Part 1, artist John Berkey delivered to Paramount a primary “color sketch” of the familiar twin-tower poster which the studio used as an announcement ad a year before the anticipated release date of their Kong remake. The composition of this image is so iconic that it’s almost impossible to imagine another approach—which makes Berkey’s pre-painting sketches all the more interesting. To my knowledge, this is the first public display of the work. 

In looking over Berkey’s surviving (and undated) sketches, they seem to fall into three distinct groups. First—and contrary to the artist’s recollections—are two renditions of Kong atop the Empire State Building.

Berkey then switched gears after the decision was made to use the World Trade Center towers.

At some point the basic angle and viewpoint were decided upon:

“C” seems to be the composition that then progressed to final.

We can see in the image below Berkey’s “refined” version of the poster in progress (from the author's own Polaroid), painted after the “sketch” poster had already been released. While the crushed jet has details not present on the first painting, Kong’s left hand is still in position to hold “Dwan” like a beer can rather than in his palm, as we see in the final piece.

A couple of details that were edited immediately after he’d delivered the final painting (and before the jets were replaced with helicopters) were the “thumb” toe on Kong’s right foot and the shadow of “Dwan’s” outstretched arm across the beast’s left pectoral, which looks suspiciously like the scar seen on 1933’s giant bust prop. 

Paramount then asked for six more painting to be completed in two weeks, a ridiculous deadline which Berkey nonetheless managed to meet. It wasn’t until after he’d seen his work reproduced that the artist realized that someone at the studio had superimposed the very same head on each and every painting. One could imagine that perhaps Berkey had made each of his “Kongs” look too distinctly different; one former Paramount exec that I spoke to recalled that they feared people would think New York was being attacked by an army of giant apes rather than just one. 

Now, for the first time in thirty years (and after a bit of detective work), here are the unadulterated paintings—you be the judge:

And just to show that there’s always a new wrinkle if you look hard enough, I direct you to an article on the KINGDOM KONG website entitled THE KIRBY/KONG KONNECTION which argues persuasively that Berkey may have looked to King Kirby for inspiration when posing King Kong. This theory is the brainchild of artist Kirk Jarvinen, and he makes a good case. Jarvinen is also quick to point out that this does not reflect negatively on Berkey at all. “If Dino De Laurentiis had hired me to paint a ‘rush to print’ poster of King Kong straddling the WTC,” he says, “the first thing I would think to myself would have been, ‘how the heck am I going to draw that?’ and then start scrambling to gather reference material.”

It would be very difficult to name another piece of commercial art that has been reproduced in so many bizarre manners as the Berkey Kong poster. In my last column I asked readers to send in some of their favorite examples, and I’ll post some of the oddities in a follow-up installment. Until then, look out for giant snakes …

There’s a new article about John Berkey posted on the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages website.

While finishing this installment of the Kong Files, I was shocked to learn that Blair Latta, creator of the KINGDOM KONG website, died after a long fight with illness. I enjoyed a long-standing email correspondence—and light-hearted debate—with Blair concerning my “problematic relationship” (his phrase) with the Dino DeLaurentiis remake. He was an articulate voice in support of a film that is off-handedly maligned among Kong-philes; his good humor and healthy perspective represented a refreshing contrast to the obstinacy that is more and more common among genre fans. My last communication with him concerned the first part of this two-part Kong Files article, to which he contributed information—generous as always.

We are poorer for the loss. Travel well, bala …