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Dear Filmfax,

I just wanted to let your readers know of a very interesting development in the King Kong spider-pit controversy. In 2011 stop-motion/visual effects wizard Jim Danforth released his memoir DINOSAURS, DRAGONS & DRAMA - The Odyssey of a Trickfilmmaker, an 828-page(!) document in CD-ROM format. Of particular interest is the following quote from page 361: "Whenever possible, I hung around the Film Effects of Hollywood matte department and talked with matte artists Howard Fisher and Cliff Silsby... Because of his involvment with KING KONG, I was also interested in talking to Orville Beckett. "Becky" showed me some stills he had from the filming of the live-action Dunning shots for the KONG spider-pit sequence (which was cut from the film before it was released)." Now, Jim Danforth should be no stranger to the readers of Filmfax, and although he himself doesn't have the pictures, his account is fascinating for two reasons. First, of course, it's another independent account that the scene was filmed. Second, I suggested Jim Aupperle (quoted in our Filmfax article) might weigh in on what exactly proof of the live-action footage might mean. On a thread at the Classic Horror Film Board, Mr. Aupperle had this to say: "If they were photographing live action Dunning shots for the spider sequence they needed completed spider animation at that time. The Dunning process would have needed a positive print of the animation to run in bipac with the unexposed negative when photographing the live action." We pointed this out in our article (although not quite so technically), when we said the live-action portions (filmed by Cooper at night on the sets of The Most Dangerous Game) were only begun after the Kong test reel's animation had been completed. Although Mr. Danforth's claim is only hearsay at this point, if true it would essentially guarantee the spider sequence's stop-motion scenes were completed, regardless of whatever happened to the footage later. Perhaps one of Filmfax's readers might know more of Orville Beckett and more particularly of his surviving family and estate. Could those pictures still survive in some scrapbook or trunk somewhere?

And if that's not enough, one more point to bolster our case: In the same thread (address posted below should space permit), a Classic Horror Film Board member named HalLane (who also helped us out with a picture for our article) posted a transcript of a clipping he found inserted in an inherited copy of The Making Of King Kong. It was a letter from TMoKK author George Turner himself, printed in a fanzine with the initials TNJ (possibly The Nostalgia Journal?). In this letter Turner warmly thanked a Mr. Lamberti for the glowing review of his book. Here's the pertinent quote: "Some of the pictures we used were photographed by Mr. Goldner on the set, using a French Sept split-frame camera. He developed the roll of film, left it in the can, and we found it while we were working on the book. It had been rolled so long we had a heck of a time getting it straightened out so we could use it. So these were printed for the first time more than 40 years after they were shot! These were the pictures of the New York sets... and of the Arsinotherium which was edited out before the movie was finished." What does this mean in terms of the spider-pit scene? Nothing. But it underscores a point we made in our article: Goldner was there, a part of Obie's effects team, from the beginning. He was there, taking pictures of miniatures from the test reel, the earliest scenes shot for Kong. He of all people would surely have known if the spider-pit scene was a mere legend--and he never indicated that in his book The Making Of King Kong., the prime text for Kong scholarship.

Gary Vehar and Lee Ashworth