BTW I was flipping through my book Hot Bloodied Dinosaur Movies (from the early 1990s) it had alittle section about this called

The Counterfeit Kong
 
Because of the notoriety of King Kong, sometimes people attempt to cash in on it. For instance a man named Carmen Nigro, who used the name Ken Roady in the 1930s where he had a traveling act where he wore a gorilla suit, emerged in the early 70's and claimed that he wore a gorilla suit and played the title role of King Kong. At first the too often gullible press believed him and ran his story. But a lot of people who worked on King Kong were still alive in the 70's and they quickly disputed Nigro's claims.
 
Fay Wray called the man an outright liar. "Why, anyone who has seen his monkey suit would know it's no more like King Kong than Shirley Temple." A spokesman for RKO Pictures also disputed Nigro's claims. Zoe Porter, the assistant to Merian C. Cooper, the film's director called Nigro's claim "a dastardly lie. I'm amazed anyone could make such a ridiculous statement." Zoe accurately described how Kong was a series of animated models, except for the full size head, foot, and hand.

Porter was on the set every day and once stood in Kong's giant hand. "They tried it out on me before they put Fay Wray in it". Nigro didn't even know enough about how the film was made to tell a convincing lie. Had he said that he operated the giant head in close-ups, he might have gotten away with it as who remembers the names of all the assistants who worked on the film? They certainly didn't get screen credit. But no, Nigro claimed that he actually wore a gorilla suit and held a model of Fay Wray in his hand. When his claim was challenged he acknowledged that puppets may have been used, but he was Kong in closeups.
Some newspapers printed retractions after Nigro's claims were challenged, but in 1982 he made them again in  a story by syndicated columnists Bob Greene. It seemed that Nigro showed Greene stills, posters, pressbooks from King Kong, as though no one could have gotten them without working on the film. When the veracity of Greene's column was challenged, the journalist made disparaging remarks about "geeks' who spend all their time in darkened screening rooms as though being used by someone to perpetrate a  fraud was of little consequence to him.
I was one of the many people who sent Greene documentation disputing Nigro's claim, including copies of the Making of King Kong  in which authors Goldner and Turner actually single out Nigro by name and label him as fraud.. Greene's reply was that Nigro was a nice man and that he still believed him, although Greene never ever wrote about the man again.
People masquerading as actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood isn't uncommon. Several people have claimed to be Spanky McFarland from The Little Rascals even though the real Spanky is still alive and has challenged every imposter, including a woman who had claimed to be Spanky in the old films. More recently a man claimed to be Buckwheat and was profiled by ABC on 20/20-who had to retract their claim when it was revealed that the real actor who played Buckwheat had been dead for a decade.

The Catch of the Day!