Cooper was a showman, maybe the best of all time, which was great for him-but and I mean this in a nice way, but I don't believe most of what (supposedly) came out of his mouth! I say supposedly because most of the time it was that he said this or that, after the fact. Just MHO, I'm inclined to think that O'Brien is the reason their is a Kong, yeah Cooper had a story about a gorilla, and he was going to fight a Komodo dragon, he was also going to steal a girl, something he got from the book Equatorial Africa or something, anyway - like Tim said there is no proof it was a Giant Gorilla in his story from the beginning. Like I said, this is just my opinion and my hunch, but I believe King Kong was a 18 foot and taller Gorilla-like creature because of Obie.

Cooper wanted a gorilla to fight a Komodo dragon, Obie wanted something more human and to fight Dinosaurs, most of the Creation story is in the Kong story, Cooper got Creation nixed to make his Kong movie, and Obie had plenty of great ideas that never came to fruition because he didn't have the financial prowess ( I think that's what they say on the restored extra's DVD of King Kong) which makes me believe that most of Kong's story was from Obie. Wallace's draft (which again, supposedly was only what Cooper told him to write) has hardly any of the final Kong story in it, I have the script but haven't read it in awhile, but from what I remember, most of it is different than the final story

Kess