The Giant Pacific Octopus wrote:

I understand that Cooper did "docudramas" but he was a man that was fascinated by larger than life characters and fantasy so for him to want to shift his "terror gorilla" story from docudrama to fantasy seems very plausible.

I agree, that he wanted to make the same type of picture that he had been making, just bigger and more incredible,  I just still don't see him coming up with a giant gorilla. Ray Morton in his book even had doubts on the idea of Cooper coming up with a giant gorilla as being an idea to weird. (Don't have any books with me so I cannot check exact quotes.) And the story about the building, sure looks great, but I still don't see giant in his idea, even though giant is better, and no one, and many have looked, can find a trace of a giant Cooper Gorilla before the painting by Crabbe and O'Brien. He wanted the ape big of coarse, the biggest ape he could get, I just think maybe the guys doing the painting thought he meant big as in gigantic, since they were in the process of making a film about gigantic dinosaurs. However it happened, I'm just glad that it did.

Tim