Godzilla 1954 Archive

[Abigayle Laurenitis]

akiraifukube (伊福部 昭, Ifukube Akira) is an Japanese composer that made the famous works of Godzilla (1954) music and all the Showa and Heisei era godzilla themes plus several other composed musicale notes.

Significant findings included the following: (1) Soviet forces interrogated American POWs in Korea, though the Russians deny it. (2) Multiple lines of evidence indicate that American POWs were transferred from Korea to the Soviet Union, some of whom appear to have been returned to POW camps in North Korea. (3) Evidence in the East German archives and from interviews confirm that American deserters were transferred to East Germany and the territory of the USSR. (4) No evidence of any kind was located in five former republics of the USSR that indicates over 23,000 American POWs were transferred to the Soviet Union after World War II.

Memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence. From: General N. F. Twining, Chief of Staff, United States Air Force Subject: (Unclassified) US Prisoners of War Remaining in Communist Custody After Termination of Exchange of Prisoners Under Terms of Korean Armistice Agreement SECRET March 16, 1954. -RDP80R01731R000800120028-5.pdf

This is FRESH AIR. In the Warner Brothers film "Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire," now in theaters, we get to see two legendary screen monsters team up to save the world. On today's show, we're going to recall the origin of these roaring creatures with archive interviews about their first appearances before movie audiences. First King Kong.

ARMSTRONG: (As Carl Denham) We'll give him more than chains. He's always been king of his world. But we'll teach him fear. We're millionaires, boys. I'll share it with all of you. Why, in a few months, it'll be up in lights on Broadway - Kong, the eighth wonder of the world.

DAVIES: That's a scene from the 1933 film "King Kong." That was Robert Armstrong as Carl Denham, the producer who journeys to Skull Island in the Indian Ocean to capture the giant ape and bring him to New York to star in his nightclub spectacle. "King Kong" was directed by Merian C. Cooper, who was himself an adventurer and documentary filmmaker who traveled through Africa and East Asia. We're going to listen to Terry's interview with film historian Rudy Behlmer recorded in 1999, when the soundtrack of "King Kong," dialogue and music, was released on CD. Behlmer had written the liner notes. His books include "Inside Warner Bros." and "Behind The Scene." Many things made that original "King Kong" memorable - the special effects, the image of the giant ape climbing the Empire State Building, the screams of Fay Wray and the score composed by Max Steiner. Here's the opening title music.

BEHLMER: It's a wonderful score. And, of course, he was a pioneer, certainly, in doing sound motion picture scores. But if you can imagine that picture, if you turn the sound off when you're watching a cassette or seeing it on television and you turn the sound off during the big sequences, certainly on - in the Jungle and on top of the Empire State Building and so forth, and you realize how much the sound elements contribute to the success of that film, not only the sound effects that Murray Spivack created out of roars and grunts and groans and what have you that he manufactured, but also, the wonderful dramatic values that Max Steiner brought to it, because, you know, at that time, when he was beginning to score that in late 1932, music throughout, in terms of a underscoring was not prevalent. It was shortly after sound came in and the emphasis was on dialogue. In fact, background scoring was relatively sparse.

But Max rose to the occasion, and fortunately, Merian C. Cooper was a staunch advocate, and so was David Selznick, who was the executive producer at RKO Radio at the time. And they said, yes, we want a full-blooded score. And it certainly became that. And he - you know, he made that thing work from a dramatic standpoint.

GROSS: I love this score, but I find something very amusing about it, which is that although it's set on this island, Skull Island, the music is really very European and nothing like what would have been heard in the region at that time. And I'll play this scene in a moment, but, you know, when they first get to the island - when the American film crew first gets to the island and they're watching this, you know, native ritual...

BEHLMER: That's true. Well, of course, Max and everybody else associated with this picture knew we were dealing with a fantasy here. It's a total fantasy, a more - as Cooper said, a more illogical picture could never (laughter) have been thought up.

BEHLMER: And it is illogical if you stop and examine it from that standpoint. But the music, you know, they weren't saying, well, wait a minute, we have to get something that's indigenous to this area. We have to be authentic. We have to be like a documentary. And, you know, it was full reign of the imagination. And of course, Max composed in a full Wagnerian manner, you know, with light motives and with all kinds of percussive effects that could be used. And he just went all out and the aspect of credibility, you forget about that, because, once again, we're dealing in the world of fantasy - the ultimate world of fantasy.

GROSS: Well, the other memorable sounds in "King Kong" include, of course, Fay Wray's screams and the roar of Kong himself. Let's start with Fay Wray's screams. You know, in the movie, the Carl Denham character, the character who wants to, like, wrangle Kong and bring it back for a nightclub act, he says to the Fay Wray character, he's kind of, like, teaching her how to scream. And he says, OK, pretend you're screaming for your life. Which, of course, she later has to do. Do you know what kind of advice Fay Wray was given about how she should scream?

BEHLMER: Well, the interesting thing is that, of course, if she had done as much screaming when they were shooting this film as it appears to be, she would have been hoarse on the fourth day of shooting. Most of her screams were post-recorded. After the picture finished shooting, they took her into a sound booth and she did wild screams, and they used those screams. So fortunately, she had one major screaming session, which, once again, was after the film finished shooting.

BEHLMER: Well, a remarkable man by the name of Murray Spivack, who was the head of the sound department at RKO Radio Pictures at the time, he was confronted with this film, you know, and thought, what can I do? It can't sound like some animal. It has to be a distinctive sound. So he went out, and he recorded the roar of a lion and the roar of a tiger, and he was playing things at different speeds and playing them backwards and then combining them. And then even for some of Kong's grunts and things, he recorded himself doing (imitating King Kong) in a little megaphone-type deal, so the sound is a kind of a combination of many things. It sounds like a roar, but it's not a roar that you can identify, which of course is what he wanted to do. But by altering the speeds of the recordings and taking two different animals and overlapping them, of course you can do all kinds of things.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear a nice scene with plenty of screams and roars? And this is, I believe, the first time we actually see Kong. Fay Wray is tied at the stake during another one of these ceremonies, and this scene starts with the chief, played by Noble Johnson.

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and as the new film "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" appears in theaters, we're listening to Terry's 1999 interview with film historian Rudy Belmar about the original "King Kong," released in 1933.

GROSS: Now, you know, Carl Denham is the character who's the American promoter determined to capture Kong so he can create a crowd-pleasing spectacle, you know, back in New York, and I want to play the scene where he explains why he needs a beautiful actress for the film that he eventually wants to build around Kong.

ARMSTRONG: (As Carl Denham) Makes me sore. I go out and sweat blood to make a swell picture, and then the critics and the exhibitors all say, if this picture had love interest, it would gross twice as much. All right. The public wants a girl, and this time, I'm going to give them what they want.

ARMSTRONG: (As Carl Denham) You think I'm going to give up just because you can't find me a girl with a backbone? Listen, I'm going out to make the greatest picture in the world, something that nobody's ever seen or heard of. You'll have to think up a lot of new adjectives when I come back.

GROSS: Well, Carl Denham is certainly determined to do anything he needs to do to make this picture. Any comparisons you could make between Carl Denham and the real director of King Kong, Merian Cooper?

BEHLMER: Well, there are a lot of comparisons because Merian Cooper was, to a large extent, Carl Denham, and Ernest Schoedsack, his partner, who was the co-director, was, to a certain degree, the Bruce Cabot character.

BEHLMER: The love interest of Fay Wray, who was the first mate on the junket, and Ruth Rose was Mrs. Schoedsack, and she wrote the final dialogue script. And Cooper and Schoedsack had been partners for a long time. They had done a very important documentary called "Grass" back in 1925, and then they did another one called "Chang" in 1927, where they were actually over in Siam, which it was called then, and later Thailand, and shot there up in the jungles with the tigers and the elephants and so forth, and they were really adventurous folk. I mean, back then, this was a big deal. And the entire company was Cooper and Schoedsack. They shot their own footage. They directed it. They set it up. They got to know the natives. So this kind of an expedition, of course, was taken to its fantasy element once again by "King Kong," which was a conception of Merian Cooper's.

When he was a young boy of about 6, his great-uncle gave him a copy of a book that was written in the middle of the 19th century called "Explorations And Adventures In Equatorial Africa," by a man by the name of Paul Du Chaillu. And in it, he's describing these terrifying gorillas, which, of course, years later, we've come to realize is not the case, but this was before anybody had really gotten to study the gorillas, and this electrified Cooper as a little kid. He said - and he told me this back in the '60s. He said, from that point on, I knew I wanted to be an explorer. Well, he did want to become an explorer, and he combined exploring with motion-picture-making and then, later on, with aviation, and he was quite - he was an incredible character.

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