King Kong: The secrets of his triumph in Paris

The night of his arrival at the Champs-Elysées, King Kong climbs the facade of Paris Match where Europe 1 has set up its studio. His huge hands break the windows and seek to seize the secretaries, who pass out...to capture this photo of terror, which reproduces one of the scenes of the film—the escaped ape terrorizes New York, smashes cars, destroys the subway, and looks in the buildings—it took our photographers and our reporters a considerable amount of work, plus 10 assistants for 4 hours. A little later, the large 16m robot was displayed at the Champs-Elysées for the preview of the film that will be released for the holidays.

The stampede is such that the agents will have to revive 25 women, and collect 33 children who climbed the barriers to touch Kong. For 100,000 Parisians, the King Kong scene looks like a riot. From midnight, the crowd invades the Champs-Elysées to see the giant gorilla (16 meters and almost two tons) lying, through Sunday, on the sidewalk in front of our newspaper building. Paris Match and Europe 1, who organized this King Kong display for you: the great ape who, despite his growls, did not scare anyone, preceded the Paris release of his film on December 17 in 2,500 theaters around the world. We have to line up for three hours to go up for a few seconds on the bridge which leads to the monster. For these dream seconds, thirty technicians worked five hours assembling King Kong, who landed at Roissy in pieces.

It took three trucks to transport it from Los Angeles to New York. There, the head and legs were loaded onto an Air France 747 cargo plane, then the body and the arms. Like a star, King Kong came with his hairdresser, the American Michael Dino. For the fur of the monster, he tested thirty-four materials, from human hair to synthetic. He finally opted for horsehair, stiched hair by hair in the rubber "skin." For the filming, there were three giant gorilla robots of different sizes. Price: one million dollars. The King Kong exhibited on the Champs-Elysées is the one who, in the film, fell from the tallest tower in New York. The one who took Jessica Lange weighs six and a half tons, has a skeleton made of aluminum, and 1,500 meters of electric wire that make up its central nervous system. Hydraulic pumps move his limbs and joints. A remake of the famous King Kong by Merian Cooper and Ernest Shoedsack, the film cost the producer, Dino de Laurentiis, twenty-four million dollars. It's the most expensive in the history of cinema with Cleopatra. The story is set in the present on a mysterious island where engineers are looking for oil. King Kong is the symbol of the living forces of nature, corrupted by man.

(Photo Caption: His body is covered in horsehair, but for the face, a hairbrush is used by Michael Dino to perfect the layout of the fur.)