Fay Wray

FAY WRAY d2004. Canadian-American actress whose acting career spanned 57 years mainly in horror-film roles. Nicknamed the first "scream queen", she will forever be remembered as the subject of the gorillas affections in the 1933 RKO Pictures film classic "King Kong". She retired from acting in 1980, but in 2004 she was approached by director Peter Jackson to appear in a small cameo for the 2005 remake of King Kong. She met with Naomi Watts who was to play the role of Ann Darrow. She politely declined the cameo, claiming the original "Kong" to be the true "King". Before filming of the remake commenced, Wray died in her sleep of natural causes on August 8th 2004 aged 96 in her Manhattan apartment. Two days after her death, the lights of the Empire State Building were extinguished for 15 minutes in her memory and that of the legendary final scene in King Kong (1933)