On Tuesday, August 10, the Empire State Building was dimmed ...

ust 10, the Empire State Building was dimmed for 15 minutes to honor Fay Wray, the 1920s and 30s film actress who had died the previous Sunday, one month shy of her ninety-seventh birthday. More than any other performer, Wray's history was linked with New York's most famous landmark. It was she who, as star of the 1933 horror classic King Kong, scaled the building's art deco heights while struggling against Kong's furry grip. Today, more than 70 years later, Wray's fear-unforgettably captured in her wild screaming and kicking-still becomes our own. It's the fear of brutality, arbitrary violence and the dehumanizing forces of a world out of control.

Along with Anita Page (star of the 1928 "flapper" hit, Our Dancing Daughters), Wray was one of the last links to the silent-movie era-the time in which, as Norma Desmond famously put it, "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" Getting her start in Hollywood films as early as 1923, Wray gained fame when director Erich von Stroheim chose her to star in his now-classic The Wedding March (begun in 1926 but not released until two years later). In her literate autobiography, On the Other Hand (1989), Wray described working with the brilliant, imperious von Stroheim: "There was never any sense of having to compete with time. Time was his, he owned it. He used it as it should be used by an artist: He ignored it."

Wray was drawn to genius all her life. From 1928 to 1939, she was married to John Monk Saunders, the troubled screenwriter of 1927's aerial drama, Wings (Saunders committed suicide in 1940). Her second husband was Robert Riskin, writer for several of Frank Capra's most famous films. In between, Wray was involved romantically with Clifford Odets, and Sinclair Lewis pursued her doggedly. Lewis sent her pages of devoted prose, including the following confession (written after a viewing of Kong): "I came out of that movie house a wreck. I herewith ship the shattered timbers on to you."

Like Lewis, the world has become infatuated with Ann Darrow, the beautiful actress who is both Kong's love object and his victim. Can a genuine response to beauty ever be considered bad? Wray addressed this question in the witty "letter to Kong" that opens her book: "I feel that you never did mean harm to me. My children knew?'He didn't want to hurt you,' they said, 'he just liked you.'"

At the time of its release, Kong was just one credit in a prolific career (in 1933 alone Wray released 11 films), but later she came to value her part in the monster's legend: "?each time I arrive in New York and see the skyline and the exquisite beauty of the Empire State Building, my heart beats a little faster." o