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Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 – 10 February 1932) was a British writer of sensational detective, gangster, adventure, and sci-fi novels, plays and stories.
Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at the age of 12. He joined the army at age 21 and was a war correspondent during the Second Boer War for Reuters and the Daily Mail. Struggling with debt, he left
South Africa, returned to London and began writing thrillers to raise income, publishing books including The Four Just Men (1905). Drawing on his time as a reporter in the Congo, covering the Belgian atrocities, Wallace serialised short stories in magazines such as The Windsor Magazine and later published collections such as Sanders of the River (1911). He signed with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921 and became an internationally recognised author.
After an unsuccessful bid to stand as Liberal MP for Blackpool (as one of David Lloyd George's Independent Liberals) in the 1931 general election, Wallace moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a script writer for RKO. He died suddenly from undiagnosed diabetes, during the initial drafting of King Kong (1933).
Wallace was such a prolific writer that one of his publishers claimed that a quarter of all books in England were written by him. As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screen plays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace's work.
In addition to his work on King Kong, he is remembered as a writer of "the colonial imagination", for the J. G. Reeder detective stories, and for the Green Archer serial. He sold over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions and The Economist in 1997 describes him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century". Although the great majority of his books are out of print in the UK, they are still read in
Germany. A 50-minute German TV documentary was made in 1963 called The Edgar Wallace Story, which featured his son Bryan Edgar Wallace.
KING KONG
Out of the many scripts he penned for RKO, Merian C. Cooper's "gorilla picture" had the most lasting influence, becoming the classic
King Kong (1933).
Wallace wrote the initial 110-page first draft for "The Beast" (the film's original title) over five weeks, from late December 1931 to January 1932.[36] In all, there were three draft versions, another titled "Kong". Kong was rejected as the film's title because it was too similar to another Cooper film, Chang, released in 1927, and because it sounded Chinese. Wallace suggested the title King Ape. His diary described the writing process for this draft: Cooper fed aspects of the story in conferences and phone conversations; Wallace then executed Cooper's ideas, the latter approving the developing script on a sequence-by-sequence basis. While working on the project, Cooper also screened various recent films for Wallace to put him in the right mindset, including Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931). One of Cooper's main aspirations with the story was to use as much footage of an abandoned RKO picture with a similar premise, Creation, as possible. He showed Wallace the fragments that were to be reused in the current script.
Although the draft was incomplete, Wallace only made minor revisions to it, each at Cooper's request. In late January, Wallace was hospitalized, and by 10 February, he was dead, leaving Cooper without a screenwriter. The fragmentary nature of Wallace's script meant that the main dialogue-free action of the film (the jungle sequences) would have to be shot first, both as insurance and as a showreel for the board of RKO.
In My Hollywood Diary, Edgar Wallace wrote about the reception of his screenplay: "Cooper called me up last night and told me that everybody who had read 'Kong' was enthusiastic. They say it is the best adventure story that has ever been written for the screen." Wallace had high expectations for the film: "I am certain that 'Kong' is going to be a wow."
His screenplay begins with Denham and the party at the island, called "Vapour Island" by Wallace because of the volcanic emissions. Ann Darrow is called Shirley Redman in this early version. Jack Driscoll is also referred to as John Lanson or Johnny, and Captain Englehorn is much more domineering. Danby G. Denham is a promoter and a P. T. Barnum type showman who is looking for a giant ape to bring back to Madison Square Garden or the Polo Grounds to exhibit as a sideshow. The movie retains the Barnum theme when Denham, who evolved into Carl Denham in the Rose and Creelman treatment, refers to Kong as "the eighth wonder of the world", echoing Barnum's style of hyping acts. Wallace created the major characters, their relationships, and their role in the overall plot. He also created the story's beauty and the beast theme.
In his original screenplay, the crew of the boat consists of escaped convicts who kidnap Shirley. After a dinosaur attacks and wrecks their boat, they find refuge on the island. In a tent, a convict tries to rape Shirley. Kong appears, rescues Shirley and takes her away to his cave. Wallace says in a notation on the script that Kong is 30 feet tall, thus establishing Kong as a giant ape. John and the remaining convicts then go after Shirley, using a log to cross a ravine. Kong attacks them which leads to their deaths as the log crashes down the ravine. Kong fights and kills a triceratops. Dinosaurs and pterodactyls attack Kong and the party. Kong takes Shirley to his hideout in the mountains, and Jack rescues her. Using gas bombs, the expedition knocks out Kong.
Kong is brought back to New York and put in a cage. Shirley is attacked by lions and tigers let loose on purpose by Senorita. Kong kills the cats and whisks Shirley away. He climbs the Empire State Building where airplanes shoot at him. Cooper sent Wallace an internal memo from RKO suggesting that John dissuade the police from shooting Kong because of the danger to Shirley: "Please see if you consider it practical to work out theme that John attempts single handed rescue on top of Empire State Building if police will let off shooting for a minute." Kong is finally killed when lightning strikes the flag pole he is hanging on to. Early publicity stills for the movie have the title as "Kong" and "by Edgar Wallace" and show a lightning storm and flashes of lightning as envisioned by Wallace.
In his version, a small ape peeling a rose prefigured Kong's peeling away Shirley's clothes. His treatment also included an underwater scene from the attacking dinosaur's point of view as it approached a capsized boat.
However, his 110-page script was merely the first rough draft, not a final and completed shooting script.
After Wallace's death, Ruth Rose was brought in to work on the document he had started. She happened to be Schoedsack's wife and was able to translate the expectations of the producers into the final script. She added the ritual scene on Skull Island to replace Wallace's original idea of the attempted rape of Ann Darrow. Rose also added the opening scenes of the movie in which the main characters and plot are introduced. James Ashmore Creelman, who worked on the screenplay for The Most Dangerous Game, a film that Wallace was in discussions to write for at the time of his death, was also brought in to tidy up the script. The job of Rose and Creelman was to rework Wallace's original screenplay and replace scenes that failed to translate as expected.
The original Wallace screenplay was published in the 2013 book Ray Harryhausen – The Master of the Majicks, Volume 1: Beginnings and Endings by Mike Hankin.[39] In 2023, the original Wallace screenplay was published in KONG: An Original Screenplay by Edgar Wallace edited by Stephen Jones.[40]
That original screenplay is analysed and discussed in The Girl in the Hairy Paw (1976), edited by Ronald Gottesman and Harry Geduld, and by Mark Cotta Vaz, in the preface to the Modern Library reissue of King Kong (2005).
In December 1932, Wallace's story and screenplay for King Kong were "novelised" or transcribed by Delos W. Lovelace, a journalist and author himself who knew Cooper from when they worked on a newspaper, and appeared in book form under the title King Kong. Lovelace based the transcription largely on the Ruth Rose and James A. Creelman screenplay. This "novelization" of King Kong, attributed to Wallace, Cooper, and Lovelace, was originally published by Grosset and Dunlap. The book was reissued in 2005 by the Modern Library, a division of Random House, with an introduction by Greg Bear and a preface by Mark Cotta Vaz, and by Penguin in the US. In the UK, Victor Gollancz published a hardcover version in 2005. The first paperback edition had been published by Bantam in 1965 in the US and by Corgi in 1966 in the UK. In 1976, Grosset and Dunlap republished the novel in paperback and hardcover editions. There were paperback editions by Tempo and by Futura that year as well. In 2005, Blackstone Audio released a spoken-word version of the book as an audiobook on CD with commentary by Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, and Ray Harryhausen, among others. Harryhausen stated that he had read the original screenplay by Wallace. There were also German and Czech versions of the novel in 2005.
On 28 October 1933, Cinema Weekly published the short story "King
Kong", credited to Edgar Wallace and Draycott Montagu Dell (1888–1940). Dell had known Wallace as both worked for British newspapers. This can be called a "story-ization" of the Wallace and Cooper story which relied on the Rose and Creelman screenplay, but which like the Wallace treatment, begins at the island. Both Wallace and Cooper had signed a contract which allowed them to develop the story in a book or short story or serial form. Walter F. Ripperger also wrote a two-part serialization of the Wallace and Cooper story in Mystery magazine titled "King Kong" in the February and March issues in 1933.
Edgar
Wallace
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