Ruth Rose

Ruth Rose (1896 - 1978) was a writer who worked on several films in the 1930s and the 1940s, most famously the original 1933 classic King Kong.

Biography

Early Life

Rose was born on January 16, 1896 to a playwright, Edward E. Rose. 1926 was when her life began to change. Rose was working as the official historian on a New York Geological Society expedition to the Galapagos Islands. Ernest Schoedsack was working as a cinematographer on that same expedition, just after he had made the 1925 film "Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life" with Merian C. Cooper. Rose and Schoedsack met there and fell in love. In 1926 they were married. She joined Schoedsack and Cooper in some of their other adventures and productions, including the 1927 "Chang".

King Kong

In the early 1930s, Cooper began to make his film King Kong. He had already gotten two other writers to work on Kong. The first one, Edgar Wallace, died before he could make any significant changes, and the second, James Creelman, wrote a screenplay that was too slow-paced, descriptive, and had too much flowery dialogue according to Cooper. So he hired Rose to rework it. Rose cut out many of the long, inimportant scenes that Creelman had written to make it more fast-paced. She also based the character of Carl Denham on Merian Cooper and Jack Driscoll she based on her husband, Ernest Schoedsack. It was now more like one of the Cooper-Schoedsack adventures.

Later Life

After King Kong's success, Rose wrote several other movies including Blind Adventure, Son of Kong, She, the Last Days of Pompeii and Mighty Joe Young, another giant ape adventure. Her "Kong" screenplay was the basis for two remakes of King Kong, one in 1976 and one in 2005. Rose did not write any more films until her death on June 8, 1978.

References

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