Merian C. Cooper
Merian Caldwell Cooper ( born October 24, 1893 in Jacksonville, Florida; † 21 April 1973 in San Diego, California ) was an American pilot, adventurer, actor, director, screenwriter and producer. His most famous film was the first King Kong film: King Kong and the white woman from the year 1933.
Life
Cooper conducted before the production of numerous films for RKO Pictures and after the Second World War.
Cooper started his film career with the documentary Grass ( 1925) and Chang ( 1927), in which game cinematics were installed. In Chang he used this technique for the film's finale, in which a horde of elephants trampling a village.
During his film career, Cooper promoted new film technologies over again. Thus, the stop-motion technique was used in the from him and Ernest B. Schoedsack, with whom he had worked closely since the 1920s, directed film King Kong and the white woman for the first time on a large scale. At this horror film classic Cooper was also involved in the screenplay. Furthermore, Cooper paved the way for film techniques such as Technicolor and Cinerama.
Cooper was a good friend and colleague of Western film director John Ford Together they produced successful films such as Rio Grande, The winner and The Searchers.
Cooper has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame ( his name was misspelled on the star: " Meriam C. Cooper ").
Cooper was married to Dorothy Jordan.