Foto: Arnold Genthe (1869-1942)

1907 - 2004

She began her film career at the age of sixteen with tiny roles in movies like "Gasoline Live" (23), "Should Sailors Marry?" (24) and "Chasing the Chaser" (25).

When the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers selected thirteen young starlets in 1926 of whom they expected a future film career, Fay Wray was together with Janet Gaynor and Mary Astor among them. In the next years she acted in many western movies like "The Man in the Saddle " (26), "Don't Shoot" (26), "The Wild Horse Stampede" (26) and "Spurs and Saddles" (27). But only with her part in Erich von Stroheim's "The Wedding March" (28) she got international attention and became famous. Other well-known silent movies are "The Legion of the Condemned" (28) and "Street of Sin" (28).

In the 30's followed other leading roles with stars like Gary Cooper and Jack Holt. To her early talkies belong "The Texan" (30), "The Sea God" (30), "Three Rogues" (31), "The Unholy Garden" (32) and "Master of Men" (33). 
Fay Wray was convincing in some horror classics of the 30's like in "Doctor X" (32), "The Vampire Bat" (33), "Mystery of the Wax Museum" (33) and finally "King Kong" (33). No other actress was able to produce such a dramatic cry on the big screen as Fay Wray. And in "King Kong" she let the blood froze in the artery of the audience. 

From the middle of the 30's she appeared more often in so-called lod-budget movies like "When Knights Were Bold" (36), "Roaming Lady" (36), "Murder in Greenwich Village" (37) and "Navy Secrets" (39).

Fay Wray got a divorce from writer John Monk Saunders after eleven years, at the same time her film career drew to a close. She only took part in few more movies in the 40's, so in "Wildcat Bus" (40), "Adam Had Four Sons" (41), "Melody for Three" (41) and "Not a Ladies' Man" (42). After that it took ten years till her next movie called "Small Town Girl" (53). In the 50's followed other roles in "Treasure of the Golden Condor" (53), as mother of Natalie Wood in the serial "The Pride of the Family" (53), "The Cobweb" (55), "Crime of Passion" (57) and "Summer Love" (58), but the movies didn't reach the same quality as her earlier works.
She impersonated her last role in "Gideon's Trumpet" (80) with Henry Fonda.

Fay Wray was married in second marriage with writer Robert Riskin.
 

Other movies with Fay Wray:
Isn't Life Terrible (25) Unfriendly Enemies (25) Your Own Back Yard (25) Moonlight and Noses (25) What Price Goofy (25) The Coast Patrol (25) One Wild Time (26) Don Key/A Son of Burro (26) Lazy Lightning (26) Loco Luck (27) A One Man Game (27) The First Kiss (28) The Honeymoon (28) Thunderbolt (29) Pointed Heels (29) The Four Feathers (29) Behind the Make-Up (30) The Border Legion (30) Captain Thunder (30) The Conquering Horde (31) The Slippery Pearls (31) Dirigible (31) The Finger Points (31) The Lawyer's Secret (31) Stowaway (32) The Most Dangerous Game (32) Below the Sea (33) Ann Carver's Profession (33) The Woman I Stole (33) Shanghai Madness (33) The Big Brain (33) One Sunday Afternoon (33) The Bowery (33) The Countess of Monte Cristo (34) Once to Every Woman (34) Viva Villa! (34) The Affairs of Cellini (34) Black Moon (34) The Richest Girl in the World (34) Woman in the Dark (34) Cheating Cheaters (34) Madame Spy (34) The Clairvoyant (34) Bulldog Jack (34) White Lies (35) Mills of the Gods (35) Come Out of the Pantry (35) They Met in a Taxi (36) It Happened in Hollywood (37) The Jury's Secret (38) Smashing the Spy Ring (39) Queen Bee (55) Hell on Frisco Bay (55) Rock, Pretty Baby (56) Tammy and the Bachelor (57) Dragstrip Riot (58)