Every great screen career has a beginning, and Jessica Lange’s began at the top of the world, literally. In John Guillermin’s 1976 remake of King Kong, she played Dwan, a young woman found adrift at sea and carried by a giant ape to the top of New York’s World Trade Center. It was one of the most high-profile debuts any actress has ever had, and it made her famous overnight. It also placed a burden on her that took years to shake off: the world knew her face before it knew her talent.
A remake with everything to prove
The original King Kong of 1933 is one of the most beloved films ever made, and remaking it in the 1970s was an act of considerable daring. Producer Dino De Laurentiis spared no expense. The new film moved the action from Skull Island’s stop-motion jungle to a modern world of oil exploration, corporate greed, and the gleaming towers of Manhattan. The ape himself was a marvel of the time, a giant animatronic creation supplemented by a man in a suit, the makeup artist Rick Baker, whose work gave Kong a surprisingly expressive face. The film’s climax, with Kong scaling the World Trade Center rather than the Empire State Building, was designed to announce that this was a Kong for a new New York.
Into this enormous production stepped a complete unknown. Lange had been working as a model in New York and had studied mime in Paris, but she had never acted in a film before. De Laurentiis chose her after a long search, reportedly captivated by her photogenic presence. She was cast opposite Jeff Bridges, as the primatologist Jack Prescott, and Charles Grodin, as the ruthless oil executive Fred Wilson. It was, by any measure, a baptism of fire: a huge budget, a beloved property, and a role that required her to act opposite a creature who was often not there at all.
Dwan: more than a scream
In the 1933 film, Fay Wray’s Ann Darrow is a destitute actress rescued from the streets by a film director. In the 1976 version, Dwan, whose name she explains is a misspelling of Dawn, is an aspiring actress found alone on a life raft in the Indian Ocean, the sole survivor of a wrecked yacht. She is picked up by the oil exploration ship, and almost immediately becomes the focus of the voyage: Wilson sees her as a potential publicity asset, Prescott sees a mystery, and Kong, when the ship reaches the island, sees something he cannot let go.
Lange’s performance is often remembered, unfairly, as little more than screaming. Certainly she screams, and well, but there is much more to Dwan than that. Lange gives her a droll, modern wit that sets her apart from the heroines of earlier monster films. She is funny, delivering wisecracks even while terrified, and she is resourceful, a woman who has already survived one disaster before Kong ever appears. Watch her early scenes on the ship: she is alert, curious, and unimpressed by male bluster, trading banter with Bridges and Grodin with a confidence that belies her newcomer status. She is not a passive prize; she is a person, and that makes Kong’s fascination with her more poignant, not less.
The heart of the film is the strange, tender relationship between Dwan and Kong. Lange had to play tenderness towards a creature made of wires, fur, and a man in a suit, and she does so with remarkable sincerity. In the jungle scenes, her fear gradually gives way to wonder, and then to a kind of affection. When Kong carries her through the island, she clutches him not only in terror but, eventually, in trust. The film’s most famous image, Kong holding Dwan gently in his enormous palm at the top of the World Trade Center, works because Lange sells it: her face registers awe, grief, and a strange gratitude all at once. She makes us believe that this woman could mourn a monster.
A debut under the microscope
King Kong was a commercial success, one of the biggest hits of 1976, and Lange won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year. But critical reaction to her performance was mixed, and some of it was cruel. A young woman making her debut in a blockbuster monster film was an easy target, and several reviewers treated her as decoration rather than as an actress. Lange herself has spoken candidly about how painful that reception was, and how it shaped her determination to choose serious work next. She did not rush into another blockbuster. She waited, studied, and returned in films that demanded everything she had.
That context makes King Kong more interesting, not less. Seen today, without the noise of 1976, Lange’s Dwan holds up remarkably well. She is luminous on camera, yes, but she is also funny, alert, and emotionally present in scenes that would defeat many experienced performers. The film asks her to carry its emotional centre while acting opposite special effects, and she does it. Modern viewers, who know what she went on to achieve in Frances, Tootsie, and Blue Sky, can see in Dwan the early signs of her gifts: the watchful eyes, the stillness, the ability to suggest an inner life even when the dialogue is thin.
Why it endures
The 1976 King Kong endures for several reasons. Its effects, though dated in places, retain a tactile charm that purely digital creatures lack. Its updating of the story to the age of oil crises and corporate ambition gives it a topical edge the original did not have. Its score by John Barry is lush and romantic. And its climax, high above Manhattan, remains genuinely moving, not least because Lange’s face in Kong’s hand gives the spectacle a human scale.
For Lange, the film is both a beginning and a paradox. It gave her everything, fame, opportunity, a place in film history, and it gave her something to prove herself against for the next decade. She would spend the years that followed showing the world that the girl in Kong’s hand was an actress of formidable depth. That she succeeded so completely is a testament to her talent and her tenacity. But it is worth returning to Dwan herself, not merely as a stepping stone, but as a performance in its own right: witty, brave, tender, and, in the film’s final moments, heartbreaking. When Kong falls and Dwan is left alone on the tower, Lange’s grief is real, and it lingers long after the credits roll. It was the first time audiences saw Jessica Lange act, and in retrospect, it was a promise of everything that would follow.