<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Merian C. Cooper was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on October 24, 1893, into a family of five and his childhood world was comfortable. His life however, was a world of change—the year he was born, the Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago and Thomas Edison created the first film studio in New Jersey. Cooper, the creator of King Kong, would embrace change his entire life.

He enrolled in the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, but didn’t make it through his senior year, ending up instead in midshipman’s prison. Cooper left Annapolis and became a newspaper reporter for the Minneapolis Daily News, then joined the Georgia National Guard and participated in General George Pershing’s hunt for Pancho Villa. In 1917 he went to France, where he became a bomber pilot during World War I and, when his plane was shot down by the Germans, he was declared dead, although he ended up as a prisoner of war. After the war, he journeyed to Poland to help fight the Bolsheviks, and helped to form the unit known as the Kosciuszko Squadron. Again shot down, he escaped with the help of a spy, and fled into Poland.

In the 1920s, Cooper joined a documentary expedition to Abyssinia, where he filmed Ras Tafari. He and his filmmaking partner, Ernest Schoedsack, produced three films: Grass (1925), Chang (1927), and The Four Feathers (1928). Cooper helped his friend John Hambleton form Pan American Airways, and when Hambleton was killed in an airplane accident, Cooper returned to Hollywood, where he and Schoedsack created and filmed King Kong (1933).

Following King Kong, Cooper became the head of production for RKO Studios, where he urged David Selznick to give a screen test to Katherine Hepburn, and paired Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers. During this time he married Dorothy Jordan. With director John Ford he formed the production company Argosy Pictures, which produced such films as Stagecoach (1939), and he championed such film processes as Technicolor and Cinerama.

Cooper reported for duty with the Tenth Air Force on March 6, 1942, and was a key member of General Claire Chennault’s team in the South Pacific during World War II. Cooper died on April 21, 1973, at Mercy Hospital in San Diego, and was buried at sea.