FAY WRAY AND WILLIAM MORTENSON

"Deportment was more important than soul-searching." - Vina Fay Wray

William Mortenson was one of the most unique photographers who ever worked in Hollywood. Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Lon Chaney and many other actors and actresses posed before the seductive lens of his camera. Associated with the "pictorialist" style that was popular in the 1920s, he is known to be among the last to use it in his work. He would develop his pictures and then manipulate them by scratching, scraping and drawing on them, then using a texturing process that ended up making the image a hybrid of illustration, painting and photography. The results were fascinating.

L'Amour by Wm. Mortenson. Myrdith Monaghan and unknown man in gorilla suit.

Many of his images were of the fantastic. One of the most well known is the 1935 photo titled L'Amour, depicting a huge ape leering over an unconscious woman. It is said that the film, KING KONG, released 2 years before, was its inspiration, and it's easy to believe so. The woman has been mistakenly identified as ambiguously dead, swooning or sleeping. However, a closer look reveals that blood is running from the corner of her mouth, suggesting more likely that she has just been clubbed by the leering monster.

In 1922, Mortenson was hired to paint matte backgrounds for art director Ferdinan Pinney Earle in the production of THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM, starring Ramon Navarro. Navarro would being groomed to be the next Valentino, but his personal life was a train wreck; torn between his Catholicism, his communism, his alcoholism and his homosexuality, Navarro was a troubled soul. He was later murdered by two male prostitutes in a money-for-sex date that turned into torture and robbery.

Mortenson persuaded either Earle or the director of Rubaiyat to include in the cast a 14-year-old Canadian girl by the name of Fay Wray. The film was was never released, but it was only 11 years later when she would be screaming at the top of her lungs in RKO's KING KONG.

A possible surviving young Fay Wray portrait by Mortenson.

Mortenson's fiance at the time was Wray's older sister, after having been introduced to the Mormon family who were living in Arizona at the time. Young Vina Fay Wray was sent by her mother to Hollywood, with the arrangement that Mortenson would act as her guardian and help her acting career get off the ground. He was successful in landing her several jobs as an extra in silent films, such as RUBAIYAT.

It was inevitable that Mortenson would photograph Wray, which she would later credit as developing her self-image. In her biography, Wray states: "There was a person in those pictures I hadn’t seen before, even if I had suspected she could be there."

A mask of Fay Wray by Mortenson and Quenton Bredt ca. 1921..

This all came to an end when Miss Wray's mother blew into town and accused Mortenson of taking advantage (implying sexual as well) of her daughter. In what must have been quite a scene, she proceeded to break the glass negatives that he had taken of Wray in front of them and whisked her away. Wray denied any wrongdoing, and forever after she would consider Mortenson a great influence.

A later portrait of Fay Wray by Mortenson.

This is one of a series of photographs incorrectly identifying the model as

Fay Wray.. It is actually Courtney Crawford, Mortenson's first wife.