“It’s barely bigger than yours,” she tells the Mate. “Is that so?”
“It is the reason he is so unsure of himself.”
This conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Commander Buck and his men. Buck has come, he announces, to take Dong back to the States to make a film star out of him. Lola is at first opposed to the idea — the removal of Dong from his homeland might create an ecological imbalance, she says — but the impresario is a fast and persuasive talker. “I want to do what’s best for all concerned,” says Buck. “Dong will make so much money in films, any lifestyle he wants will be available to him. I don’t think it’s fair to deny him this opportunity. Do you want to be the one to deny him?”
Lola makes conditions. She will help Commander Buck capture the giant ape on the grounds that if things don’t work out with Dong’s career, or if Dong is unhappy in his new life, Buck will see to it personally that Dong returns to his island.
“If that’s the way you want it,” says the impresario, “that’s the way it will be.”
On shipboard — Dong in captivity in the hull of the ship — Commander Buck strides the deck with uncharacteristic swagger, a swagger stick under his arm. When Lola comes by he signals her with his head to follow him. He takes her to his quarters and orders her to remove her clothes and position herself at the foot of his bed. She can see from his obsessive manner that there is no arguing with him. She manages to divert him from his purpose by telling him a succession of stories.
In another part of the ship, Dong weeps and moans under the burden of his chains. Civilization has already begun to change him. He has taken to smoking a pipe, a comfort to him in his isolation.
There has been a breakdown in discipline. Buck writes in his journal. To avoid mutiny, I’ve had to put half the crew in chains. The choice of who to chain and who not has been wholly arbitrary. All week I’ve been crazed with sexual longing. I hear whispers of mutiny in my sleep.
The First Mate, who has been put in irons for insubordination, has fantasies of murdering Commander Buck and taking command of the ship. Lola visits him and encourages him in his ambition to make something of himself;
In captivity, Dong takes up with the two men who bring him his food, a sublimation of unfulfilled desires. He keeps a picture of Lola on his wall, a pin-up from her modeling days before she got her advanced degree in Anthropomorphology.
I’ve done what I’ve set out to do, writes Buck in his journal.
Who can say it hasn’t been worth it?
True to his promise, the impresario stars Dong in a motion picture treating in a semifictional way the ape’s early life on Hong Dong Island. The audience at the premiere gives the film a prolonged standing ovation. King Dong is launched on a brilliant career.
Commander Buck arranges for the construction of an extraordinary house for Dong overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The interior décor simulates the landscape of Hong Dong Island, and Dong, although puzzled by the unfamiliar similarities, accepts the gift gratefully. Lola lives with him as friend and advisor and there is some gossip in the prints of a secret marriage.
In real life, however, Lola has become tired of living with someone unable to share the same intellectual interests. She keeps to herself, wears dark glasses, is seen reading difficult books or walking along the ocean’s edge, looking bored and feckless.
Success has gone to Dong’s head and he has of late become extremely careless of Lola’s feelings. Other women, starlets and would-be starlets, the famous and the infamous, come to the exotic Malibu residence at all hours of the day and night to pay homage to the beast. Lola keeps his appointment book and warns him of the implication of social diseases.
Dong had a certain integrity when they found him, a kind of primitive innocence, while now he is a creature governed solely by his pleasures.
Montage of Dong on his back like a fallen colossus being licked in a variety of formations by five or six starlets at once, his small hairy tower smoldering like some apprentice volcano.
Dong growls and beats his chest, his eyes rolling out of his head in ecstasy. Lola stands on a parapet, overlooking the scene, her hand shielding her eyes from the full brunt of her naked sight. When the starlets (or whoever — it is rumored that the daughter of a former President is one of the ape’s visitors) are gone, Lola chides Dong in a gentle voice. “If you keep this up, you’ll ruin your health,” she says.
It goes on this way for a while. The more successful Dong’s public life becomes, the more vile is his private behavior. For those who love him for himself, there is nothing but ashes and grief.
Dong does not seem particularly happy with himself and is short-tempered and sulky, prey to every passing vice. Sex, marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, alcohol — a classic downfall. Dong drinks heavily, downing gallon bottles as if they were shot glasses. The beast carries it well, but is always a little out of focus these days, his eyes exceptionally glassy.
At Lola’s urging, Commander Buck has a fatherly talk with Dong about his unacknowledged drinking problem. Dong has a way of going non compos mentis when there’s something he doesn’t want to hear, his normally intelligent face lapsing into bestial stolidity. The impresario warns Dong that unless he shapes up, he will sell his contract to the syndicate and go off on another expedition. “I made you,” says the impresario, “and if I have to, I can unmake you.”
When Lola threatens to leave Dong, the beast turns maudlin, moaning and weeping in a heartbreaking way. Lola says she will continue to live with him if he promises to give up boozing and womanizing. The ape agrees or seems to, but we can see it is only a ruse to get her to stay.
Dong becomes increasingly tempermental at the studio, refusing to shoot certain scenes when not in the mood. One director quits the picture rather than be undermined by his erratic star. In a fit of pique — one or two details not to his liking — Dong tears down a million-dollar set.
Lola has to plead with the studio head to take him back. Only if she agrees to appear with him in the picture, says the head, will he work with Dong again.
Lola keeps Dong in line for the completion of the film, and just as it seems as if things are working out in their lives, Dong learns that Lola has gotten the lion’s share of the press — she has become a star in her own right — and he hits the sauce again.
One day, working in his first B film, Dong collapses on the set and has to be taken home and put to bed. The studio doctor comes to examine him and we can see from the doctor’s face that there is something gravely wrong with the ape.
“Is it very serious?” Lola asks.
“I assure you that I’ll do the best I can,” says the doctor. “New discoveries are being made every day. The important thing is that he want to live. Without the will to live, there is nothing modern medicine can do for him.”
After the doctor leaves, Tex comes to the house to renew his plea to Lola to run off with him. He has become a successful Hollywood writer (five straight hits in a row, including Lola’s latest picture) and can offer Lola everything she wants.
Lola looks away, unable to speak, but we can see (or sense) that she wishes she were free to go.
“I want you to tell me that you don’t love me,” says Tex. “I want to hear you tell me that from your own lips.”
“I don’t…,” she says, but can’t finish the sentence. “I don’t love you.”
They came together irresistibly. We see their lovemaking in slow motion through a dark red filter; it is as if they were dancing at the center of a fire.