Merian C. Cooper's fascination with gorillas began with his boyhood reading of Paul Du Chaillu's "Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa" (1861) and was furthered in 1929 by studying a tribe of baboons in Africa while filming "The Four Feathers". After reading W. Douglas Burden's "The Dragon Lizards of Komodo", he fashioned a scenario depicting African gorillas battling Komodo dragons intercut with artificial stand-ins for joint shots. He then narrowed the "dramatis personae" to one ferocious, lizard-battling gorilla (rather than a group) and included a lone woman on expedition to appease those critics who belabored him for neglecting romance in his films. A remote island would be the setting and the gorilla would be dealt a spectacular death in New York City.