Thanksgiving Day is a good time to revisit James H. Burns’ essay for The Thunderchild on WOR-TV’s odd tradition of showing King Kong on this holiday. Also, to note these words Jim recently shared with the Classic Horror Film Board:

I didn’t realize Kong was on just now, and as I was changing channels, there it was, coincidentally, my favorite sequence in the movie, when Denham and company land on the island… I’ve recently moved, and this was my first time seeing the movie in the new place… And just a few minutes ago, it got me to wondering: How many different locales have I watched King Kong in, and from? There was the chair in my parents’ bedroom, in 1967, or thereabouts… And sometimes, in later years, I’d scoot down to the floor, laying akimbo… A trip to a giant movie palace on West 14th Street in Manhattan, to see a revival screening (along with a chapter of Flash Gordon–and far more importantly, my Dad!) around 1970… A double-feature at the Malverne, in Long Island, with Animal Crackers, also in the early ’70s. I’m sure at least one convention ballroom… And the bedroom of my boyhood home, and many bedrooms and living rooms thereafter… I just had a pretty rough week, and when I discovered Denham, and Ann, and Jack and Englehorn by chance, I was happy; for the first time in a while. We may forget our dreams as the years and age go by. But our cinematic notions can endure, light through strips of celluloid, and now bits and bytes in a digital wonderland.