The Four Faces of Hollywood's Jungle Fever

Fay Wray as Ann Darrow in the 1933 version of

King Kong

The Jungle Fever (JF) theme has its origin in the 1933 Merian C. Copper movie called, King Kong, where the idea of controversial love, JF, had its film debut.

The idea of love between a white woman and a black ape was understandable – people love and adore pets.

In 1933 the love in Kong was entirely more acceptable then than the other form of controversial love, that is, love between a black man and a white woman, which was about to debut on the silver screen thirty-four years later.

King Kong stirred no racial passions. Only she, Ann Darrow, (played by Fay Wray) knows for sure if their passion was truly JF. Yet women of eclectic tastes yearned to know what Kong was like, but Kong wasn’t showing or telling. Kong was a silent lover.

So JF, its first edition, went quietly into the film can, but in 2005 there was another resurrection. Still, that initial, though acceptable, controversial love with Kong gave birth in a most unorthodox fashion to the JF that was about to follow.

JF, edition II, thirty-four years after Kong, takes us to the year 1967. In that year the Stanley Kramer’s movie: “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” surfaced. It was a more controversial form of love than in Kong and of a slightly different type – human to human.

The subject of interracial love in 1967 was as controversial as it gets. The Academy Award winning movie, for original screenplay, starred the young Sidney Poitier.

The story centres on Joanna Drayton, a young white American woman, played by Katharine Houghton who has a worldwind romance with Dr. Prentice, an African American. They meet while on holiday in Hawaii. The two plan to marry and she will return with him to Switzerland. It was a groundbreaking story of subtle interracial love, quiet “JF.”

The JF Kramer creates in ’67 became that once in a lifetime event; it was like Fate had taken both of them by the hand. To both of them this “quiet JF” seemed so real. But, could they be sure? Was he sure? Was she sure?

They were so innocent of the ways of the world and they wanted to believe that a new day had dawned for other people in love just as they were. Love, like time, is fleeing and yet it moves mountains.

JF, edition III, was in fact the 1991 movie called “Jungle Fever.” The Spike Lee movie starred Wesley Snipes and introduced newer generation of actors poised to make their marks.

The plot centres on the interracial romance between a successful, married architect, Flipper Purify, Wesley Snipes, and an Italian-American woman, Angie Tucci, Annabella Sciorra. One notes that the names of the actors were as unrecognizable as the names of the characters in the script.

This is the real JF, raunchy, no holes barred type of JF, where both partners get more than what they wanted in the first place. They meet in the architectural firm, where Purify works and Tucci is hired as a temp secretary.

As a result of their relationship, they come under intense pressure, exerted by their families and friends. There are also subplots this time (the JF is not enough): Flipper’s brother, ‘Gator, (Samuel L. Jackson) is a crack addict.

Gone is the innocence of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” JF is no longer that once in a lifetime experience that it was in 1967. By 1991 JF is allowed to let “it all hang out.”

Raunchy JF is defined now as the passion of a couple of the opposite race, notably black and white, making-out all over the place. Now, the lovers are all in a hurry. It’s jiggy time.

So far JF is a love of extremes: animal-love JF, quiet JF, raunchy JF and at last “indifferent JF.”

The last and fourth source of JF appears in the television show, Grey’s Anatomy. The popular television series stars Canadian Sandra Ho as a doctor of Korean ancestry, Dr. Cristina Yang, and the plot matches her with Isaiah Washington, a doctor of African American ancestry, Dr. Preston Burke. Suddenly interracial love, JF, takes on a whole new meaning.

Yang is a graduate of Sanford University medical school. Work complications arise out of their “secret” relationship but they continue to sleep together and she gets pregnant but does not tell her mate, Dr. Burke.

Her pregnancy is revealed one day when she collapses in surgery and the pregnancy is aborted. Always uptight Cristina only tells Dr. Burke she loves him only when he falls to sleep; this is a kind of “indifferent JF,” but it works for the show.

It is to be yet observed that for some reason the medical and scientific professions seems to have the corner in the marketplace when it comes to JF.

So, if JF started all with a black ape. Where can JF go from here?

Perhaps, next time we witness JF it will probably be between two gender-identical gang leaders, a kind of Brokeback Mountain of the intercity, where two male leaders of rival gangs, driving powerful and expensive European sports cars, fall in love, play video games for fun but never get it on.


As always, well wishes, and having fun,


F. Stanley Boyd