No More Monkey Jokes

In honor of the Wednesday debut of King Kong, here is a link to a Detroit Free Press review of the movie. The review itself, and especially the title, is not that great, but it does have some fun facts about the original. The one thing it doesn't answer that I've been curious about is where the idea for the original movie came from. Was there a book or a short story? Was is just a creative movie maker? If anyone has any information on this, I'd be interested to know.