 The film was an immediate hit, and by some estimates it was one of the highest-grossing films of the 1930s at over $4 million.Although Cooper never listed "Ingagi" among his influences for "King Kong," it has long been held that RKO green-lit "Kong" because of the bottom-line example of "Ingagi" and the formula that "gorillas plus sexy women in peril equals enormous profits".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".