King Kong (1933 film)
1933 American monster adventure film
King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code adventure horror monster film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, with special effects by Willis H. O'Brien and music by Max Steiner. Produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, King Kong is the first film in the self-titled franchise, combining live-action sequences with stop-motion animation using rear-screen projection. The idea for the film came when Cooper decided to create a motion picture about a giant gorilla struggling against modern civilization. The film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot. The story follows said gorilla dubbed Kong who feels affection for a beautiful young woman offered to him as a sacrifice.
King Kong premiered in New York City on March 2, 1933, to many rave reviews, with praise for its stop-motion animation and musical score. During its initial run, the film earned a profit of $650,000, which increased to $2,847,000 by the time of its re-release in 1952. Various scenes were deleted by censors, but they were restored in 1970. Later, in 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2010, the film was ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time and the fifty-sixth greatest film of all time.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “King Kong (1933 film)” as 1933 American monster adventure film. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1933 American monster adventure film. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q309048. VIAF identifies the subject as 316751625. The Library of Congress control number is n95030682. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1952, 1970 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “King Kong (1933 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.