Max Steiner in the context of "Bernard Herrmann"

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 film follows a giant ape 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, and in 1970, they were restored. 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. Various new editions of the film have also been released. A sequel, entitled Son of Kong, was made the same year as the original film, and several more films have been made, including two remakes in 1976 and 2005, respectively. The characters and story have since entered the public domain; the film's copyright is set to expire in 2029 in the US. Analysis of the film has included such topics as racial stereotypes, Ann's relationship with the other characters, and the struggle between nature and civilization.

RKO Pictures, commonly known as simply RKO, is an American film, television and stage production company owned by Concord. In its original incarnation, as RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., it was one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA executive David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name (an initialism of Radio-Keith-Orpheum). Two years later, another Kennedy concern, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum.

RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid- to late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their first major successes at the studio. Cary Grant was a mainstay for years, with credits including touchstones of the screwball comedy genre with which RKO was identified. The work of producer Val Lewton's low-budget horror unit and RKO's many ventures into the field now known as film noir have been acclaimed, largely after the fact, by film critics and historians. The studio produced two of the most famous films in motion picture history: King Kong and producer/director/star Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. RKO was also responsible for notable coproductions such as It's a Wonderful Life and Notorious, and it distributed many celebrated films by animation pioneer Walt Disney and leading independent producer Samuel Goldwyn. Though it often could not compete financially for top star and director contracts, RKO's below-the-line personnel were among the finest, including composer Max Steiner, cinematographers Nicholas Musuraca and Gregg Toland, and designer Van Nest Polglase.