King Kong (1933) has long been considered one of the greatest fantasy films of all time. To audiences who were suffering during the worst years of the Great Depression, King Kong was breathtakingly new and exciting. The concept was audacious; there had never before been a telling of the "Beauty and the Beast" story on such a huge scale and with a modern sensibility. The film seemed so fresh because it was conceived by a real-life adventurer, Merian C. Cooper, who, with fellow documentarian Ernest Schoedsack, created his first fiction film after traveling the world and making several well-regarded documentaries. Cooper was fortunate to have the services of a talented group of special effects artists, particularly Willis O'Brien, who animated the bulk of the Kong and dinosaur footage using stop-motion animation. The film, made long before the computer age, utilized all manner of hands-on special effects, including painted miniature settings, a giant-size mechanical ape hand to hold the damsel in distress, and a number of miniature sets depicting both Skull Island and New York City. King Kong also features one of the first great musical scores of the sound era. Earlier "talkies" had minimal music written for them; Max Steiner's score for King Kong was very sophisticated and featured scene-specific music and recurring themes for the main characters. The scope and depth of imaginative work that shaped King Kong has rarely been equaled and visions of Fay Wray in a giant ape paw and of Kong himself looking to regain his status atop the Empire State Building have become unforgettable, iconic images to generations of moviegoers.