The Dino De Laurentiis’ production of King Kong premiered on December 17, 1976 and I was first in line to see it. I was not disappointed. As promised, in John Berkey’s striking illustration for the poster, the film made spectacular use of the World Trade Center as the stage for Kong’s heroic last stand.

Hollywood lost a lot of wonderful folks in 2010, but three of those deaths hit close to home. So before we barrel too far on into 2011, let’s stop for a minute to pay tribute to these three greats.