Pretorius did not hold the king between his fingers. He picked up the king with a pair of forceps, which greatly simplifies the building of a giant prop that looks reasonable in the shots that are closer in on the king.
I think (though I would have to double check that sequence, just examining it from that point of view instead of watching the movie) that they probably did it with a combination of masking to combine two shots and judicious editing choices.
I think that at that time they still tended to combine a couple different shots by doing the combination in the camera. To that that, they would figure out exactly where they wanted the dividing line between the two shots (and this would typically be facilitated in the set design stage), literally mask one section of the lens so that no light would hit that part of the film, shoot one side of the scene, rewind the film, mask the other side of the lens, and shoot the other side of the scene. Keeping the mask boundaries steady enough for that to work meant bolting down the camera; note that the camera is never moving in those scenes like it is in many other scenes.
So for the king - forceps bit, they would figure to go through the above process with the masks being a top / bottom sort of arrangement. They get the shot of Pretorius starting to reach for the king with forceps while the king is trying to break into the queen's jar. Just at the instant when the tip of the forceps is about to cross their masking boundary, they cut to a shot of just the king with the giant forceps coming from the top of the shot and picking him up. Then they cut back to a masked combination shot of Pretorius holding a miniature king doll by forceps and moving him toward the king's jar. Just as the king's feet are about to cross the mask boundary, they cut to a closer shot of the king's jar with the king being dropped back into it. Then, finally, back out to Pretorius holding empty forceps again.
Note that when Pretorius was picking up and moving the jars containing the miniature people, they always were inside of their velvet covers so that you couldn't see the little people while the jars were moving with changing backgrounds behind them.
Also, note the practical matter that, when you are combining shots in the camera, a mistake in the second shot means that you have to go back and start over with re-shooting the first shot.
The original King Kong did some really interesting things to get their actors into the same shots with the stop-action animation of Kong fighting other giant creatures.
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