The box-office king

JOSEPH E. LEVINE, one of the most innovative Hollywood producers of the postwar era, began his career in Boston. Born in 1906 and reared in the West End, he dropped out of school at age 14 to work in a garment factory. Standing just 5 feet 4 inches tall, he quickly clawed his way out of the slums. He sold ready-to-wear women's apparel under the name LeVine's, bought a stake in a restaurant called Cafe Wonderbar on Mass. Ave., and married a singer for Rudy Vallee named Rosalie Harrison.

In 1938, he jumped into the film business, borrowing money to buy Boston's Park Square and two other theaters in New England. Throughout his career, Levine bridged the gap between high art and low trash, putting his money behind everything from B westerns and war documentaries to De Sica's "Open City" and Fellini's "8 1/2."

He was widely noted for his marketing panache. Less known is his role in pioneering today's wide-release system. In 1956, he bought the US rights to "Godzilla," dubbed it into English and spent $1 million marketing it from coast to coast. In 1958, he retooled a cheap Italian film called "Hercules," launched a nationwide advertising campaign, and released it in 600 theaters in July 1959.

Despite producing such films as "The Graduate" and "The Producers," today Levine's memory is all but erased in Hollywood. But a version of him survives in the form of Jack Palance's portrayal of a crass American producer who hires a French screenwriter to adapt "The Odyssey" in Godard's "Contempt" (1963), which Levine produced. "Everytime I hear the word 'culture,' " Palance's character says at one point, "I bring out my checkbook."