Levine was responsible for the U.S. releases of Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, Attila and Hercules, which helped revolutionize U.S. film marketing, and was founder and president of Embassy Pictures.

The youngest of six children of a Russian-Jewish[2] immigrant tailor, Joe did whatever work he could to help support his mother, a widow who had remarried only to have her second husband abandon her.

[4] One of Levine's most unusual successes was Body Beautiful, a sex-hygiene film which he saw drawing a line of prospective ticket-buyers who were braving a snowstorm to that end.

He was also a representative for Burstyn-Mayer distributing Italian films such as Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) and Paisà (1946), and Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948).

Renting the Shubert Theater in his native Boston, he spent large sums of his own money on advertisements for the film that he wrote himself; these reflected the anti-Japanese sentiments of the times and used language that would later be considered offensive.

With each section narrated by different commentators -- Ben Grauer, John B. Kennedy, and Milton Cross and Ethel Owen) -- the individual parts could also be shown separately as short subjects.

[4] In 1956, Levine achieved great financial success distributing the Japanese film Godzilla to the American general public, acquiring the rights for $12,000.

[4] His breakthrough came the following year with Hercules, starring Steve Reeves and released by Warner Bros. Levine invested $120,000 on dubbing, sound effects, and new titles and spent $1.25 million on promoting the film.

He was not credited as the "executive producer" of Two Women, which was based on a novella written by Alberto Moravia, had been directed by Vittorio de Sica, and starred Sophia Loren and Eleanora Brown, who acted out the respective roles of a mother and her young daughter whom World War II had displaced from their home.

Levine's promotional campaign focused on one still photograph, which showed Loren, as the mother, wearing a torn dress, kneeling in the dirt, and weeping with rage and grief.

In 1963, Levine was offered a $30 million deal with Paramount Pictures (making him a major shareholder) to produce films in the vein of his previous successes.

In a 1965 interview, Baker sardonically commented: "I'll say this about Joe Levine: I admire his taste in leading ladies", which led the press to suspect a rift between the actress and producer.

In an interview with Rex Reed in his book People Are Crazy Here (1974), Baker revealed that she had felt pressure in both her working relationship with Levine, and her domestic life with her husband, who she said wanted to maintain an expensive lifestyle: "We'd been very poor when we started out at the Actors Studio in New York.

In the Levine produced film The Oscar, one of the characters, a blonde movie star played by Jean Hagen as a harpy, is named Cheryl Barker, a dig at Baker.

[7] Levine got to know Mike Nichols who was one of the most in-demand directors on Broadway and signed him to make The Graduate (1967) before he made his feature film debut with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

[4] He resigned from Avco Embassy in 1974 and formed Joseph E. Levine Presents and spent 2½ years making A Bridge Too Far (1977) with his son Richard.

Charlap and Lawrence were so upset with changes that they filed suit in New York Supreme Court seeking an injunction to prevent the play from opening.

While the judge urged that the parties pursue arbitration, lawyers representing Charlap and Lawrence were threatening to sue for damages that had been caused through "unauthorized changes, omissions and additions" made to the musical.

[18][19] In 1964, Levine received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in recognition of his lifetime achievement in motion pictures.