Known For: Production
Born: October 24, 1909
Place of Birth: Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA
Died: July 18, 1993

John Beck

John Beck was the American producer who facilitated the production of the original King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), which he released in a heavily edited form in the United States in 1963 as King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963). Beck's other claims to fame are producing the 1950 James Stewart film Harvey and his involvement in the 1946 merger between Universal Pictures and International Pictures. Stop-motion animator Willis O'Brien had contacted Beck with a film treatment for King Kong vs. Frankenstein, which they made a handshake deal to work on. Beck recruited sci-fi screenwriter George Worthing Yates to write the script which became King Kong vs. Prometheus. After failing to pitched it to several American studios, Beck did not further contact with O'Brien. Instead he found a buyer in Japan, Toho, who substituted Godzilla for Frankenstein and started from scratch. Beck, having secured the righ…