Jack J. Gross (born July 29, 1902 in New York City, died March 12, 1964, age 61, London, England) was a motion picture and television producer.

Early years

Jack Gross was the son of George and Pauline Gross, Jewish immigrants from Hungary and Romania, respectively. The oldest of three brothers, Jack Gross began working as an usher after school in New York City, as a projectionist in St. Joseph, Missouri, and as a theater manager in South Bend, Indiana, Eldorado, Kansas, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, before being appointed western division manager of

RKO RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheu ...

Theaters.

Producer

In 1939, Gross became a producer at

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...

, remaining there until 1943, when he was appointed executive producer at RKO. Gross joined Philip N. Krasne in 1952 to form Gross-Krasne, Inc, a pioneer American independent producer of television films. They produced, among other programs, the

Big Town ''Big Town'' is a popular long-running radio drama featuring a corruption-fighting newspaper editor initially played from 1937 to 1942 by Edward G. Robinson in his first radio role, with echoes of the conscience-stricken tabloid editor he had ...

and Mayor of the Town. Gross-Krasne also acquired the rights to O. Henry's stories and filmed 39 half-hour O. Henry Playhouse television shows. In 1952, Gross-Krasne bought the California Studios (now the

Raleigh Studios Raleigh Studios is a studio facility located in Hollywood, Los Angeles and has been under the ownership of Raleigh Enterprises since 1979. The location has been active since 1915. Before Raleigh, the studio was run by Famous Players Film Company, ...

) where many of their productions were filmed.

Death

In the Connaught Hotel, Gross died suddenly of basilar cerebral thrombosis while on a business trip to London. His remains were cremated and dispersed in the Garden of Rest Cemetery, London.Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1835-1974. Jacob Jerome Gross

Selected filmography

* ''

Return of the Bad Men ''Return of the Bad Men'', also known as ''Return of the Badmen'', is a 1948 American Western film directed by Ray Enright and starring Randolph Scott, Robert Ryan and Anne Jeffreys.Jarlett p.192-93 A loose sequel to the 1946 film ''Badman's T ...

'' (1948)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gross, Jack J. 1902 births 1964 deaths American film studio executives American film producers American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Film producers from California Television producers from California 20th-century American businesspeople