What happened with "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!" is that its the American release of "Gojia", coming out two years later, in 1956. Toho in the Fifties, being a Japanese film company, had little thought to exportation of their movies, and took a very low sum of $25,000 dollars for the international rights. It would have been impossible for them to guess that "Gojira" was going to become an international hit, as no Japanese film previously had made much of a worldwide impact. The American company that bought the rights was an independent company called Jewell Enterprises, who decided that US audiences would never want to watch a film featuring only Japanese characters. So they created a character named Steve Martin*, played by Hollywood actor, Raymond Burr, who is a reporter hanging around in the background of the major events of the original film. Obviously it isn't easy to splice an entire character into a movie since they cannot interact with the other actors or sets or monsters, but "Godzilla" does not even attempt to make Steve Martin appear like he belongs in this story.
Ironically, that actually makes "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!" a surprisingly faithful adaptation, despite the addition of an entire new protagonist who steals the spotlight from the real heroes. The story plays out exactly the same as the original, with every major scene remaining more or less intact. Lots of scenes were cut out or shortened considerably since this version is about twenty minutes shorter than the Japanese, but the flow remains intact, its just that we see much less of the Japanese heroes. Obviously this is the inferior version, as Raymond Burr's existence is more distracting than anything else, though they do a surprisingly decent job making it appear like he's in the same locations as the Japanese actors from 1954. But the special effects are all intact, several of the best scenes are still intact, and actually the movie is somewhat breezier this way, if lacking the emotional punch of "Gojira".
