Darryl F. Zanuck

Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck in his office, circa 1940.
Born	Darryl Francis Zanuck (1902-09-05)September 5, 1902 Wahoo, Nebraska
Died	December 22, 1979(1979-12-22) (aged 77) Palm Springs, California
Cause of death	Jaw cancer
Resting place	Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
Other names	Gregory Rogers Melville Crossman Mark Canfield
Years active	1922–1970
Spouse(s)	Virginia Fox (1924–1956; separated)
Children	Richard D. Zanuck Darrylin Zanuck Susan Zanuck

Darryl Francis Zanuck (September 5, 1902 – December 22, 1979) was an American film studio executive and producer; he also contributed to the scripts of the films on which he worked. He played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors (the length of his career was rivaled only by that of Adolph Zukor).^{[citation needed]} He earned three Academy Awards during his tenure.

Early life

Zanuck was born in Wahoo, Nebraska to Louise (née Torpin) and Frank Zanuck, who owned and operated a hotel in Wahoo. Zanuck was of part Swiss descent and was raised a Protestant. At age six, Zanuck and his mother moved to Los Angeles, California, where the better climate could improve her poor health. At age eight, he found his first movie job as an extra, but his disapproving father recalled him to Nebraska.^{[citation needed]}

In 1918, despite being sixteen, he deceived a recruiter, joined the United States Army, and served in France with the Nebraska National Guard. Upon returning to the US, he worked in many part-time jobs while seeking work as a writer. He found work producing movie plots, and sold his first story in 1922 to William Russell and his second to Irving Thalberg. Screenwriter Frederica Sagor Maas, story editor at Universal Pictures' New York office, stated that one of the stories Zanuck sent out to movie studios around this time was completely plagiarized from another author's work. Zanuck then worked for Mack Sennett and took that experience to Warner Brothers, where he wrote stories for Rin Tin Tin and under a number of pseudonyms wrote over forty scripts from 1924 to 1929, including Red Hot Tires (1925) and Old San Francisco (1927). He moved into management in 1929, and became head of production in 1931.^{[citation needed]}

Studio head

In 1933, Zanuck left Warners to found 20th Century Films with Joseph Schenck and William Goetz, releasing their material through United Artists. In 1935, Schenck and Zanuck bought out Fox studios to become 20th Century Fox. Zanuck was president of this new studio and took an interventionist approach, closely involving himself in editing and producing. Like the other heads of Hollywood studios, during the war he was commissioned as a Colonel in the Army Signal Corps. He returned to Fox in 1944.^{[citation needed]}

In 1956, he withdrew from the studio and left his wife, Virginia Fox, to move to Europe and concentrate on independent producing. Many of his later films were designed, in part, to promote the careers of his successive girlfriends, Bella Darvi, Irina Demick, and Geneviève Gilles, and several movies he produced featured his girlfriend of moment, including the French singer Juliette Gréco.

He returned to control Fox in 1962, replacing Spyros Skouras, in a confrontation over the release of Zanuck's production of The Longest Day as the studio struggled to finish the difficult production of Cleopatra (1963). He made his son, Richard D. Zanuck, head of production. He later became involved in a power struggle with the board and his son, circa 1969. In May 1971, Zanuck was forced from "his" studio.^{[citation needed]}

Death

Darryl Zanuck's grave

A long-time cigar smoker, he died of jaw cancer at the age of 77, and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Darryl F. Zanuck has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6336 Hollywood Blvd and has won 3 Thalberg Awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. On the present-day Fox lot, movies are shown in the Zanuck Theater.

Zanuck is a minor character in the fictional musical Bombshell, a musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe during the first season of the TV series Smash and performs in the number "Don't Say Yes Until I Finish Talking."

Academy Awards

Year	Result	Category	Film
1929–30	Nominated	Outstanding Production	Disraeli
1932–33	Nominated	Outstanding Production	42nd Street
1934	Nominated	Outstanding Production	The House of Rothschild
1935	Nominated	Outstanding Production	Les Misérables
1937	Nominated	Outstanding Production	In Old Chicago
1938	Nominated	Outstanding Production	Alexander's Ragtime Band
1940	Nominated	Outstanding Production	The Grapes of Wrath
1941	Won	Outstanding Motion Picture	How Green Was My Valley
1944	Nominated	Outstanding Motion Picture	Wilson
1946	Nominated	Outstanding Motion Picture	The Razor's Edge
1947	Won	Outstanding Motion Picture	Gentleman's Agreement
1949	Nominated	Outstanding Motion Picture	Twelve O'Clock High
1950	Won	Outstanding Motion Picture	All About Eve
1962	Nominated	Best Picture	The Longest Day

Quotes

• He said of actress Gene Tierney (whom he discovered after her Broadway appearance in The Male Animal) after her first film: she is "undeniably the most beautiful actress in movie history."^{[citation needed]}

• In 1946, Zanuck said: "(Television) won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

Further reading

• Behlmer, Rudy (editor) (1993). Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century-Fox. Grove. ISBN 0-8021-1540-3. 
• Mosley, Leonard (1984). Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Last Tycoon. Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-58538-6. 
• Thackrey Jr., Thomas. (December 23, 1979). "Darryl F. Zanuck, Last of Movie Moguls, Dies at 77". Los Angeles Times, p. 1.

External links

• Darryl F. Zanuck at the Internet Movie Database
• The Zanucks: Reel Royalty from CBS News Sunday Morning, July 10, 2005. Accessed November 30, 2006.