Darryl F. Zanuck

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Famed Hollywood producer Darryl F. Zanuck, c. 1948.

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Darryl F. Zanuckwas a Hollywood producer and movie executive for more than 40 years and an innovator of many trends in film.

Abandoned by his parents at age 13, Zanuck joined the U.S. Army and fought in Belgium during World War I. He worked as a steelworker, garment factory foreman, and a professional boxer while pursuing his career as a writer—though he was barely literate. He did, however, display a talent for creating unique and interesting plots, and in 1923 he sold a film scenario to producer Irving Thalberg. After apprenticeships with Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, and Carl Laemmle, Zanuck joined Warner Brothers studio in 1924 and contributed scripts for the popular Rin Tin Tin series. Within three years he had advanced to executive producer. As such he produced The Jazz Singer (1927), the film that started the sound revolution. He also initiated Warner Brothers’s popular series of gangster films with Little Caesar (1930) and The Public Enemy (1931).

In 1933 Zanuck cofounded Twentieth Century Pictures, the company that merged two years later with the Fox Film Corporation. As the controlling executive of Twentieth Century Fox, Zanuck produced such memorable films as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Winged Victory (1944), The Razor’s Edge (1946), Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947), and Viva Zapata! (1952). The most directly involved of the major studio kingpins, Zanuck took pride in his talent for remaking films during the editing process.

Although the studio prospered and made many famous films, Twentieth Century Fox productions were somewhat pious and dull and lacked the individual quality and particular style of MGM, Warner Brothers, Paramount, and RKO. Zanuck’s pictures often suffered from pretentious seriousness, mawkish sentiment, and an overly-polite approach to subject matter that demanded earthy realism. Such an approach was no match for the sex, violence, intelligence, and high melodrama of films by such producers as David O. Selznick and Hal B. Wallis. A notable exception was Twentieth Century Fox’s sophisticated comedy All About Eve (1950), starring Bette Davis, which won six Academy Awards, including best picture for Zanuck.

Zanuck resigned the presidency of Twentieth Century Fox in 1956. He returned six years later and engineered the financial recovery of the studio with two box-office hits: The Longest Day (1962) and The Sound of Music (1965). The last studio kingpin of his era, Zanuck retired in 1971. He produced more than 165 films during his career. On three occasions he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for outstanding contributions to the industry.