For more than 40 years Darryl F. Zanuck was one of the most influential film producers in Hollywood. Partially responsible for the success of Warner Brothers in the 1930’s, Zanuck left in 1933 to form 20th Century Pictures a small studio that only a few years later merged with the bankrupt Fox studio.Darryl Zanuck thus became the founder and director of Twenty Century Fox one of the major studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Zanuck’s carer started in the 1920’s as a screenwriter but soon he became a producer. Working at Warner Brothers Zanuck played an important role in the sound transition producing The Jazz Singer and by so rushing the film industry into a new era.
His interest in technical innovations would resurface years later with the pivotal role that Twenty Century Fox had in the introduction of Cinemascope and Stereo Sound as instruments to fight the growing popularity of Television during the Fifties.
Darryl Zanuck: The Executive Producer
However Darryl Zanuck’s contribution to the film Industry was not merely in the technical area. Creatively Zanuck was also fundamental in developing film genres like the Gangster film, with the production of classics like The Public Enemy and Little Cesar booth from 1931, the musical with 42nd Street (33) at Warner and the social film with The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Gentleman’s Agreement (1946) among others at Twentieth Century Fox.
As chief of production for Fox, Zanuck discovered child actress Shirley Temple, a popularity phenomenon during the 1930’s. In the 1940’s Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda musicals shot in Technicolor and Tyrone Power’s adventure films were the studio’s most profitable ventures.
Among the most important films produced by Zanuck in those years are classics like John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green was my Valley (1941), Elia Kazan’s Gentleman’s Agreement (1946), Pinky (1949) and Viva Zapata (1952), Henry King’s Twelve O’clock High (1949) and The Snows of the Kilimanjaro (1952), Man Hunt (1941) directed by Fritz Lang, William Wellman’s The Ox Bow Incident (43), Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944) and All About Eve (1950) directed by Joseph Mankiewicz.
With the attendance crisis that Hollywood faced in the early 50’s Fox invested in cinemascope and big productions to attract the public, producing biblical films like The Robe (1953) or The Egyptian (1954) and musicals like Oklahoma! (1955) and The King and I (1956)
In 1956 Zanuck was forced to resign from Twentieth Century Fox Presidency by the Studio Board who believed that a new production strategy was needed to face the growing competition from Television.
The Longest Day
From 1957 to 1962 Zanuck lived in Europe and became an independent producer for Fox, delivering films like: Robert Rosen’s Island in the Sun (1957) Richard Fleischer’s Crack in the Mirror (1960) and John Huston’s two minor films The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958) and The Roots of Heaven (1958).
In 1962 Zanuck produced the large scale second world war epic, The Longest Day, which featured an impressive cast headed by John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda and Richard Burton.
The box office success of The Longest Day single handedly saved the studio from the near bankruptcy provoked by the financial disaster of Cleopatra (1963) and Zanuck returned triumphantly to California to run the studio he had founded.
After the production debacle of Cleopatra, who had led the studio to close down production on all other films, Zanuck implemented a similar strategy, which after the astonishing success of The Sound of Music (1965) relied increasingly in high publicized big budget productions, usually musicals like Star (1968), Doctor Doolittle (1968) and Hello Dolly (1968) that were box office flops.
The world had changed in the late 60’s and movie spectators wanted different films from the ones of the early 60’s. Like so many movie Moguls of his Era Darryl Zanuck was out of touch with the public taste.
During this period it would be Zanuck’s son, Richard, working as head of production who was responsible for acclaimed hit’s like Planet of the Apes (1968) Patton (1969) and The French Connection (1971).
After the expensive war film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) flopped, Darryl Zanuck resigned from the board of administration due to the studio’s financial problems.
During an impressively long carer in the movie industry, Zanuck won the Oscar for best picture with How Green was my Valley and All About Eve, the New York Film Critic’s Award, The Golden Globe Award, The British Film Academy Award, and the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award and Cecil B. DeMille Award.
Darryl F. Zanuck died in 1979, at age 77, but his name would always be remembered as one of the few men that built the studio system and shaped Hollywood into much of what is still today.
