Oscar Profile #189: Darryl F. Zanuck

Born September 5, 1902 in Wahoo, Nebraska to the promiscuous daughter of the town’s only hotel and her husband, the hotel’s alcoholic night clerk, Darryl F. Zanuck was on his own by age 13 having been abandoned by both parents. He joined the Army at 15 by lying about his age and fought in Belgium during World War I. After the war he had a series of jobs from steelworker to professional boxer while pursuing a career as a writer.

By 1924 he was working full time for Mack Sennett, and then Warner Bros. where he developed stories for numerous films, most notably the box office phenomenon that was the Rin Tin Tin series. His first job as a producer at Warner Bros., albeit uncredited, was for Ernst Lubitsch’s 1925 film of Lady Windemere’s Fan and received his first credit as producer for Lubitsch’s 1926 film, So This Is Paris. Subsequent Warner Bros. films he produced included Disraeli; Little Caesar and 42nd Street. A salary dispute with Jack Warner caused him to leave Warner Bros. and found 20th Century Pictures with Joseph Schenck releasing such films as The House of Rothschild; The Affairs of Cellini; Clive of India; Les Misérables and The Call of the Wild making it the most successful independent film company in the world.

In 1935, after a dispute with United Artists, Schenck and Zanuck bought out bankrupt Fox Studios and formed 20th Century-Fox.

Zanuck would remain head of 20th Century-Fox through 1962, seeing it through some of the biggest hits of its existence, many of which he produced himself, including The Prisoner of Shark Island; In Old Chicago; Alexander’s Ragtime Band; Jesse James; The Rains Came; Drums Along the Mohawk; The Grapes of Wrath; The Mark of Zorro; How Green Was My Valley; The Black Swan; Wilson; Leave Her to Heaven; The Razor’s Edge; Centennial Summer; Boomerang!; Gentleman’s Agreement; Call Northside 777; The Snake Pit; Pinky; Twelve O’Clock High; All About Eve; People Will Talk; Carousel; The King and I; The Sun Also Rises and The Longest Day.

Zanuck’s love affair with the Academy began with his nomination as producer of 1929’s Disaraeli. He would go on to be nominated a total 15 times for Best Picture through 1962, winning three times for How Green Was My Valley; Gentleman’s Agreement and All Above Eve. Additional nominations were for 42nd Street; The House of Rothschild; Les Misérables; In Old Chicago; Alexander’s Ragtime Band; The Grapes of Wrath; Wilson; The Razor’s Edge; Twelve O’Clock High; The King and I and The Longest Day with time out for a writing nod for 1935’s G-Men. He would also be nominated for the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award five times and win it three times. That’s a total of twenty-one nominations and five wins.

Zanuck left 20th Century-Fox in 1956, leaving his wife since 1924 behind and moving to Europe to make independent films promoting a succession of his mistresses. He returned to Fox in 1962 to produce The Longest Day. He made his son Richard head of production and was ousted in a 1971 power struggle with Richard.

Darryl F. Zanuck died of jaw cancer in 1979 at the age of 77.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940), directed by John Ford

Zanuck’s involvement with The Grapes of Wrath began with his purchase of John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. His most famed contributions to the film were his selection of Jane Darwell for the pivotal role of Ma Joad and the tacked on hopeful “we’re the people” ending.

Beulah Bondi had been John Ford’s choice for Ma Joad and the actress bought an old jalopy and moved to Bakersfield to live among the migrant workers in order to research the role. Returning to Hollywood she was shocked to learn that Zanuck had over-ruled Ford’s choice and given the part to loyal studio player Darwell. Darwell, of course, proved Ford’s faith in her by turning in a sublime Oscar winning performance.

Zanuck also had another director direct Darwell’s “we’re the people” speech at the end of the film after Ford left the project.

HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (19441, directed by John Ford

Originally planned as Zanuck’s answer to David O. Zelznick’s Gone With the Wind, his film of Richard Llewellyn’s novel was to be an elaborate color production to be filmed on location in the United Kingdom. The onslaught of World War II put a damper on those plans.
The studio back-lot, Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains would have to do. Since the Los Angeles terrain couldn’t match the color palate of the story’s Welsh locations, color was scrapped and the film was made in black-and-white. The Zanuck-Ford production, narrated by Irving Pichel as the grown Roddy McDowall eliminated the second half of the book as well. Still, it was a glorious production that earned its ten Oscar nominations and five wins including Best Picture.

GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947), directed by Elia Kazan

Zanuck’s pet project, 1944’s Wilson about the World War I era U.S. President had been a box-office disappointment, but it was a prestige production that managed ten Oscar nominations and five wins, but not Best Picture which irked Zanuck even though he himself was given the Thalberg for his courage in producing the film that revived interest in Wilson’s hope for a League of Nations which became the United Nations.

Three years later no other studio in Hollywood would touch Laura Hobson’s Gentleman’s Agreement, her full-out exposé of anti-Semitism in America. It was Zanuck, the one non-Jewish studio head, who had the guts to make it. The film, which seems simplistic today, was nevertheless quite daring for the times, receiving eight Oscar nominations and winning three including Best Picture. Zanuck, however, was still fuming that Wilson hadn’t won three years earlier.

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Zanuck’s hands seem to be off this classic about life in the theatre which emanated from a script by writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz with sparkling performances from its entire cast, five of whom were nominated for Oscars – Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter – with Sanders winning. Audiences still find it hard to believe that the role of aging actress Margo Channing wasn’t written for Davis – Claudette Colbert was originally cast in the part said to have been based on Ilka Chase. Davis, of course, made no bones about having based her performance on Tallulah Bankhead.

Nominated for a record fourteen Oscars, the film won six including Zanuck’s third as producer.

THE LONGEST DAY (1962), directed by Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki

Even more of a passion project than Wilson, Zanuck’s returned from his self-imposed six year exile in Europe to produce this accurately detailed tribute to the D-Day landing of June 6,1944. The film’s three directors each handled a major portion of the film – Annakin directed the American sequences; Marton the British sequences and Wicki the Nazi sequences.

The cast was a veritable who’s who of actors of the day including Robert Mitchum; John Wayne; Henry Fonda; Richard Burton; Robert Wagner; Richard Beymer; Red Buttons; Curt Jurgens; Eddie Albert; Rod Steiger; Jean-Louis Barrault; Sean Connery and Mel Ferrer. The film was nominated for five Oscars and won two.