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Darryl F. Zanuck

Darryl Francis Zanuck (/ˈzænək/; September 5, 1902 – December 22, 1979) was an American film producer and studio executive; he earlier contributed stories for films starting in the silent era. 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).[1] He produced three films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture during his tenure at 20th Century Fox.

Darryl F. Zanuck

Darryl Francis Zanuck

(1902-09-05)September 5, 1902

December 22, 1979(1979-12-22) (aged 77)

1922–1970

(m. 1924)

3, including Richard D. Zanuck

Dean Zanuck (grandson)

Early life[edit]

Zanuck was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, the son of Sarah Louise (née Torpin), who later married Charles Norton,[2] and Frank Harvey Zanuck, who owned and operated a hotel in Wahoo. He had an older brother, Donald (1893–1903), who died in an accident when he was only 9 years old.[3][4] Zanuck was of partial Swiss descent, and raised a Protestant.[5] At age six, Zanuck and his mother moved to Los Angeles, 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. In 1917, despite being 15, he deceived a recruiter, joined the U.S. Army and served in France with the Nebraska National Guard during World War I.


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.[6]


Zanuck then worked for Mack Sennett and FBO (where he wrote the serials The Telephone Girl and The Leather Pushers) and took that experience to Warner Bros., where he wrote stories for Rin Tin Tin and under a number of pseudonyms wrote over 40 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.

Legacy[edit]

Zanuck began tackling serious issues, breaking new ground by producing some of Hollywood's most important and controversial films . Long before it was fashionable to do so, Zanuck addressed issues such as racism (Pinky), antisemitism (Gentleman's Agreement), poverty (The Grapes of Wrath, Tobacco Road), unfair labor exploitation and destruction of the environment (How Green Was My Valley), and institutionalized mistreatment of the mentally ill (The Snake Pit). After The Snake Pit (1948) was released, 13 states changed their laws. For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Zanuck earned three Irving G. Thalberg Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (including the first ever awarded); after Zanuck's third win, the rules were changed to limit one Thalberg Award to one person. 20th Century Fox, the studio he co-founded and ran successfully for so many years, screens movies in its Darryl F. Zanuck Theater.


On February 8, 1960, Zanuck received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for his contribution to the motion picture industry, at 6336 Hollywood Blvd.[21][22]


In the 2022 Netflix film Blonde, Zanuck was portrayed by David Warshofsky.[23]

2013 Don't Say Yes Until I Finish Talking (Documentary)

2013 Don't Say No Until I Finish Talking: The Story of Richard D. Zanuck (Documentary)

2011 Hollywood Invasion (Documentary)

2011 Making the Boys (Documentary)

2009 Coming Attractions: The History of the Movie Trailer (Documentary)

2009 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year (TV documentary)

2006 Darryl F. Zanuck: A Dream Fulfilled (TV documentary)

2005 Filmmakers vs. Tycoons (Documentary)

American Masters

Backstory

History vs. Hollywood

2001 Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood (TV documentary)

Great Books

Biography

1997 20th Century-Fox: The First 50 Years (TV documentary)

1996 Rodgers & Hammerstein: The Sound of Movies (TV documentary)

1995 The First 100 Years: A Celebration of American Movies (TV documentary)

1995 Darryl F. Zanuck: 20th Century Filmmaker (TV documentary)

1995 The Casting Couch (Video documentary)

1975 20th Century Fox Presents...A Tribute to Darryl F. Zanuck (TV documentary)

The David Frost Show

1968 D-Day Revisited (Documentary)

What's My Line?

Cinépanorama

Small World

The Ed Sullivan Show

1954 The CinemaScope Parade

1953 Screen Snapshots: Hollywood's Great Entertainers (Short)

1950 Screen Snapshots: The Great Showman (Short)

1946 Hollywood Park (Short)

1943 Show-Business at War (Documentary)

1943 At the Front (Documentary)

1943 At the Front in North Africa with the U.S. Army (Documentary)

Behlmer, Rudy, ed. (1993). Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century-Fox. Grove.  0-8021-1540-3.

ISBN

Chrissochoidis, Ilias (editor) (2013). from the Spyros P. Skouras Archive. Brave World. ISBN 978-0-61582-919-7.

The Cleopatra Files: Selected Documents

Chrissochoidis, Ilias (ed.). Brave World, 2013. ISBN 978-0-61589-880-3.

CinemaScope: Selected Documents from the Spyros P. Skouras Archive.

Custen, George F. Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck And The Culture Of Hollywood. Basic Books (November 1997)  046507619X

ISBN

Dunne, John Gregory. The Studio. Farrar, Straus & Giroux (January 1969)  0374271127

ISBN

Mosley, Leonard (1984). Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Last Tycoon. Little, Brown.  0-316-58538-6.

ISBN

Farber, Stephen. Hollywood Dynasties, Putnam Group (July 1984)  0887150004

ISBN

Harris, Marlys J. The Zanucks of Hollywood: The Dark Legacy of an American Dynasty, Crown (June 1989)  0517570203

ISBN

Thackrey Jr., Thomas. (December 23, 1979). "Darryl F. Zanuck, Last of Movie Moguls, Dies at 77". , p. 1.

Los Angeles Times

at IMDb 

Darryl F. Zanuck

. from CBS News Sunday Morning, July 10, 2005

"The Zanucks: Reel Royalty"