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82-479: Darryl Francis Zanuck ( / ˈ z æ n ə k / ; 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 ). He produced three films that won

164-658: A Lockheed factory, was made a colonel in the Army Air Corps without ever actually having to leave the studio, let alone put on a uniform. Not so Zanuck, who pleaded with the War Department, as soon as American troops were posted for action in North Africa , and was rewarded with the assignment of covering the invasion for the Signal Corps. Director John Ford , a longtime adversary of Zanuck despite

246-577: A monopoly on the creation and distribution of motion pictures. Fox refused to sell out to the monopoly, and sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act , eventually receiving a $ 370,000 settlement, and ending restrictions on the length of films and the prices that could be paid for screenplays. In 1914, reflecting the broader scope of his business, he renamed it the Box Office Attraction Company He entered into

328-553: A Fox film storage facility destroyed over 40,000 reels of negatives and prints, including the best-quality copies of every Fox feature produced prior to 1932; although copies located elsewhere allowed many to survive in some form, over 75% of Fox's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost . In 1919, Fox began a series of silent newsreels , competing with existing series such as Hearst Metrotone News , International Newsreel , and Pathé News . Fox News premiered on October 11, 1919, with subsequent issues released on

410-430: A Millionaire (also 1953), a glossy star package with Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall . Of the other studios, MGM had immediately abandoned its own attempts and committed to CinemaScope and United Artists and Walt Disney Productions announced they would make films in the same widescreen process, but the other studios hesitated, and some announced their own rival systems: Paramount's VistaVision , which would prove

492-542: A Protestant. 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

574-583: A contract with the Balboa Amusement Producing Company film studio, purchasing all of their films for showing in his New York area theaters and renting the prints to other exhibitors nationwide. He also continued to distribute material from other sources, such as Winsor McCay 's early animated film Gertie the Dinosaur . Later that year, Fox concluded that it was unwise to be so dependent on other companies, so he purchased

656-458: A corporation that is not involved in the entertainment industry. Studio executive is commonly used to describe someone who takes responsibility for all interests, financial or otherwise, between the film studio and the production company of a film. This article related to film or motion picture terminology is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Fox Film The Fox Film Corporation (also known as Fox Studios )

738-495: A cumbersome cut of The Song of Bernadette (1943), recutting the completed film into a surprise hit that made a star of newcomer Jennifer Jones , who won the Oscar. He relented to actor Otto Preminger 's fervent wish to direct a modest thriller called Laura (1944), casting Clifton Webb in his Oscar-nominated role as Gene Tierney 's controlling mentor, with David Raksin 's haunting score. Leading theater director Elia Kazan

820-449: A generous contract from Fox that gave him directing and casting control on any projects Fox financed. Eventually, in his absence, Fox began to fall to pieces due to the ballooning budget of Cleopatra (1963), whose entire set constructed at Pinewood Studios had to be scrapped before shooting even started. Meanwhile, Zanuck picked up a hefty book by Cornelius Ryan called The Longest Day , which promised to fulfill his dream of making

902-520: A new and vastly more economical and efficient wide-screen process, but all Fox films would be released in CinemaScope—a format which had yet to be perfected. The Robe (1953), a Biblical epic , would be its first released feature film. Skouras now began to oversee Fox's somewhat startled research scientists, based on the East Coast and accustomed to Hollywood executives who thought R&D

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984-523: A proxy takeover, claiming the current Fox administration was wasting stockholders' money. He attempted to conspire with Zanuck to oust the New York-based president of Fox since 1942, Greek-American Spyros Skouras . Zanuck refused; instead, Skouras and he decided to gamble on CinemaScope to save their jobs, and perhaps, their studio. Skouras made a bold announcement in February; Fox not only had

1066-463: A sign reading 'Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck'." Ford's chagrin turned to real outrage when Zanuck, after three months, took all their footage from battles in Tunisia , most of which Ford had shot, and hastily assembled it into a picture that went into American theaters without Ford's name appearing anywhere. The movie, released as At The Front with Zanuck credited as producer, was poorly received in

1148-401: A top-secret, brand new, massively powerful bomb the size of a "golf ball" to a fellow officer from his Hollywood world. Whatever the reason, despite having published his own first-person account of his wartime adventures ( The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther actually liked this book better than the film), he resigned. Zanuck returned to 20th Century-Fox in 1944 a changed man. He avoided

1230-399: A well-documented habit of flashing his penis at women." According to Zanuck's biographer, Marlys Harris: "Anyone at the studio knew of the afternoon trysts, [...] [Zanuck] was not serious about any of the women. To him they were merely pleasurable breaks in the day — like polo, lunch, and practical jokes." A long-time cigar smoker , he died of pneumonia in 1979, aged 77. He is interred at

1312-507: A worthy rival, and Warner Bros.'s WarnerScope which vanished overnight. The November 3, 1953, premiere of The Robe brought Warner Bros. and Columbia around, though Warner's plan was a full slate of 3-D features for 1954, instead. Zanuck began to make compromises, and eventually capitulated. Smaller theaters rented conventional versions of the studio's films; stereo they could live without altogether. Todd-AO came out in 1955, and after its developer, Mike Todd , died in 1958, Zanuck invested in

1394-551: The 35 mm format in which all movies were shot—and this was no accident. Standardization of film size meant all theaters everywhere could play all films. Even the projection of film formats—i.e. any attempt to break out of the 35 mm format were under the control of the Hays Office, which limited any wide-screen experiments to the 10 largest cities in America. This severely limited the future of any widescreen format. Zanuck

1476-567: The Academy Award for Best Picture during his tenure at 20th Century Fox . Zanuck was born in Wahoo, Nebraska , the son of Sarah Louise (née Torpin), who later married Charles Norton, 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. Zanuck was of partial Swiss descent, and raised

1558-574: The Academy Awards ; the disturbing questions of a bomber squadron leader Gregory Peck in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) challenged wartime patriotism . Both showed Zanuck's ability to create box-office hits via brilliant films with unflinching examinations of demanding, hierarchical worlds. Zanuck continued to tackle social issues other studios would not touch, but he stumbled with idealistic projects. Wilson (1944), an expensive picture that

1640-569: The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ' decision to restore salary cuts. A few days later, he partnered with Joseph Schenck to form 20th Century Pictures, Inc. with financial help from Joseph's brother Nicholas Schenck and Louis B. Mayer , president and studio head of Loew's, Inc and its subsidiary Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , along with William Goetz and Raymond Griffith . 20th Century released its material through United Artists . During that short time (1933–1935), 20th Century became

1722-777: The British Army film unit, where at least he would be studying army training films while under Nazi bombardment by Hitler 's Luftwaffe . He even persuaded Lord Mountbatten to allow him along on a secret coastal raid across the Channel to occupied France. The daring nighttime attack on a German radar site was a success. Zanuck, ever the showman, sent his wife in Santa Monica a package of "Nazi-occupied sand", writing her "I've just been swimming on an enemy beach" – not allowed, of course, to tell her where he had been, let alone that they had been under Nazi gunfire and helped

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1804-749: The Fox News and Fox Movietone News libraries have largely survived. The earlier series and some parts of its sound successor are now held by the University of South Carolina , with the remaining Fox Movietone News still held by the company. Fox Film briefly experimented with serial films , releasing the 15-episode Bride 13 and the 20-episode Fantômas in 1920. William Fox was unwilling to compromise on production quality in order to make serials profitable, however, and none were produced subsequently. Hundreds of one- and two-reel short films of various types were also produced by Fox. Beginning in 1916,

1886-584: The Sunshine Comedy division created two-reel comedy shorts. Many of these, beginning with 1917's Roaring Lions and Wedding Bliss , starring Lloyd Hamilton , were slapstick , intended to compete with Mack Sennett 's popular offerings. Sunshine releases continued until the introduction of sound. Other short film series included Imperial Comedies , Van Bibber Comedies (with Earle Foxe ), O'Henry , Married Life of Helen and Warren , and Fox Varieties . Fox's expansion into Spanish-language films in

1968-631: The Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery , near his wife, Virginia Fox in Westwood, Los Angeles, California . 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

2050-554: 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. In April 1933, Zanuck left Warner Bros. over an industry salary dispute when studio head Jack L. Warner refused to comply with

2132-723: The Éclair studio facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey , along with property in Staten Island , and arranged for actors and crew. The company became a film studio , using the name Box Office Attraction Company; its first release was Life's Shop Window . Always more of an entrepreneur than a showman, Fox concentrated on acquiring and building theaters; pictures were secondary. The company's first film studios were set up in Fort Lee where it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based at

2214-758: The French press which Zanuck managed to suppress. Probably for reasons like this, though he stayed in Europe for some years, Zanuck would not divorce his wife Virginia, nor she him. She stayed patiently in Santa Monica, a neglected but effective " Maginot Line " against the claims of her rivals. This would later prove to have costly consequences. Fearing the studio's profligacy would sink his cherished The Longest Day (1962) as it readied for release, Zanuck returned to control Fox. He replaced Spyros Skouras as president, who had failed to control perilous cost overruns on

2296-483: The Justice Department's objections. Overextended and close to bankruptcy, Fox was stripped of his empire in 1930 and later ended up in jail on bribery and perjury charges. Fox Film, with more than 500 theatres, was placed in receivership. A bank-mandated reorganization propped the company up for a time, but it soon became apparent that despite its size, Fox could not stand on its own. William Fox resented

2378-586: The States, called amateurish, dull, and even lacking in realism, prompting the affronted Zanuck to counter in The New York Times that he had resisted the temptation to stage events for a more convincing film. Unfortunately, this controversy landed Zanuck into a Senate subcommittee headed by Senator Harry S. Truman , investigating "instant" colonels who were popping up and concentrating on famous Hollywood names. Unlike Col. Warner, most colonels from

2460-548: 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 FBO (where he wrote

2542-509: The Wednesday and Sunday of each week. Fox News gained an advantage over its more established competitors when President Woodrow Wilson endorsed the newsreel in a letter, in what may have been the first time an American president commented on a film. In subsequent years, Fox News remained one of the major names in the newsreel industry by providing often-exclusive coverage of major international events, including reporting on Pancho Villa ,

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2624-576: The airship Roma , the Ku Klux Klan , and a 1922 eruption of Mount Vesuvius . The silent newsreel series continued until 1930. In 1926, a subsidiary, Fox Movietone Corporation, was created, tasked with producing newsreels using Fox's recently acquired sound-on-film technology. The first of these newsreels debuted on January 21, 1927. Four months later, the May 25 release of a sound recording of Charles Lindbergh 's departure on his transatlantic flight

2706-625: The beginning of the 20th century. That same year, in 1914, Fox Film began making motion pictures in California, and in 1915 decided to build its own permanent studio. The company leased the Los Angeles Edendale studio of the Selig Polyscope Company until its own studio, located at Western Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, was completed in 1916. In 1917, William Fox sent Sol M. Wurtzel to Hollywood to oversee

2788-614: The company with Twentieth Century Pictures to form 20th Century-Fox in 1935. William Fox entered the film industry in 1904 when he purchased a one-third share of a Brooklyn nickelodeon for $ 1,667. He reinvested his profits from that initial location, expanding to fifteen similar venues in the city, and purchasing prints from the major studios of the time: Biograph , Essanay , Kalem , Lubin , Pathé , Selig , and Vitagraph . After experiencing further success presenting live vaudeville routines along with motion pictures, he expanded into larger venues beginning with his purchase of

2870-535: The company's most prominent stars by the late 1920s. When rival Marcus Loew died in 1927, Fox offered to buy the Loew family's holdings. Loew's Inc. controlled more than 200 theaters, as well as the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio. The Loew family agreed to the sale, and the merger of Fox and Loew's Inc. was announced in 1929; MGM studio bosses Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were not included in

2952-535: The deal, and fought back. Using powerful political connections, Mayer called upon the Justice Department 's antitrust unit to delay giving final approval to the merger. William Fox was badly injured in a car crash in the summer of 1929, and by the time he recovered, he had lost most of his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929 , ending any chance of the Fox/Loew's merger being approved, even without

3034-399: The definitive film of D-Day . Flying back to the States, he had to convince a Fox board, staggering under the still-unfinished Cleopatra ' s $ 15 million cost, to finance what he was sure would be a box-office hit, as indeed it was, despite skeptics that included his son Richard. He seethed at the $ 8 million ceiling imposed on him, knowing he would have to dip into his own pocket to finish

3116-660: The disused Gaiety theater, and continuing with acquisitions throughout New York City and New Jersey, including the Academy of Music . Fox invested further in the film industry by founding the Greater New York Film Rental Company as a film distributor . The major film studios responded by forming the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908 and the General Film Company in 1910, in an effort to create

3198-419: 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,

3280-401: The film, as he soon did. To the all-star all-male cast, he added an unknown French beauty, Irina Demick , as a Resistance fighter . She had become his mistress after her casting session for the film's only female speaking part. She would be followed by Geneviève Gilles and the French singer Juliette Gréco . Greco, who in fact had her own recording career, published a kiss-and-tell memoir in

3362-428: The first half of the 20th century, as Cohn reportedly even had a private room next to his office where he conducted his unofficial 'business'", and went on to blame both Zanuck and Cohn for having "helped foster the industry's corrosive atmosphere of sexualized misconduct." A New York Times article in February 2020 following Weinstein's conviction repeated similar claims about Zanuck, while reporting that he also "had

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3444-425: The first time, had the power to cancel it and he did. At the end of 1970, Zanuck hurriedly assembled the board the day before New Year's. Zanuck denounced his son's incompetence in front of the entire board and summarily fired him. Richard, stunned and humiliated, flew back to Los Angeles on New Year's Day; a studio guard stood watch at his office; it was left to his secretary to tell him he had until 6:00 pm to be off

3526-460: The highly successful The Sound of Music (1965), committed to the science-fiction hit Planet of the Apes (1968), unleashed maverick director Robert Altman to create his antiwar comedy MASH (1970) and hired the little-known Francis Coppola to write Patton (1970) into a project for George C. Scott . However, Zanuck Sr's next all-star World War II film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

3608-456: The industry's studios, theater owners, manufacturers, to stockholders and the press—by mid-March, to give them enough time to impress their shareholders with their new product and thus win the proxy fight. With Chretien's new lens, the Fox engineers pulled it together—a widescreen, Cinerama-like picture projected using merely one projector, not three. Zanuck carried out presentations of CinemaScope to

3690-489: The innovative new process was pitched to them for investment. In retrospect, this looked like a mistake, but nothing could be done. Cinerama was no longer for sale. Zanuck now urged the studio to keep the same principle, but find a more feasible approach. He approved a massive investment into a system that would be called CinemaScope —$ 10 million in its first year alone. The urgency was increased when an aggressive appliance tycoon and shareholder, Charles Green, began threatening

3772-400: The latter's having shepherded Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940) past the censorious Hays office into production, had been making films as a commander in the U.S. Navy even before the U.S. entered the war, and he was horrified to discover himself drafted into Zanuck's Africa unit. "Can't I ever get away from you?" he growled. "I bet if I die and go to heaven, you'll be waiting for me under

3854-404: The lot. Zanuck remained chairman and appointed underlings to replace his son as president; an outraged Virginia Zanuck rushed to her son's side with her 100,000 shares of stock. Guilty gifts of stock from her faithless husband had made her one of Fox's major shareholders. She signed them over to a group of disgusted shareholders who staged a rebellion at the annual spring meeting that May. Zanuck

3936-428: The most successful independent movie studio of its time, breaking box-office records with 18 of its 19 films, all profitable, including Clive of India , Les Miserables , and The House of Rothschild . After a dispute with United Artists over stock ownership, Schenck and Zanuck negotiated and used their studio to bring the bankrupt Fox studios in 1935 to create Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation . Zanuck

4018-532: The new proportions. Committed to its all-widescreen slate, Fox had to drop several projects that were deemed unsuitable for CinemaScope—one of them being Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), which Zanuck could not visualize being in color and widescreen. (Kazan took the project to Columbia , which had thus far stayed on the sidelines of the widescreen debate.) The public demonstrations that spring had already included excerpts from The Robe and How to Marry

4100-623: The period film Star! (1968), and Barbra Streisand in Hello Dolly (1969). By the decade's end, Zanuck Sr. was spending millions on expensive vehicles in Europe for his new girlfriend, Genevieve Gilles . Barely 20 years old, she had her own contract to produce and star in Zanuck's films. Her first acting effort, Hello-Goodbye (1970), died on release. The studio lost $ 4 million. From her Paris apartment, Gilles interviewed directors for her next script, which she had written herself. Zanuck

4182-462: The press in cities across the country throughout April, as Skouras and he gathered their forces for the proxy fight. "The enthusiastic response of those who attended these screenings and the laudatory reviews of CinemaScope in the trade press," writes John Belton in his book, Widescreen (1992), "undoubtedly played a major role in Green's defeat" at the May 5 meeting. CinemaScope's need for a wider screen

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4264-665: The process for Fox's most exclusive roadshows . Although pictures continued to be shot in CinemaScope until 1967, it ironically became relegated to Fox's conventional releases. Nonetheless, the Battle of the Screens seemed to leave Zanuck emotionally exhausted. He began an affair with a young Polish woman, who was actually a guest of his wife, changing her name to Bella Darvi . When he cast Darvi in The Egyptian (1954), she

4346-607: The relentlessly authentic film could not disguise its downbeat nature as a chronicle of American defeat, the last thing critics and audiences wanted to revisit at the height of the Vietnam War in Asia . As the tumultuous decade wore on, Richard also began to falter with lavish costume musicals that expensively tanked: Rex Harrison as the man who could talk to the animals in Doctor Dolittle (1967), Julie Andrews in

4428-466: 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 . In the 2022 Netflix film Blonde , Zanuck

4510-544: The spoiled son of Universal's founder, Carl Laemmle Jr. , who was chauffeured by limousine to the facility each morning from a luxury Manhattan hotel. Appalled by such privileged cosseting, Zanuck stormed down to Washington, DC , and into the War Department , demanding a riskier assignment from Chief of Staff , General George C. Marshall . Since American forces were not yet fighting anywhere, Marshall had Zanuck posted to London as chief U.S. liaison officer to

4592-491: The still-unfinished Cleopatra and had been forced to shelve Marilyn Monroe 's last vehicle, Something's Got to Give after principal photography had started, at a loss of $ 2 million. Zanuck promptly made his son, Richard D. Zanuck , head of production. Richard quickly displayed his own flair for picking fresh, new hits, helped by his trusted fellow producer, David Brown . He plucked Rodgers and Hammerstein's least successful Broadway show from obscurity and turned it into

4674-419: The studio and instead read books at home, surrounded by his growing family, and caught up on all the films he had missed while overseas in his private screening room. He did not return to take the reins until William Goetz , the man Zanuck had left in charge when he went off to war, left for a job at Universal . Zanuck's tenure in the 1940s and '50s resonated with his astute choices. He first personally rescued

4756-500: The studio system — Col. Frank Capra , Col. Anatole Litvak , Col. Hal Roach —were actually doing their cinematic jobs, often, like Zanuck, under enemy fire. Nonetheless, when Col. Zanuck was named in this investigation in 1944, the usually combative mogul uncharacteristically and abruptly resigned his commission and left the Army. Biographer Leonard Mosley suggests this to be because of an inadvertent security leak when Zanuck had mentioned

4838-399: The studio's West Coast production facilities where a more hospitable and cost-effective climate existed for filmmaking. Between 1915 and 1919, Fox Films earned millions of dollars through films featuring Theda Bara , known as "The Vamp" due to her unique ability to display exoticism. With the introduction of sound technology, Fox moved to acquire the rights to a sound-on-film process. In

4920-522: The studio's new West Coast production facilities, where the climate was more hospitable for filmmaking. On July 23, 1926, Fox Studios bought the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film . After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 , William Fox lost control of the company in 1930, during a hostile takeover . Under new president Sidney R. Kent, the new owners merged

5002-451: The titan who rose from working as the head of production at Warner Bros. to running Twentieth Century Fox. It was in the latter position that he supposedly begat the modern casting couch, holding conferences with a variety of starlets in his office every afternoon from 4-4:30 p.m." The article further adds that "As some have argued, he may have learned this malicious practice from fellow studio head Harry Cohn , chief of Columbia Pictures during

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5084-466: The two reconciled and lived together in Palm Springs, and she cared for him at their home from the time he became mentally incapacitated in the early 1970s until his death in 1979. An October 2017 article by The Daily Beast , following the reporting of several sexual abuse cases committed by Harvey Weinstein reported that "For an origin to all this ugliness, one must turn to Darryl F. Zanuck,

5166-428: The viewer in a wrap-around image, Zanuck wrote an essay extolling widescreen's virtues, seeing the new formats as a "participatory" form of recreation, rather than mere passive entertainment, such as television. Cinerama was cumbersome, though, and used three (image) projectors simultaneously (plus a 4th projector for sound), potentially a hugely expensive investment. Fox, like every other studio, had rejected Cinerama when

5248-605: The way he was forced out of his company and portrayed it as an active conspiracy against him in the 1933 book Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox . Under new president Sidney Kent, the new owners began negotiating with the upstart, but powerful independent Twentieth Century Pictures in the early spring of 1935. Twentieth Century had begun in the Samuel Goldwyn Studios in 1932 under founders Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck . The two companies merged that spring of 1935 and became 20th Century-Fox. The company

5330-590: The weekly Fox Movietone News feature, that ran until 1963. The growing company needed space, and in 1926 Fox acquired 300 acres (1.2 km ) in the open country west of Beverly Hills and built "Movietone City", the best-equipped studio of its time. Because William Fox opted to remain in New York, much of the Hollywood filmmaking at the Fox Film Corporation was instead managed by Fox's movie makers. Janet Gaynor would also become one of

5412-438: The wounded back to the ship. While Zanuck was on duty, 20th Century-Fox, like the other studios, contributed to the war effort by releasing a large number of their male stars for overseas service and many of their female stars for USO and war bond tours — while creating patriotic films under the often contentious supervision of a fledgling Office of War Information . Jack L. Warner, whose studio lot happened to be next door to

5494-546: The years 1925–26, Fox purchased the rights to the work of Freeman Harrison Owens , the U.S. rights to the Tri-Ergon system invented by three German inventors, and the work of Theodore Case . This resulted in the Movietone sound system later known as "Fox Movietone" developed at the Movietone Studio . Later that year, the company began offering films with a music-and-effects track, and the following year Fox began

5576-679: Was The Sting . Darryl predicted it would win the Oscar, and it did. On January 12, 1924, at a time when he was a hopeful screenwriter, he married actress Virginia Fox , with whom he had three children, Darrylin, Susan Marie, and Richard Darryl . Fox retired from acting but became known as a behind-the-scenes influence on her husband's business decisions, as well as a prominent California hostess. The couple separated in 1956, after Zanuck had suddenly resigned from Twentieth Century-Fox to become an independent producer, over Zanuck's well-publicized affairs with other actresses, although they never legally divorced. In 1973, after Zanuck retired from filmmaking,

5658-511: Was Vice President of Production of this new studio and took a hands-on approach, closely involving himself in scripts, film editing , and producing. When the U.S. entered World War II at the end of 1941, he was commissioned as a colonel in the U.S. Army Signal Corps , but was frustrated to find himself posted to the Astoria studios in Queens, New York , and even worse, serving alongside

5740-420: Was a waste of money. Then Skouras flew to Paris to meet with a French inventor, Henri Chretien , who had created a new lens that just might be suitable. Though Fox shares immediately went up, Green found this an even more damning indication of Zanuck and Skouras's leadership and began readying his proxy fight for the May shareholder meeting. This meant that a CinemaScope process had to be publicly demonstrated to

5822-428: Was an American independent company that produced motion pictures and was formed in 1915 by the theater "chain" pioneer William Fox . It was the corporate successor to his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attraction Company (founded 1913). The company's first film studios were set up in Fort Lee, New Jersey , but in 1917, William Fox sent Sol M. Wurtzel to Hollywood, California to oversee

5904-464: Was an early advocate of widescreen projection. One of the first things Zanuck did when he returned to Fox in 1944 was to restart the research on a 50 mm film, shelved in the early 1930s as a cost-cutting measure (a larger-sized film print in the projector meant higher resolution). Impressed by a screening in Cinerama , a three- projector widescreen process, unveiled in 1952 that promised to envelop

5986-421: Was because of an anamorphic lens attached to the camera which squeezed the image while filming, and another lens on the projector which reverted the process, widening the image during screening. Implementing this was no easy matter. Directors, cameramen, and production designers were baffled by what to do with all that space. Zanuck encouraged them to spread the action across the screen, to take full advantage of

6068-903: Was carefully nurtured through his first film, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), based on a popular novel. It did so well, he chose Kazan to direct the first studio film on antisemitism , Gentleman's Agreement (1947), with Gregory Peck playing a Gentile reporter whose life falls apart due to implacable antisemitism emerging from friends and family when he pretends to be Jewish for an exposé. After Kazan triumphed in Tennessee Williams ' Broadway hit, A Streetcar Named Desire , he brought Kazan back to direct Pinky (1949), another film about prejudice , this time racial. The scathing theater world of Bette Davis 's aging actress in All About Eve (1950) went on to win six Oscars at

6150-415: Was described by film historian Raymond Fielding as the "first sound news film of consequence". Movietone News was launched as a regular newsreel feature December 3 of that year. Production of the series continued after the merger with Twentieth Century Pictures, until 1963, and continued to serve 20th Century Fox after that, as a source for film industry stock footage. Unlike Fox's early feature films,

6232-425: Was never at the studio, seldom even in America. He seemed to have nothing on but more projects for Gilles. Quietly, eyeing a debt level whose interest they could hardly afford to pay, the nervous board members moved Richard to president and promoted his father to chairman , or more accurately, kicked the older man upstairs, which is how Zanuck began to perceive it. When Gilles' contract came up for renewal, Richard, for

6314-685: Was ousted from the studio he had founded and commanded for so long. He was the last Hollywood tycoon to fall. Richard went to work for Warner Brothers and forgave his father. They spoke on the phone. Virginia put her foot down and Gilles was gone. After so much blood on the floor, Darryl Zanuck was now back in the fold of his original family. When his health failed and he suffered a stroke, Zanuck returned to California and moved in with Virginia. They lived together again and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Richard moved to Universal Pictures with his producing partner, David Brown. They gave 26-year-old Steven Spielberg his first feature; their second movie

6396-636: Was plagued with production problems from the start. First, director David Lean pulled out of the Pearl Harbor retelling, and had to be hastily replaced by Richard Fleischer ; storms destroyed expensive exteriors, closing down production while they were rebuilt; then the Japanese co-director Akira Kurosawa , miffed by criticism of his early rushes, either really had or merely faked a nervous breakdown before his cast and crew and had to be hospitalized, shutting down production again. When finally finished,

6478-407: Was portrayed by David Warshofsky . Studio executive A studio executive may be a chief executive officer (CEO), a chief financial officer (CFO), or a chief operating officer (COO), or be employed to serve in a variety of vice presidential capacities, such as senior vice president of corporate relations. A studio executive may oversee production or may serve in a role identical to

6560-458: Was purchased by News Corporation in 1985, becoming " 20th Century Fox " without the hyphen, and in 2020 was purchased by The Walt Disney Company and renamed 20th Century Studios. For many years, 20th Century-Fox claimed to have been founded in 1915; for instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, marking its 75th rather than 95th anniversary in 2010. A 1937 fire in

6642-479: Was so mediocre and the script so unsatisfactory, that star Marlon Brando walked off the picture after the first read-through. He agreed to give Fox two other pictures rather than return. Her unintelligible accent helped sink not only the ponderous film, but also his long-enduring marriage, and indeed his life at the studio itself. In 1956, Zanuck withdrew from the studio and left his wife, Virginia Fox , to move to Europe and concentrate on independent producing with

6724-415: Was unsuccessful at the box office, and an attempt to make a film of One World , a memoir by politician Wendell Willkie of his tour of war-damaged Europe , a project that was aborted before shooting began. As television began to erode Hollywood's audiences in the early 1950s, widescreen presentation was thought to be a potential solution. The 1950 television set duplicated the near-square shape of

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