One of the kingpins of Hollywoods studio system, Zanuck was the offspring of the illfated marriage of the alcoholic night clerk in Wahoo, Nebraskas only hotel and the hotel owners promiscuous daughter. Both parents had abandoned him by the time he was 13. At 15, he joined the U.S. Army, and he fought in Belgium in World War I. Mustered out, he kept himself alive with a series of desultory jobs steelworker, foreman in a garment factory, professional boxer while pursuing a career as a writer.He turned his first published story for Physical Culture, a pulp magazine into a film scenario for William Russell; his next important sale was to Irving Thalberg.Although often described as barely literate, Zanuck turned out to have a prodigious knack for movie plots. After a wellpaid apprenticeship with Mack Sennett, Syd Chaplin and Carl Laemmle, Zanuck hit his stride by devising with Malcolm St. Clair the Rin Tin Tin series of policedog movies for Warner Brothers. For Warner, under his own name and three pseudonyms, he ground out as many as 19 scripts a year and became head of production at age 23. He helped forge that studios style with such films as The Jazz Singer 1927, The Public Enemy 1931 and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang 1932.In 1933, after the Warners made it clear that Zanuck would never be more than an employee, he quit to form Twentieth Century Films with backing from Louis B. Mayer and Joseph M. Schenck. In 1935, Twentieth absorbed a bankrupt giant, Fox. Zanuck ruled the combined studio for decades. He became known as the most handson of the major studio bosses, taking particular pride in his talent for remaking movies in the cutting room. His signature productions were such sentimental, contentladen dramas as How Green Was My Valley 1941, The Grapes of Wrath 1940, and Twelve OClock High 1949.In the late fifties, Zanuck relinquished daytoday control of the studio, left his wife, and moved to Europe to concentrate on producing. Many of his later films were designed in part to promote the careers of his successive girlfriends, Bella Darvi, Juliette Gréco, Irina Demick and Geneviève Gilles none of whom found much favor with directors or audiences.After the success of The Longest Day 1962, Zanuck returned to run 20th CenturyFox; he promoted his son, Richard D. Zanuck, to head of production, then engineered his firing in a messy boardroom brawl. Within a few months, in May 1971, Zanuck himself was deposed. He was the last studio boss of his era to go down.

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