Darryl Francis Zanuck was the offspring of an ill-fated marriage between a night clerk and a hotel owner's daughter in Wahoo, Nebraska. Both parents abandoned him by the time he was 13 years old. He joined the U.S. Army at the age of 15 and fought in Belgium during World War I. After being mustered out, he struggled to find employment, working various jobs including steelworker, foreman in a garment factory, and professional boxer, all while pursuing a career as a writer.
Zanuck's writing career began with a story published in "Physical Culture," a pulp magazine, which he later adapted into a film scenario for William Russell. His next significant sale was to Irving Thalberg. Despite being often described as barely literate, Zanuck demonstrated a knack for crafting movie plots.
Zanuck's early career in the film industry was marked by apprenticeships with Mack Sennett, Syd Chaplin, and Carl Laemmle. He eventually landed a job at Warner Brothers, where he devised the Rin Tin Tin series of police-dog movies with Malcolm St. Clair. Under his own name and three pseudonyms, Zanuck churned out as many as 19 scripts a year and became the head of production at Warner Brothers at the age of 23.
Zanuck played a significant role in shaping Warner Brothers' style with films such as "The Jazz Singer" (1927),"The Public Enemy" (1931),and "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (1932). In 1933, after the Warner brothers made it clear that Zanuck would never rise above the rank of employee, he left the studio to form Twentieth Century Films with backing from Louis B. Mayer and Joseph M. Schenck.
In 1935, Twentieth Century Films absorbed a bankrupt giant, Fox, and Zanuck became the ruler of the combined studio for decades. He was known for being the most "hands-on" of the major studio bosses, taking particular pride in his talent for remaking movies in the cutting room.
Zanuck's signature productions were sentimental, content-laden dramas such as "How Green Was My Valley" (1941),"The Grapes of Wrath" (1940),and "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949). In the late 1950s, Zanuck relinquished day-to-day control of the studio, left his wife, and moved to Europe to focus on producing.
Many of Zanuck's later films were designed to promote the careers of his successive girlfriends, including 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 Century-Fox and promoted his son, Richard D. Zanuck, to head of production. However, he later engineered his son's firing in a messy boardroom brawl.
Within a few months, in May 1971, Zanuck himself was deposed, marking the end of an era for the last studio boss of his kind.
