Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Last Tycoon

by Leonard Mosley

Profiles the genius filmmaker who steered Twentieth Century-Fox to the forefront of Hollywood studios and whose turbulent private life frequently spilled over into his business affairs

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Film

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Leonard Oswald Mosley OBE OStJ (11 February 1913 – June 1992) was a British journalist, historian, biographer and novelist. His works include five novels and biographies of General George Marshall, Reich Marshall Hermann Göring, Orde Wingate, Walt Disney, Charles Lindbergh, Du Pont family, Eleanor Dulles, Allen Welsh Dulles, John Foster Dulles and Darryl F. Zanuck. He also worked as chief war correspondent for London's The Sunday Times.

Reviews

[Georgia Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who gambles a fortune on a dog and a kid with blond curls? That's what I wanted to know. What gave Zanuck the idea to make Rin Tin Tin and Shirley Temple stars? Something special must tick inside a guy who thinks like that. I wish I could say after reading this book that I'm any wiser, but I'm not. More than four hundred pages later, and I still don't have the answers.

Zanuck remains inscrutable as a man I once saw drop thousands at a roulette wheel. The difference is this filmmaker won more than he lost. Here are some of his best.
Disaster films? For fires, see In Old Chicago (1938).
For floods, nothing beats The Rains Came (1939).
Tearjerkers? Plenty. From The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941) to anything with Shirley Temple in it.
Thrillers? Lifeboat (1944) directed by Hitchcock.
Social awareness? Gentleman's Agreement (1947) took on anti-Semitism. And no, Zanuck wasn't Jewish. He just cared.

Upped this to four stars if only to remember. Great films. Once and for forever.

[Jeroen Kraan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather bizarre or delightfully original take on the Hollywood biography (maybe both) - this describes Zanuck almost exclusively through the prism of his sexual encounters. Whenever his male collaborators come up, from studio chiefs to screenwriters, Mosley never misses an opportunity to describe whether they, too, partook in various escapades with starlets, like the great man himself in his office-cum-boudoir. I have no idea if the many spicy stories are any more factual than Hollywood Babylon, but they certainly make for a salacious read.

[Laini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good look at the man, the movies he helped to make, and the affairs that helped end his rein at 20th Century Fox.

[Debi Emerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Well written & well researched. And accounting of the life of a man who was truly bigger than life!

[Raphael Bernardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was well written. I really enjoyed reading Zanuck's rise in the film industry (he was only 25 when he was making $5000 a week, a time when the average pay when $50 a week was enough to live).

Warning: Spoilers

Midway through it's all about his problems. We see how unfaithful he is to his wife, how emotional he was as a leader (ex. he'd fire people for stupid reasons). In place of the genius he was in the first half here he was a man compensating for being so short by being a dictator, bullying his employees, always wanting to be the center of attention, and needing to dominate even if it meant booting his son from his own company.

Just as an example of Zanuck's immaturity Zanuck joined the army as a Colonel in some Film Committee the government made. He stayed in the war zone for three months, but when it started to get difficult he went home. Later he received a letter that said he had to report to active duty for x days. Zanuck used his connections in Washington to avoid it.

My favorite story was when Zanuck was at his all time low. He had a stroke and just completed the premier of a flop whose lead actress and his mistress just left him. Erol Williams, the only editor with the same skill as Zanuck, stopped by to see how he was doing. Williams had to cancelled his flight because the nurses didn't think Zanuck was in a condition to see visitors. Three days later he gets to see Zanuck. Zanuck complains how he had nothing left, and begs Williams to see if he had any salvageable scripts. Erol Williams spends the next two days reading scripts Zanuck had bought and tells him all of them are crap. Zanuck had only one more script to show Williams and that was The Longest Day.

Something that I also found interesting was how even though his studio, Fox-21st Century was was the most powerful studio at the time, it was always about to go out of business until he made a box office hit that saved it.

Another fun fact is that Zanuck once borrowed $100,000 from Howard Hughes to pay for the gambling debts of one of his mistresses. It was also fun to see the names of Spielberg, and Coppola come up towards the end.

Next up is either something about his son Richard Zanuck (Personally I think his movie picking was better than Zanucks) or Howard Hughes who Nolan tried to make a movie about.