Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck And The Culture Of Hollywood [Hardcover]

George F. Custen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 1997

Spanning four decades and more than a thousand films, the creative output of Darryl D. Zanuck was astonishing and unparalleled. With The Jazz Singer he supervised the innovation of film sound. With The Public Enemy and Little Caesar he reinvented the gangster film. With 42nd Street he reinvigorated the musical. He set the standard for film biography with pictures such as Young Mr. Lincoln and The Story of Alexander Graham Bell. He innovated CinemaScope. And he molded the star images of James Cagney, Shirley Temple, Tyrone Power, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, and Rin Tin Tin.In this major new biography, George F. Custen illuminates Zanuck’s evolution into one of the most influential producers in American film. He explains what set him apart from rivals Irving Thalberg and David O. Selznick, how he developed the gritty realism that came to redefine motion pictures, and how he brilliantly predicted and capitalized on changing public tastes.Zanuck was a man of enormous energy and eccentricity, commanding his studio with a sawed-off polo mallet. Dozens of his memorable films—including I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, The Grapes of Wrath, Gentleman’s Agreement, All About Eve, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Robe—have come to represent the era in which they were made. Hard-boiled or nostalgic, historical or pure Hollywood, Zanuck’s films and Zanuck himself have become legends of the cinema. But what exactly was this producer’s contribution to the films he made? How did he rise from being a writer of silent serials to become head of production at Warner Brothers by his mid-twenties, and then to form his own studio, Twentieth Century-Fox at age thirty-three?Twentieth Century’s Fox tells the whole story—from Zanuck’s boyhood to his tumultuous years with the feuding Warners, his battles with the censors and with his own actors, and the legendary acting-out of scenes during story conferences in his famous green office. Along the way, Custen treats us to inside stories about actors such as Edward G. Robinson, Gregory Peck, and Marilyn Monroe. In never-before-published story conference notes, telegrams, and surprisingly candid anecdotes, he reveals how—more than any producer before or since—this diminutive, enigmatic fellow from Wahoo, Nebraska, changed the way we look at film.Custen highlights the studio as the context of production. Zanuck’s ability to shape the producer’s role and the organizational style during the golden years of the studio system—with its own peculiar methods, clearly delineated rules, and pecking order—was the crucible out of which he forged a unique vision of American film and American culture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Unfairly remembered as a vulgar, cigar-chomping mogul, producer Darryl F. Zanuck (1902-79) gets his due in this perceptive biography. Film historian George F. Custen analyzes Zanuck's role in shaping gritty, urban-oriented movies such as The Public Enemy that made Warner Brothers' reputation in the 1920s and '30s. Discussing Zanuck's career at 20th Century Fox, Custen emphasizes Zanuck's nurturing of socially conscious films such as Gentleman's Agreement, wisely relegating to a brief epilogue the later years of his physical and mental decline. This intelligent appraisal doubles as a cogent history of the Hollywood studio system.

From Library Journal

Zanuck is one of Hollywood's most fascinating characters: an uneducated Midwesterner who became a brilliantly intuitive writer and editor for Warner Brothers, the man who ran 20th Century-Fox for 20 years, a gentile in a business dominated by Jewish moguls, and a great shaper of popular culture. Custen (Bio-Pics, Rutgers Univ., 1992) considers him, along with MGM's Irving Thalberg, "the most important and most influential producer in the history of the American cinema." He claims that Zanuck has never received his full due from historians because of his crude and abrasive personality and marshals plenty of evidence to support his claim. This is not a full-length biography. Custen chooses to concentrate on the intricacies of movie-making, and the story in effect stops with Zanuck's 1956 departure from Hollywood for a short-lived career of independent filmmaking in France. Use of archival material marks it as an important study, but by no means is it the last word on Zanuck.?Thomas J. Wiener, editor, "Satellite DIRECT"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1St Edition edition (November 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 046507619X
• ISBN-13: 978-0465076192
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,368,913 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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