A few weeks ago, I wrote about the behind-the-scenes memos between Jack Warner and his producers, directors, and stars that can be found in a book titled Inside Warner Bros. 1935 – 1951. Compiled by Rudy Behlmer, the memos are fascinating and revelatory. Not only do they offer insights into the daily operations of the major studios, they also revealed the personalities, peculiarities, and peccadillos of the moguls who ran Hollywood during the Golden Age. This week, I thought I would skim through Behlmer’s Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century-Fox to uncover forgotten details of the studio’s history that classic movie fans might find enlightening. Though his memos are not as quirky or unintentionally funny as Warner’s, they confirmed my opinion regarding his strengths as a producer.
I have always thought of Zanuck as a literate man whose early years as a scriptwriter for Warner Bros. served him well as an executive producer. Zanuck exhibited a talent for shaping scripts during preproduction and sharpening films during editing. While directors such as John Ford and Preston Sturges often bristled at his interference and disagreed with him about cutting down scenes and sequences, Zanuck was a stickler for linear narratives with sharp pacing, which he called “tempo.” Often, his judgment was correct. His cut of My Darling Clementine did tighten the narrative without losing the majesty of the visuals and gravity of the characters.
TEMPLE, ZANUCK, and ZANUCK’S DAUGHTER, DARRILYN
Zanuck inherited two major stars from Fox Films after he became vice president of production for Twentieth Century-Fox in 1935. Shirley Temple and Will Rogers had been Fox’s biggest box-office draws before the merger with Twentieth Century. (Rogers died in a plane crash in August 1935.) Zanuck fully understood that Temple’s continued success was in his hands. Shirley was around seven when Zanuck took over, leaving him with the difficult task of shepherding the career of an enormously popular child star whose fans wanted her to remain forever young. He seemed to understand that as Temple grew up, her films could not follow the same rigid formula. In 1936, Temple was cast in Wee Willie Winkie, which was based on the Rudyard Kipling story. In notes from the film’s story conference, he acknowledged that they had to respect her star image, but the writers should “forget that it is a Shirley Temple picture. . . . All the hokum must be thrown out. . . .We don’t want to depend on any of her tricks.” Zanuck seemed to have had a strategy for Temple, approaching each film as though it were part of a continuum. The following year, he explained in a story conference on Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, “Whereas in Wee Willie Winkie she was always asking questions, in this one she knows all the answers.”
TEMPLE IN ‘YOUNG PEOPLE’: NO LONGER THE MOPPET
Temple’s last film under her Twentieth Century-Fox contract was Young People. Zanuck noted in a dictated outline that Temple had tripled in size since her first film, though that seems like an exaggeration. His plan for Young People embraced the fact that she was growing up, instead of trying to hide it. His idea was to use four or five musical numbers from her previous films as part of her character’s story so her fans could relive her career. However, in the scaled-down final version, only two numbers were used. Temple left Fox in 1940, returning in 1949 for Mr. Belvedere Goes to College.
Zanuck’s preference for tempo improved many a Fox film, while his ability to keep directors on a brisk schedule served the bottom line. However, neither of these traits proved helpful when the legendary French filmmaker Jean Renoir directed Swamp Water for the studio in 1941. The director’s thoughtful approach in which he shot key scenes in different ways, plus his preference for long shots in long takes, with bits of action in the foreground, middleground, and background, was the antithesis of Zanuck’s version of a good film. In a blunt memo to Renoir in July 1941, Zanuck chided the great director, “You are going entirely too slow.” He went on to list Renoir’s faulty directorial practices, which included everything from “wasting time on non-essential details in your background” to “worrying too much about background, atmosphere and elements” to shooting “four different angles to [capture] the action with the sheriff on the porch.” In an August memo, Zanuck reiterates his complaint about “too much atmosphere.” His harshest criticism, however, was the way that Renoir handled the bit or small players, noting that they were all trying too hard to be “a character” that was “so typically American—chewing tobacco, smoking corncob pipes, etc. that it becomes unreal and fakey.” Zanuck may have had a point on the last criticism, but I can’t help but feel sorry for Renoir who was treated with less respect than most contract directors. Despite the producer’s accusations, Swamp Water cost only $602,000, and it became one of the studio’s top box-office successes of 1941.
JEAN RENOIR DISCUSSES A SCENE WITH DANA ANDREWS AND ANNE BAXTER DURING ‘SWAMP WATER.’ A TRUE MICRO-MANAGER, ZANUCK TOLD RENOIR NOT TO SHOOT SO MANY SCENES WITH ANDREWS WEARING THIS HAT.
ZANUCK HAD A PROBLEM ACCEPTING THE REALIST STYLE OF ‘CALL NORTHSIDE 777.”
Various genres and trends ebbed and flowed during the twenty years Zanuck served Fox as its production head. One subgenre that he did not seem to understand was the semi-documentary crime drama. Influenced by a postwar interest in realist styles, these crime dramas used newsreel-like techniques (location shooting, voiceover narration, nonactors in small roles) to tell real-life crime stories. The personal lives of the characters were downplayed or avoided in favor of a step-by-step chronicle of the solving of a crime. Louis de Rochemont, the producer of The March of Times, was hired by Fox in 1943 to produce films in this style. During a story conference for The House on 92nd Street, Zanuck criticized the lack of personal drama in the narrative, noting there were no scenes in which the acting would shine. He seemed to harbor a dislike for the style: “We have to make up our minds to make an entertaining picture out of it, or we should just turn the material over to “The March of Time” and forget about making a picture out of it.” In 1947, Zanuck echoed these remarks in a memo to the writers and producer of Call Northside 777. “I do not like it,” he bluntly stated. “If we do not have a vital personal story and characters whom we understand and appreciate, then our film becomes as impersonal as a “March of Time.” He admits that when de Rochemont originally came to him with the idea for telling a story in the March of Time style, he “vetoed it.” Together, the two came up with a compromise by combining “factual technique with factual dramatization.” Apparently, de Rochemont leaned toward objective documentary techniques, while Zanuck wanted to err on the side of raw drama and heart-warming sentiment. He need not have worried: Call Northside 777 became a box-office success, giving Jimmy Stewart his first postwar hit.
Like all studio executives, Zanuck hated crossing swords with the Production Code and its administrator, Joseph Breen. During Captain of Castile, Zanuck acquiesced to Breen’s censorship by asking writer John Tucker Battle to avoid the word Inquisition and to eliminate any reference to the Catholic Church. He said, “Keep crosses and crucifixes and all such out of it completely. The Inquisitors are just the local Ku-Klux-Klanners, so to speak. . . .” However, Zanuck was not at all sympathetic when fellow producer Howard Hughes had his issues with the Code in regard to The Outlaw. In a personal letter to Breen, he wrote, “The whole campaign on this picture is a disgrace to the industry and I am on the verge of publicly attacking Howard Hughes with a blast in the newspapers.”
ZANUCK WITH MARILYN MONROE. HE CHANGED THE NAME OF HER FIRST FILM TO ‘SCUDDA-HOO! SCUDDA-HAY!,’ A TITLE HE REGRETTED.
The memos contained other odds and ends that I found fascinating or humorous. In 1938, John Ford wanted to remake Renoir’s The Grand Illusion, but Zanuck refused. He claimed three English production companies had already attempted a remake but quickly gave up because of the difficulties involved. That same year, he had problems with the script for a biopic on Brigham Young, because the man practiced bigamy. There was no way to excuse “the idea of one man having eight or nine bed companions . . . . Brigham Young has been used as a standard vaudeville joke for years. . . .” Zanuck had strong opinions on titles for films, disliking pessimistic-sounding titles such as “Nightmare Alley” and “Kiss of Death.” The worst, according to Darryl F., was “the change from Summer Lightning to Scudda-Hoo! Scudda- Hay!, a classic example of stupidity on all our parts. . . .” Even Zanuck could make a mistake.