Read Studio (9780307817600) Online
Authors: John Gregory Dunne
Some months after I began my research, the studio’s
vice president in charge of public relations came out to California from his headquarters in New York. He was appalled at the access I had been given and ordered it stopped. At a meeting in his office, he offered to buy me off, to make it “worth my while” to let the studio have editorial control over my book. If I refused, I would not be let back on the lot. I was in a quandary. I had no intention of giving up editorial control of the book, but at the same time I needed two set pieces—the preview of
Dr. Doolittle
in Minneapolis and the picture’s premiere in Los Angeles—to complete the research on the book. I asked to see Richard Zanuck.
We had seen each other nearly every day I was at the studio, sometimes at lunch (I had a standing invitation at his table in the commissary), sometimes at dailies (I also had a standing invitation to watch the rushes with him). I told him that I could not in good conscience give him veto over the book and that, if that were the condition, I would pack it in. I suspect he wondered if I already had enough material to make a book; I also suspect he thought that throwing me off the lot at that late date would make any book I wrote less amiable. He finally asked if he could read the manuscript and make suggestions that I would be under no obligation to follow. I agreed. He ultimately asked me to delete three minor references. One—a producer’s bad rapping of an actor—my lawyer had already said was libelous; the other two would have complicated Zanuck’s divorce proceedings from his first wife. I made the deletions he requested.
The Studio
was simplicity itself to write. It was mainly a matter of transcribing and rearranging my notes. That
there were no surprises—I knew exactly what I was going to do—was for me the problem. Writing is essentially donkey work, manual labor of the mind. What makes it bearable are those moments (which sometimes can last for weeks, months) when the book takes over, takes on a life of its own, goes off in unexpected directions. There were no detours like that in
The Studio
. My notes were like plans for a bridge. Writing the book was like building that bridge.
When I finally read
The Studio
—I had picked it up because I had to check something in it—I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. In the decade since I finished it, I myself had worked extensively in the movie business. Indeed, the first picture I wrote was for Richard Zanuck and Twentieth Century Fox. “Look,” he told the producer, “do you mind if we don’t mention
The Studio
in the announcement? It would make my life simpler.” He remains the best executive I have met in the movie business, forceful and decisive. If he makes a wrong decision (and I think he might like to reconsider opening up Fox to me), he sticks by it, never apologizing, never explaining. That I had written
The Studio
was one thing; that I had now written a screenplay ready to go into production was another altogether.
If I were writing
The Studio
today, I would probably be more compassionate, but that is a factor of age and experience. The story of Henry Koster’s meeting with Zanuck troubles me more than anything in the book, yet I think I would probably still put it in: a fact of the movie business is that people are used and discarded like so many wads of Kleenex. I would also change a nuance here and a nuance
there, largely because I am convinced that it is impossible for anyone who had never worked in the movie business to understand the dynamics of any given picture. But on the whole, I am surprised and a little gratified at how accurate the portrait remains. In some circles, it is an article of faith that Hollywood is dead, the studios extinct. To which I can only say rubbish. Movies must still be financed and distributed, and they are still largely financed and wholly distributed by the major motion picture companies. If there are fewer pictures, the stakes are higher. A film like
Star Wars
can redeem the mistakes of ten years. Richard Zanuck was fired by his father at Fox; he went to Warner Brothers and was fired there. He formed an independent production company, went to Universal and co-produced
Jaws
, which probably has made more money than all the films his father produced personally in a lifetime.
Hollywood is a technological crapshoot. Table stakes open at a million dollars. It was true in 1968, it is true now.
I suppose that is why after seventeen years I like
The Studio
now. I got it right.
Los Angeles
January 1985
DARRYL F. ZANUCK
, president, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
RICHARD D. ZANUCK
, his son, executive vice president in charge of world-wide production, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
And in Alphabetical Order
MORT ABRAHAMS
, associate producer of
Dr. Dolittle
IRWIN ALLEN
, a science-fiction entrepreneur
JULIE ANDREWS
, a film star
EDWARD ANHALT
, a screenwriter
ARMY ARCHERD
, a gossip columnist
TED ASHLEY
, president of the Ashley-Famous Artists Agency
GEORGE AXELROD
, a Renaissance Man
JACK BAUR
, assistant head of the Studio’s casting department
PANDRO S. BERMAN
, a film producer
JOEY BISHOP
, a television personality
JACQUELINE BISSET
, an actress
PAUL BLOCH
, press agent
JOHN BOTTOMLY
, technical advisor on
The Boston Strangler
LESLIE BRICUSSE
, scenarist-composer-lyricist,
Dr. Dolittle
DAVID BROWN
, husband of Helen Gurley Brown and the Studio’s vice president in charge of story operations
ROBERT BUCKNER
, producer
REGGIE CALLOW
, assistant director of
Star!
CAROL CHANNING
, an actress
GEORGE CHASIN
, partner in the Park-Chasin-Citron Agency
CHER
, as in “Sonny & Cher”
CURT CONWAY
, New Talent School
GARY CONWAY
, a television actor
ALEXANDER COURAGE
, co-arranger of the score of
Dr. Dolittle
WARREN COWAN
, partner in the public relations firm of Rogers, Cowan & Brenner
TONY CURTIS
, a film star
PAMELA DANOVA
, New Talent School
BOBBY DARIN
, singer
JOHN DE CUIR
, production designer of
Hello, Dolly!
JAMES DENTON
, the Studio’s head of West Coast publicity
BOB DENVER
, an actor
ABE DICKSTEIN
, the Studio’s head of domestic sales
LOU DYER
, a Studio press agent
JAMES FISHER
, the Studio’s West Coast story editor
BERNARD FLATOW
, head of Latin American publicity
RICHARD FLEISCHER
, director of
Dr. Dolittle
and
The Boston Strangler
HENRY FONDA
, a film star
KURT FRINGS
, an agent
WILLIAM FROUG
, a television writer
ROBERT FRYER
, producer of
The Boston Strangler
PHIL GERSH
, an agent
HAPPY GODAY
, a song plugger
JOYCE HABER
, a gossip columnist
SHEILA HACKETT
, assistant to Michael Kidd
LINDA HARRISON
, an actress in the New Talent School
REX HARRISON
, a film star
HARVEY HART
, director of
The Sweet Ride
DALE HENNESY
, a Studio art director
HAL HERMAN
, television production manager
CHARLTON HESTON
, a film star
JACK HIRSHBERG
, a Studio press agent
STANLEY HOUGH
, head of the Studio’s production department
ARTHUR P. JACOBS
, producer of
Dr. Dolittle
GENE KELLY
, director of
Hello, Dolly!
MICHAEL KIDD
, choreographer of
Star!
and
Hello, Dolly!
HENRY KOSTER
, director of
A Hundred Men and a Girl
ERNEST LEHMAN
, writer-producer of
Hello, Dolly!
PERRY LIEBER
, former head of West Coast publicity
FRANK MC CARTHY
, a film producer and friend of General Omar Bradley
MARY ANN MC GOWAN
, secretary to Richard Zanuck
HARRY MC INTYRE
, a Studio executive
BARBARA MC LEAN
, head of the Studio’s cutting department
OWEN MC LEAN
, head of the Studio’s casting department
TED MANN
, a Minnesota theater magnate
IRVING MANSFIELD
, husband of Jacqueline Susann
DANIEL MASSEY
, an actor
ARNOLD MAXIN
, a music publisher
LOUIS MERMAN
, assistant head of the Studio’s production department
PAUL MONASH
, a film and television producer
FRANK NEILL
, a Studio press agent
LIONEL NEWMAN
, head of the Studio’s music department
JOE PASTERNAK
, producer of
The Sweet Ride
DAVID RAPHEL
, vice president in charge of international sales
DON RECORD
, a title designer
JERRY REYNOLDS
, an engineer from the Boeing Aircraft Corporation
JONAS ROSENFIELD
, the Studio’s vice president in charge of publicity
ED ROTHMAN
, an agent for Ashley-Famous Artists Agency
FRANKLIN SCHAFFNER
, director of
Planet of the Apes
IRENE SHARAFF
, costume designer of
Hello, Dolly
RICHARD SHEPHERD
, an agent for Creative Management Associates
SPYROS SKOURAS
, chairman of the board, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
MILT SMITH
, a Studio press agent
HARRY SOKOLOV
, executive assistant to Richard Zanuck
SONNY
, as in “Sonny & Cher”
BARBRA STREISAND
, a film star
JACQUELINE SUSANN
, an authoress
NATALIE TRUNDY
, friend to Arthur Jacobs
DAVID WEISBART
, producer of
Valley of the Dolls
ELMO WILLIAMS
, producer of
Tora, Tora, Tora
ROBERT WISE
, director of
Star!
EVARTS ZIEGLER
, partner in the Ziegler-Ross Agency
FRED ZINNEMANN
, a film director
“
As a story it was reasonable enough to pass, and I sometimes believed what I said and tried to take the cure in the very real sun of Desert D’Or with its cactus, its mountain, and the bright green foliage of its love and its money
.”
Norman Mailer,
The Deer Park
Shortly after two o’clock on the afternoon of May 16, 1967, Darryl F. Zanuck stepped out of an elevator on the eighteenth floor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. He was wearing sunglasses and smoking a large black cigar and in the lapel buttonhole of his well-tailored blue blazer was the rosette of the
Legion d’Honneur
. In his wake, stopping when he stopped, walking when he walked, trailed a convoy of equally well-tailored men in the employ of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, over whose annual stockholders’ meeting Zanuck was scheduled to preside that afternoon in the Waldorf’s Starlight Roof. Leading the convoy, but a half step behind his father, the dauphin to
the king, was Zanuck’s only son, Richard Darryl Zanuck, a member of the board of directors of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and the Studio’s Los Angeles-based executive vice president in charge of world-wide production.
As Darryl Zanuck entered the meeting room, a number of stockholders rose and began to applaud. The elder Zanuck paid no attention, and he seated the young woman with him, a slender French girl in a green silk Pucci dress, in a chair at the rear of the room. Then he headed for the dais, shaking hands with board members and embracing old friends as he went. Over the dais hung the green, gold and black flag of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Already in his place at the end of the front table on the dais was Fox’s chairman of the board, Spyros P. Skouras. During the years when Darryl Zanuck held the same post his son holds now, Skouras had chaired these annual meetings, but on this afternoon, he sat impassively, looking like an aging white-maned lion, his hands folded in front of him.
Darryl Zanuck took his place at the lectern, his son in a chair immediately to his right. The cigar was still implanted in Darryl Zanuck’s mouth. “Well, here we go again,” he said to Richard Zanuck. The microphone picked up his nasal Nebraska twang and there was a titter from the audience. Darryl Zanuck glared impatiently and then called the meeting to order, placing the agenda in front of him. Suddenly he stopped and took off his sunglasses.
“Are these the right goddamn glasses?” he said. “For Christ’s sake, no.”
He replaced the sunglasses with reading glasses and began to introduce the members of the board and Studio executives sitting on the double-tiered dais. When he came to his son, he stopped, fumbling for effect: “On my right, I can’t remember his name, heh, heh, now I’ve got it, Richard Zanuck.”