Richard Zanuck, 1934–2012

last updated 8 January 2015

In 1962, legendary movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck asked his 27-year-old son to do some research. He wanted a list of possible candidates who could take over production at 20th Century Fox, which had fallen on hard times and was losing millions on the historical epic Cleopatra. Richard Zanuck handed his father a piece of paper with a single word on it: “Me.” He got the job. Under Richard the studio won 159 Oscar nominations, and three movies—The Sound of Music, Patton, and The French Connection—were named Best Picture.

Zanuck essentially grew up in show business, said The Washington Post. He accompanied his father to the studio as a child, and by the time he was in sixth grade he was reading scripts, attending story conferences, and watching the rough cuts of films in production. At age 24, Zanuck was given his first movie to produce, the 1959 murder mystery Compulsion, which won critical and public approval. As 20th Century Fox’s influential production chief, Zanuck pumped out a string of box-office smashes, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and M*A*S*H. But there were also costly flops, and by 1970 the studio was deep in debt. That Christmas, Zanuck was sacked by his father, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to save his own job.

Zanuck went on to thrive outside the studio system, said the Los Angeles Times. He formed an independent production company with another old Fox hand, David Brown, and started scouting for new talent. The company produced Steven Spielberg’s first movie, The Sugarland Express, in 1974, and the director’s first blockbuster, Jaws, the following year. Jaws “was a hard act to follow,” said The Guardian (U.K.), but Zanuck had hits with the World War II biopic MacArthur, the sci-fi blockbuster Cocoon, and 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy—which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. “Zanuck was still working when he died, this time on a new thriller,” said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). “The embodiment of the modern history of Hollywood was doing what he loved until the end.”