David Brown

David Brown

1916–2010

David Brown, who has died at 93, produced dozens of hit movies, many of them with Richard Zanuck; among their biggest hits were Jaws and The Sting. Brown succeeded in Hollywood, he said, because he valued a good script above all else: “It was my secret weapon in a place where most people don’t read.”

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An alumnus of Stanford and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, Brown was second-string drama critic and night editor of Women’s Wear Daily in the 1930s. He also edited Liberty and Cosmopolitan, and wrote for such magazines as Collier’s and The New Yorker. “With his eclectic résumé and clear sense of narrative,” said The Boston Globe, “he caught the eye of legendary studio chief Darryl Zanuck,” who hired him in 1951 to run 20th Century Fox’s story department. There, Brown helped turn out such hits as The Sound of Music, M*A*S*H, and Patton. In 1972, he formed his own company with Zanuck’s son Richard; their movies included Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy, The Player, and The Verdict.

“He and Zanuck seemed an ideal team, given his zeal for writing and Zanuck’s dealmaking prowess,” said Variety. But Brown’s most enduring partnership was with his wife of more than 50 years, Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, who survives him. He worked with her to develop her 1962 best-seller Sex and the Single Girl. In 1965, they launched a newly revamped, spicier Cosmopolitan, famous for cover lines such as “How to Turn Him On While You Take It Off.” Gurley Brown often credited her husband with coming up with the most salacious cover lines, “and the two would recite them for friends, knowing they’d elicit laughter and admiration.”