Richard Darryl Zanuck was an American film producer. His 1989 film Driving
Miss Daisy won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Zanuck was also
instrumental in launching the careers of directors Tim Burton and Steven
Spielberg, who described Zanuck as a "director's producer" and "one of the
most honorable and loyal men of our profession."
Early life and career Richard Darryl Zanuck was born in Los
Angeles, to actress Virginia Fox and Darryl F. Zanuck, then head of
production for 20th Century-Fox. While studying at Stanford University, he
began his career in the film industry working for the 20th Century Fox story
department. In 1959, Zanuck had his first shot at producing with the film
Compulsion. In the 1960s, Zanuck became the president of 20th Century Fox. One
year of his tenure was chronicled by John Gregory Dunne in The Studio. After
failures like 1967's Doctor Dolittle, he was fired by his father and joined
Warner Bros. as Executive Vice President.
In 1972, Zanuck joined with David Brown to form an independent production
company called The Zanuck/Brown Company at Universal Pictures. The two men
produced a pair of Steven Spielberg's early films, The Sugarland Express and
Jaws. They subsequently produced such box office hits as Cocoon and Driving
Miss Daisy before dissolving their partnership in 1988. They were jointly
awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award by the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences in 1990. He worked with Tim Burton six times, producing
Burton's adaptation of Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice in
Wonderland, and Dark Shadows. He and Burton connected immediately, and Zanuck
was Burton's producer of choice. In a May 2012 interview, Zanuck told Variety:
"A producer should contribute from the very beginning until the very end, in
all aspects. I'm there at the set every day, on every shot. Not that the
director, particularly Tim [Burton], needs me, but just in case."
Personal life Zanuck married three times. On January
14, 1958, he married Lili Charlene Gentle, an actress from Birmingham,
Alabama, and second cousin of Tallulah Bankhead. The marriage, which produced
two daughters, Virginia and Janet, was dissolved in 1968. On October 26, 1969,
Zanuck and his protégé, actress Linda Harrison, together with his friend,
producer Sy Bartlett, and Harrison's sister Kay, flew to Las Vegas, where
Zanuck married Harrison on a balcony of the Sands Hotel. The marriage became
difficult after Harrison failed to garner the role of the wife in Zanuck's
production of Jaws. In mid-1977, as a result of his second wife's entanglement
with a 65-year-old "guru", Vincentii Turriziani of the Risen Christ
Foundation, and the alleged guru's claims and demands for money from
Zanuck, he filed for divorce and was awarded custody of his two sons,
Harrison Richard Zanuck and Dean Francis Zanuck. In a 1985 interview, Zanuck said
that career problems contributed to his two failed marriages. "Both girls were
actresses, and neither one was well established," he said. As head of 20th
Century Fox, "It was tough to try to be fair to the project and also try to help
them in their careers. If I didn't give them the role, then I had to explain why
they weren't right for it. It wasn't the major problem in the marriages, but it
was an underlying source of discomfort." On 23 September 1978, Zanuck married his
third wife, Lili Fini, a former World Bank employee and Carnation Co. office
manager, who helped him raise his sons from his second marriage, and would
co-produce some of his most memorable films, including Cocoon, Driving Miss
Daisy, and Reign of Fire. When the Zanucks won the Best Picture Oscar in
1989 for Driving Miss Daisy, Lili Fini Zanuck was only the second woman in
history to have earned an Oscar for Best Picture. In 1998, she directed an
episode of the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, titled "We Have
Cleared the Tower", and in 2000, Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck co-produced the
72nd Academy Awards ceremony. Death
Richard Zanuck died on July 13, 2012, of a heart attack at his home in Beverly
Hills. The Beverly Park home he had lived in until his death was sold for
$20.1MM in July 2012. On 25th February 2014, Twentieth-Century Fox opened the
Richard D. Zanuck Production Building at its Los Angeles studios. "Richard was a
true giant of our industry for over five decades," Fox Chairman and CEO Jim
Gianopulos said at the dedication ceremony. "He was family, and an
integral part of our legacy. We couldn't find a building worthy of him, so we
built one." The ceremony was attended by Zanuck's widow, Lili Fini Zanuck, his
sons, Harrison and Dean, and four of his nine grandchildren, Jack, Darryl, Kyler,
and Luke Zanuck. Filmography
Television Awards and nominations
References External links
Richard D. Zanuck at the Internet Movie Database
The Zanucks: Reel Royalty