Biografia

It was an unwritten rule on the 20th Century Fox lot that Zanuck was "in conference" between 4:00 and 4:30 pm daily, "interviewing" one of his starlets or chorus girls.

Like Charles Chaplin, he kept a dictionary in his office bathroom. Zanuck would escape to the bathroom to look up words his underlings would use that he didn't understand.

While Zanuck was at Warner Brothers, Jack Warner felt that the public had tired of gangster pictures and challenged him to come up with something new. Zanuck came up with the idea of a cycle of biographical films of which "Disreali" was the first.

He was the prime promoter of the CinemaScope anamorphic widescreen system. Many exhibitors were afraid to make the significant investment required to install CinemaScope equipment in case it was only a short-lived fad, like 3-D. He pledged that all future 20th Century-Fox releases would be in CinemaScope (or an other compatible process).

In 1917 he lied about his age and joined the US Army (he was actually 15 at the time) and was eventually posted to the Mexican border, during which time he took part in the punitive expedition against Mexican revolutionary / bandit Pancho Villa. He was later sent to France, where he saw even more combat.

There is nothing duller on the screen than being accurate but not dramatic.

I know audiences feed on crap, but I can't believe we are so lacking that we cannot dish it up to them with some trace of originality.

We are in this business primarily to provide entertainment, but in doing so we do not dodge the issue if we can also provide enlightenment.

An executive cannot expect love - ever!

No one can possibly write the history of motion pictures without devoting the largest individual share of it to Irving Thalberg, who incidentally was my intimate friend until the day he died. In my opinion, he was the most creative producer in the history of films during the period when he was Production Head of MGM, and the guiding light of that operation.