Richard D. Zanuck(1934-2012)

The son of Darryl F Zanuck s a college student he spent his holidays working in different departments at Fox Studios so learnt the business from the bottom up. One Summer he attended every production business meeting with his father and later joined his dad as story and production assistant on such films as Island in the Sun and The Sun Also Rises. With his father working in Africa on Roots of Heaven he was given responsibility for a film he'd been working on but hadn't expected to produce - Compulsion, which went on to win the Cannes Festival Award for it's male stars and was a financial as well as an artistic success establishing Richard as a producer in his own right. In 1969 at 34 with his appointment as senior executive vice president at 20th Century Fox he was the youngest corporate president in Hollywood history and during his 8 years at Fox he rebuilt the oganisation into one of the world's most prestigious and successful studios and at the same time brought it up to date as a leading centre for television and film production.