Insightful on Zanuck’s role and the different era when Thalburg, Walis, and Selznick were potentates within empires. The Renaissance had its royal patrons directing the artists , as did we.

You are a font of information. The quote about the difference between Ford and Zanuck in terms of pacing is so true in regard to CLEMENTINE. When I was describing the difference between the two versions of the film to a colleague, I used almost the same verbage, even though I did not know Johnson had said that.
Thanks for the additional information in support. You truly are our favorite reader!!!!

Our wonderful Morlock friend, Moirafinnie directed the following comment toward me when we were discussing The Brasher Doubloon and Darryl F. Zanuck:
“As Philip Dunne, Jean Negulesco, Joseph Mankiewicz and Otto Preminger would readily attest, his true gift may not have been as a mogul or as the writer he fancied himself to be, but as an editor who could cut through the sometimes tangled exposition that writers could sometimes get themselves into and show them the best way to tell stories cinematically.”
Well, first of all, I can’t discount Zanuck’s writing skills. Anyone who allegedly wrote Jane Darwell’s closing speech in Grapes of Wrath is OK in my book.
Secondly, we have to remove Mankiewicz from that list of directors who admired Zanuck’s editing skills. Mankiewicz was bitter about DFZ’s editing of Cleopatra and thought he butchered it. Moirafinnie and I danced around the subject of Cleopatra when we exchanged comments on its producer Walter Wanger. Neither of us seemed to want to go there. I’m sure Wanger regretted the whole experience. As for Mankiewicz, he always needed a good editor but probably didn’t really want one. He did work with DFZ on his prizewinner, All About Eve, although Zanuck gave Joe all the credit on that one.

Zanuck was a flamboyant man, to say the least. According to Kenneth Geist’s biography of Mank, Pictures Will Talk, Zanuck chose Otto Lang as producer for Mankiewicz’s Five Fingers because he was “a former Sun Valley ski instructor whom he had befriended and brought to the studio for producing lessons in return for those he had received on the slopes.”
Dan Ford wrote in his biography of his grandfather John, called Pappy:
“Even by Hollywood standards Zanuck was one of the most outlandish moguls in the history of motion pictures. He surrounded himself with flunkies, cronies and yes-men…They included a French tutor, the man who ran the studio commissary and the studio barber. Their function was not to provide Zanuck with sound advice but rather amusement.”

Ford’s grandson takes Zanuck’s side and compliments him for his editing talent.
“Everyone I talked to who was close to Darryl Zanuck said that if he and my grandfather had a conflict, it was over the issue of pacing. In Nunnally Johnson’s words, “John liked his films to meander, to stop and focus on something inconsequential and make a comment of some sort. Darryl liked them to MOVE.”

Dan Ford said Zanuck cut a half hour out of John Ford’s version of My Darling Clementine, eliminating the sentimentality and low comedy, emphasizing the visual flow and clarifying the exposition.

Sometimes great teamwork produces great movies, even though the participants don’t always agree. I wish the other Mankiewicz, Herman, would have worked with Orson Welles and John Houseman again after Citizen Kane.

Thanks again, SuziDoll, for giving me unexpected recognition. I knew, though, that I was eventually going to add my two cents worth.

(You guys know me. I’m sure that’s not ALL that I can say. Let me give it some thought.)

Wonderful post! Thanks for the compliment!

I thought that this process and comparison of the two versions really illuminated what was best about the studio system. I wish that there were more dvds that might allow for such a comparison, though the existence of edited portions of movies from earlier times makes this unlikely for most films. (Instead, we now get the dubious pleasure of a “director’s cut” of “Saw XXIII” or some such contemporary cinematic detritus).

Of course, if I were the editor/mogul in the late 1940s, I might have chosen to feature more of Alan Mowbray as that pickled ham without peer, Granville Thorndyke! ;-)

Thanks for writing in detail on such an interesting topic.

None of this is meant to detract from the qualities of the film, except to note that for some of us the suspension of disbelief may be hard to come by.

There are problems with studio people who have no vision or cinematic vocabulary. I was in a meeting once with a young executive from a studio we all know. It was a meeting in which the discussion was about Alice in Wonderland. Someone mentioned going back to the original book by Louis Carroll. And this executive who might have been all of twenty five, said and I quote, “Wait… ALice in Wonderland was a book?”

So I respect so much the directors who not only have a film vision, but are able to work with the studios to make a movie that comes close to that. I hope that there are more people in the studios now who believe in the auteur theory.
I love also when you are talking about Zanuck changing the name to Cory Sue because it sounded more western…. not more authentic…. Oh my g-d Suzidoll. this blog offers so many ideas to think about. Way to go. Again.