Word: mankiewicz
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...demote D.Z. Darryl Zanuck is the president of 20th Century-Fox, not a producer. Your photograph [March i] shows him approving the shooting of the scenes that Producer Walter Wanger and Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz were restrained from doing properly by a former management and that are now being sponsored by the new president...
Married. Joseph Leo Mankiewicz, 53, pipe-chewing Hollywood director most recently involved with Cleopatra; and Rosemary Matthews, 33, a production assistant on the Cleo set; he for the third time; in Manhattan...
Said the wounded Mankiewicz: "I showed him the first half of the picture. 'Joe,' he said, 'it is beautifully written, beautifully acted, and beautifully directed.' Then he wrote to me to say 'Your services are terminated.' The actors are almost more upset than I am. They gave three goddam good performances and, badly cut, they'll be ruined. In my film, the background remains background, but Mr. Zanuck is already yelling about bigger battles. That's the kind of background he likes...
With that, Zanuck launched his counterattack. "Remember," he proclaimed, "I'm a practical picturemaker, not a fool. I have done my duty to my corporation and-yes-to myself." Mankiewicz, he said, was fired because he demanded full control over Cleopatra, a right Zanuck feels must be reserved for himself. Worse, Mankiewicz wasted vast amounts of money-$7,500,000 by Zanuck's reckoning: Richard Burton worked only one of the first 17 weeks he spent in Rome; Roddy McDowall was called to the set only once in four months; sets were built at hurry-up costs, then...
...released in mid-May. "I can't afford the luxury of more talk," Zanuck says. "Interest on the $35 million the picture has consumed amounts to $7,000 a day. Completing work on it will cost a couple million more." Then, assuring all who would listen that Mankiewicz is still welcome "for debates and conversations about what I do to the film," Zanuck retreated to the consolations of feeling misunderstood. "An executive cannot expect love," he said. "Never...