If you look at the producers’ credits on films or television shows today, it seems they go on
Forever. There’s Executive Producer, Associate Producer, Line Producer, Supervising
Producer and more.
"Just what does a producer do?" asked a young novice director at a recent
American Film Institute Seminar. Several answers were given but none seemed satisfactory.
Prior to the full flowering of the studio system, the director was king. In trying to keep production
costs in line, Louis B. Mayer appointed “supervisors” to keep an eye on production. They were to report
back to him if the director wasn’t keeping a tight schedule.
Pioneer director Maurice Tournier was directing “Mysterious Island” in 1924 at Metro when
he noticed a man standing around the set. Tournier went to Mayer and asked him what the man was
doing on the set. “He's your supervisor,” replied Mayer.
He Showed Studio — or Did He?
“There is no such thing!” retorted Turner, father of film director Jacque Turner who directed the classic film noir “Out of The Past.” Tournier walked off the set, off the lot and sailed back to Europe. He never directed another film in the United States. The name “supervisor” was changed to "producer" to mollify directors.
Irving Thalberg is thought of as the classic producer.
That's why they named a building after him. It was said he was that rare person who could keep the whole equation of a film’s ingredients in his head.
Louis B. Mayer, one of the most powerful moguls of his generation, was not a producer. He was,
in effect, the plant manager. Had he been handed the money, the space and the script, Mayer
wouldn’t have known where to begin. David O. Selznick discovered that it was next to impossible
to manage a facility, even a small boutique operation like his, and personally produce a film.
One of a Special Kind
There was only one mogul of that generation who managed to successfully run a studio and produce films. That was Darryl Zanuck. He headed production at 20th Century Fox from 1935 till 1956,
and again from 1962 until 1965.
Zanuck had been hired as a scriptwriter at Warners, penning “Rin Tin Tin” movies.
By 1927, he was an executive producer. He introduced the sound process with his precedent-setting production of “The Jazz Singer.” Sheridan Gibney, who adapted the book "I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang” for the screen, told me that Hal Wallis tried to change the ending.
In that famous dramatic climax, Paul Muni, the escaped convict, is hiding behind his wife’s apartment. His wife confronts him and offers her help. He advises her to forget him and never try to find him. “How do you live?” she asks. “I steal,” is Muni’s reply, and as she gasps, he steps back into the shadows and the
screen goes black. Wallis felt the ending was too stark. Zanuck stepped up and told Wallis that the ending was the whole point of the story, and it was kept as written.
A Classic-Crammed Resume
As head of production at Fox, he was the most involved in the creative and editorial process.
On the 1940 production of “The Grapes of Wrath,” Zanuck wrote and directed the final scene
where Jane Darwell and Russell Simpson, as Ma and Pa Joad, are driving down the highway after
their son (played by Henry Fonda) has gone.
Among the classic films produced under his tenure were “How Green Was My Valley,” “Twelve
O’Clock High,” “Gentleman's Agreement” and “All About Eve.”
Actor Henry Fonda was also totally absorbed in his career to the exclusion of four of his wives and
children. “I like to hide behind a mask,” recalled a painfully shy Fonda. “I get to be all those other
fellas.” Those other fellas included what some consider the definitive Abe Lincoln, Wyatt Earp, Tom
Joad and “Mr. Roberts.”
Not a Chevrolet
In his excellent biography of John Ford, “Print The Legend,” which best describes what goes into being
an artist, Scott Eyman wrote:
"John Ford was a magnificent piece of work, but no simple hero. He was grander, tougher and sadder
than any hero can allow himself to be. He was clever and he was ruthless. It was not his nature to trust but to test. Ford had a great capacity for kindness and generosity, so long as he could firmly
maintain control and the beneficiary displayed sufficient gratitude. He had a devotion to his own
talent, which required that his wife and family tend to their place on the periphery. Beneath the
scary surface, he was a mushy sentimentalist, and beneath that was the hard, selfish core of the
true artist.
“He cared nothing for money, little for politics, cared a great deal for tradition and character. Lindsay
Anderson would eloquently call him ‘a poet of faith in an age of unbelief.’ “
