Beginning with The Jazz Singer (1927) and 42nd Street (1933),
legendary Hollywood film producer Darryl F. Zanuck (1902-1979)
revolutionized the movie musical, cementing its place in American
popular culture. Zanuck, who got his start writing stories and scripts
in the silent film era, worked his way to becoming a top production
executive at Warner Bros. in the later 1920s and early 1930s. Leaving
that studio in 1933, he and industry executive Joseph Schenck formed
Twentieth Century Pictures, an independent Hollywood motion picture
production company. In 1935, Zanuck merged his Twentieth Century
Pictures with the ailing Fox Film Corporation, resulting in the combined
Twentieth Century-Fox, which instantly became a new major Hollywood film
entity.
The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred
Blondes is the first book devoted to the musicals that Zanuck produced
at these three studios. The volume spotlights how he placed his personal
imprint on the genre and how--especially at Twentieth Century-Fox--he
nurtured and showcased several blonde female stars who headlined the
studio's musicals--including Shirley Temple, Alice Faye, Betty Grable,
Vivian Blaine, June Haver, Marilyn Monroe, and Sheree North. Building
upon Bernard F. Dick's previous work in That Was Entertainment: The
Golden Age of the MGM Musical, this volume illustrates the richness of
the American movie musical, tracing how these song-and-dance films fit
within the career of Darryl F. Zanuck and within the timeline of
Hollywood history.
