The seven deadly sins of Hollywood (1957)

THE LAST TYCOONS The question-and-answer interview continued. Nothing disturbed his equanimity. He seemed an unlikely man to be in charge of MGM productions: cultured, well read, almost scholarly, eminently reasonable in the face of criticism. After I left I talked to a producer who had worked for both Schary and Zanuck. I asked him how he felt about the two men. He said, "On the surface, Schary is the more civilized — the scholarly film tycoon. But he is not a strong man, like Zanuck. When there is trouble he develops a backache. He cannot stand trouble. He is nervous of taking risks. Yes, he has read a lot of books, he has read Proust and Dostoievsky, and Zanuck has only read synopses. But Zanuck at his peak was a fire-eater. Schary? He's an Alka-Seltzer eater." This point of view could, of course, have been prejudiced : but there seemed to me to be at the least a germ of truth in it. The significant fact is that both Zanuck and Schary are no longer in command at their respective studios. In their different ways both men are individualists and possess striking personal qualities. But the place Hollywood has become today no longer requires such men. They were the last tycoons, the last of the men who impressed their own (sometimes idiosyncratic) personalities upon the making of films. The new bosses of Hollywood are the efficiencyexperts, the accountants and the super-administrators. 191