LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Otto Preminger: Suddenly Zanuck
built 634 days ago
In April 1935, as Preminger was rehearsing a boulevard farce, The King with an Umbrella, he received a summons from American film producer Joseph Schenck, to a five o'clock meeting at the Imperial Hotel. In 1924 Schenck had become the president of United Artists, and in 1934 had founded a new company called Twentieth Century. Two years later (only several months before his meeting with Preminger), Schenck had taken over William Fox's ailing studio and with a partner, Darryl F. Zanuck, had set-up a new entity, Twentieth Century-Fox. At the new studio, Zanuck handled all film production while Schneck managed the finances. The duo, now in competition with already well-established studios such as Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, were on the lookout for new talent. Within a half-hour Preminger accepted an invitation to come to work in Twentieth in Los Angeles.
Source:
Relations between Zanuck and Preminger remained cool until 1944, when Preminger persuaded the studio head to let him produce and direct the suspense story Laura. Starring Clifton Webb, Dana Andrews, and Gene Tierney, Laura was a critical and commercial success. Many considered it Preminger's finest film. Halliwell's Film Guide calls Laura "a quiet, streamlined little murder mystery that brought a new adult approach to the genre and heralded the mature film noir of the later forties." Preminger received an Academy Award nomination for Laura.
Source:
The end of a Preminger shot often has a hallucinatory, fantastic power, as if the scene, suddenly vacated by the narrative, were exposed to the threat - constantly present in Preminger - of the insignificant (cf. the smashed clock at the end of Laura and the camera peering down at a garbage can at the end of Anatomy of a Murder). At the end of the dance-hall sequence in Carmen Jones (1954), after Carmen (Dorothy Dandridge) and Joe (Harry Belafonte) have gone offscreen, the camera stays on the front of the house, through the curtained windows of which we see people dancing inside. Or, at the end of the party scene in Advise and Consent, Van Ackerman (George Grizzard) approaches the camera and beckons to his offscreen driver as the shot dissolves. The entire final section of Angel Face is a terrifying descent into nothingness. The threat of such a collapse haunts Bonjour Tristesse, with its repeated dissolves between color past and black-and-white present.
Source:
In the noir story mold of Laura, Preminger's next picture Fallen Angel was exactly what Preminger had been anticipating. In Fallen Angel, a con man and a womanizer ends up by chance in a small California town, where he romances a sultry waitress and a well-to-do spinster. When the waitress is found killed, the drifter, played by Dana Andrews, becomes the prime suspect. Zanuck gave Preminger the task of convincing Alice Faye, the studio's top musical star of the late 1930's and early 1940's, to play the role of the spinster. Zanuck hoped Faye's appearance would boost the film's box-office appeal and introduce Faye back into the public eye. Linda Darnell was given the role of the doomed waitress.
Source:
Preminger revived his own fortunes by returning to the stage, where he directed some Broadway hits -- notably Clare Booth's comedy "Margin for Error," in which he himself played a nasty Nazi. The play was a success, but he was a smash. Suddenly Zanuck wanted him back -- as an actor only. Preminger held out, saying he'd repeat his role only if he could direct the 1943 film version. Sweetening the deal, he offered to do the latter job for free, and on spec -- if after a few days his work proved unsatisfactory, he'd step down. But the results were immediately encouraging, getting him back into Zanuck's good graces.
Source:
Preminger was Jewish, and in 1935, he thought it wise to leave Austria to escape the Nazi threat and take up an invitation to direct Broadway plays in the United States. In New York, he directed Libel, a minor success and the next year went to Hollywood to make the films Under Your Spell and Danger, Love at Work for Daryl F. Zanuck's 20th-Century Fox.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Suddenly Zanuck