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SCHAFFNER , director of
Planet of the Apes
    IRENE SHARAFF , costume designer of
Hello, Dolly
    RICHARD SHEPHERD , an agent for Creative Management Associates
    SPYROS SKOURAS , chairman of the board, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
    MILT SMITH , a Studio press agent
    HARRY SOKOLOV , executive assistant to Richard Zanuck
    SONNY , as in “Sonny & Cher”
    BARBRA STREISAND , a film star
    JACQUELINE SUSANN , an authoress
    NATALIE TRUNDY , friend to Arthur Jacobs
    DAVID WEISBART , producer of
Valley of the Dolls
    ELMO WILLIAMS , producer of
Tora, Tora, Tora
    ROBERT WISE , director of
Star!
    EVARTS ZIEGLER , partner in the Ziegler-Ross Agency
    FRED ZINNEMANN , a film director

“
As a story it was reasonable enough to pass, and I sometimes believed what I said and tried to take the cure in the very real sun of Desert D’Or with its cactus, its mountain, and the bright green foliage of its love and its money
.”
    Norman Mailer,
The Deer Park

1
“And now he’s working for me,”
Darryl Zanuck said
    Shortly after two o’clock on the afternoon of May 16, 1967, Darryl F. Zanuck stepped out of an elevator on the eighteenth floor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. He was wearing sunglasses and smoking a large black cigar and in the lapel buttonhole of his well-tailored blue blazer was the rosette of the
Legion d’Honneur
. In his wake, stopping when he stopped, walking when he walked, trailed a convoy of equally well-tailored men in the employ of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, over whose annual stockholders’ meeting Zanuck was scheduled to preside that afternoon in the Waldorf’s Starlight Roof. Leading the convoy, but a half step behind his father, the dauphin tothe king, was Zanuck’s only son, Richard Darryl Zanuck, a member of the board of directors of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and the Studio’s Los Angeles-based executive vice president in charge of world-wide production.
    As Darryl Zanuck entered the meeting room, a number of stockholders rose and began to applaud. The elder Zanuck paid no attention, and he seated the young woman with him, a slender French girl in a green silk Pucci dress, in a chair at the rear of the room. Then he headed for the dais, shaking hands with board members and embracing old friends as he went. Over the dais hung the green, gold and black flag of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Already in his place at the end of the front table on the dais was Fox’s chairman of the board, Spyros P. Skouras. During the years when Darryl Zanuck held the same post his son holds now, Skouras had chaired these annual meetings, but on this afternoon, he sat impassively, looking like an aging white-maned lion, his hands folded in front of him.
    Darryl Zanuck took his place at the lectern, his son in a chair immediately to his right. The cigar was still implanted in Darryl Zanuck’s mouth. “Well, here we go again,” he said to Richard Zanuck. The microphone picked up his nasal Nebraska twang and there was a titter from the audience. Darryl Zanuck glared impatiently and then called the meeting to order, placing the agenda in front of him. Suddenly he stopped and took off his sunglasses.
    “Are these the right goddamn glasses?” he said. “For Christ’s sake, no.”
    He replaced the sunglasses with reading glasses and began to introduce the members of the board and Studio executives sitting on the double-tiered dais. When he came to his son, he stopped, fumbling for effect: “On my right, I can’t remember his name, heh, heh, now I’ve got it, Richard Zanuck.”
    There was an appreciative laugh from the audience. Darryl Zanuck continued the introductions. “At the end of the table, a man—I worked for him once, I overthrew him once, I took the company away from him once, and now he’s working for me, but I still have the greatest affection for him, Mr. Spyros Skouras.”
    Spyros Skouras did not move a muscle.
    Each stockholder attending the meeting