Richard Zanuck passed away on July 13, 2012.
Read all about the man who made great movies as Driving Miss Daisy and Jaws from Wikipedia.
Richard Darryl Zanuck (December 13, 1934 – July 13, 2012) was an American film producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1989 for Driving Miss Daisy.
Zanuck was born in Los Angeles, California, to actress Virginia Fox and Darryl F. Zanuck, then head of 20th Century Fox.
While studying at Stanford University, he began his career in the film industry working for Fox.
In 1959, Zanuck had his first shot at producing with Compulsion.
In the 1960s Zanuck became president of 20th Century Fox.
One year of his tenure, 1967, is chronicled in the John Gregory Dunne book The Studio.
After disastrous failures like 1967's Doctor Dolittle, he was fired by his father and joined Warner Brothers as executive vice president.
One year later he formed The Zanuck/Brown Company.
In 1968 he married model and actress Linda Harrison. They divorced in 1978.
Zanuck and Brown produced Steven Spielberg's early films The Sugarland Express (1974) and Jaws (1975).
They subsequently produced box office hits as Cocoon (1985) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989) before dissolving their partnership in 1988.
They were jointly awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award by the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences in 1990.
Zanuck worked with Tim Burton six times, producing Planet Of The Apes (2001), Big Fish (2003), Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (2007), Alice In Wonderland (2010) and Dark Shadows (2012).
