Fred Zinnemann

Biography in: "John Wakeman, editor." "World Film Directors, Volume One," 1890- 1945, pp 1238-1247, New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

According to Zinneman he was inspired to be a director by four films: Greed (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925), The Big Parade (1925) and The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).

After abandoning his law studies at the University of Vienna, he was trained to be a cinematographer at the École Technique de Photographie in Paris (1927).

His main influence as a director was famed documentarian Robert J. Flaherty who made a huge impression on the young Zinnemann when he acted as assistant director to Flaherty on an early 1930s project that was ultimately abandoned.

Zinneman was promoted from directing shorts at MGM to features when his boss Jack Chertok graduated into a producer for the studio. Their first film was Kid Glove Killer (1942).

His first big-budget film was The Seventh Cross (1944), starring Spencer Tracy. The two men admired each other, but did not get on very well. A dozen or so years later, Zinnemann was set to direct Tracy in The Old Man and the Sea (1958), but they disagreed bitterly over Zinnemann's plan to make as much of the film as possible at sea and in a real fishing-boat. Zinnemann began filming second-unit footage of the ocean and fish with cameraman Floyd Crosby, but then left the project, and John Sturges replaced him as director. Some of his footage was in the final film, however.

Among the projects that Zinneman was attached to but didn't do were The Clock (1945), _Hawaii_, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Old Man and the Sea (1958), and Custer of the West (1967). He also worked on "Abelard and Heloise" and "Man's Fate," neither of each was made.

Directed 18 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Hume Cronyn, Montgomery Clift, Gary Cooper, Julie Harris, Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Anthony Franciosa, Audrey Hepburn, Glynis Johns, Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw, Wendy Hiller, Jason Robards, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda and Maximilian Schell. Cooper, Redgrave, Robards, Sinatra, Reed and Scofield won Oscars for their performances in one of Zinneman's movies. Additionally, Ivan Jandl received a Juvenile Awards for is performance in Zinneman's The Search (1948).

The Member of the Wedding (1952) is the director's personal favorite of his films. His favorite individual scene is Sir Thomas More's goodbye to his wife and daughter in A Man for All Seasons (1966).

He directed two Best Picture Academy Award winners: From Here to Eternity (1953) and A Man for All Seasons (1966), and four other Best Picture nominees: High Noon (1952), The Nun's Story (1959), The Sundowners (1960) and Julia (1977).

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961

In 1963, it was announced that he would make a large-scale film for Twentieth Century Fox entitled, "The Day Custer Fell," about the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The film, scripted by Wendell Mayes, was to be made in Todd-AO on a budget of 18 million dollars, a huge sum then. Fox recently had enormous problems with Cleopatra (1963) and was reluctant to spend so much money quite so soon after that film, and Zinnemann also worried them by saying that he had planned not to use any big stars - although Fox had suggested an all-star cast along the lines of its recent hit, The Longest Day (1962). When Zinnemann's current movie, Behold a Pale Horse (1964) proved to be a critical and financial flop, the Custer project was quietly postponed, and Zinnemann instead made A Man for All Seasons (1966). This proved to be a huge success and an Oscar-winner, so the Custer movie plan was briefly revived in 1967; but it was still thought to be too expensive, and Fox executives were opposed to Zinnemann's desire to hire Japanese star Toshirô Mifune for the role of Sitting Bull. The announcement that a cheap version of the story was being made in Spain (Custer of the West (1967), starring Robert Shaw) led to the cancellation of the film.

Zinneman's greatest disappointment as a director was the cancellation of "Man's Fate," adapted from the Andre Malraux novel, about a week before cameras were set to roll. All the sets were built, $4 million had been already spent, and the cast (Peter Finch, Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, David Niven) had rehearsed a week to ten days in costume. James Aubrey had just taken over MGM in November 1969 when he pulled the plug. It was the studio's third corporate change in as many months. Zinneman bitterly remarked that it was "a shattering experience that took 4 1/2 years out of my life." The director had invested three years in preparation and over a year involved with the acrimonious lawsuit that followed.

Is portrayed by Bruce Gray in Sinatra (1992) and by Walker Edmiston in Grace Kelly (1983)

Awarded first annual John Huston Award for Artists Rights. [1994]

Is portrayed by Peter James Haworth in Hollywoodland (2006).