Cinema: One-Man Studio

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With the box office sagging and television on the rise, Zanuck finds "less time for practical jokes these days." What movies need more than anything else, he believes, is "subject matter that can appeal to the intellectual and yet not alienate the masses." He adds: "People will accept enlightenment if it is skillfully served to them. They will not go to the theater for enlightenment alone." Confident of the future, he will spend $5,000,000 in the next few years to add five new sound stages to the 20th Century-Fox lot.

A Few Lousy Bucks. Insured by 20th Century-Fox for $900,000 (all it could get), Zanuck last year signed Hollywood's longest-term contract. It calls for him to work ten more years at his old salary of $260,000 a year, with an option to go on for another ten as an adviser at an annual $150,000. As the largest individual stockholder, he has 100,000 shares in the company, plus 30,000 in trust for his children (total current value: $2,616,250). Last year his income from salary and dividends, before taxes, came to $465,000. After taxes, it did not meet his expenses.

"I have gone into the red every year since the war," he says. "I manage only by going a few thousand dollars into my savings each year. I won't change my way of living to save a few lousy bucks. I have a philosophy about it: the only thing you get out of life is living. I'm not working as hard as I do to turn around and deprive myself."

But for zealous Moviemaker Zanuck, the best part of living is his work: "It's silly to say money hasn't meant anything —but it has never been the primary consideration. Actually, nothing has ever given me the genuine satisfaction of taking pictures, seeing them through and then getting wonderful reviews. I love what I'm doing."

* This week 20th Century-Fox is shooting pictures in England and the Philippines, planning others in Germany, Mexico, Israel, Newfoundland, Australia, Sweden and Argentina.

* Another nominal boss: 20th Century-Fox President Spyros Skouras.

* Whose current Wabash Avenue, Zanuck hopes, will recover some of the $3,000,000 lost by a box-office slump in her last two films.

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