Biography

He directed the film debuts of Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and Meryl Streep.

He is widely credited with an incident known as "You First." The story goes that when Oscar winner Zinnemann sat down for a meeting with a clueless young executive, he was asked to list what he had done in his career. Zinnemann reportedly countered the executive by answering, "Sure. You first." Of this, Zinnemann said: "I've been trying to disown that story for years. It seems to me Billy Wilder told it to me about himself".

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).

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).

Zinneman's greatest disappointment as a director was the cancellation of "Man's Fate," adapted from the André 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.

I'm not in pictures to promote my private personality. I'm in it for the joy of it.

[on directing Ethel Waters in The Member of the Wedding (1952)] Every time I'd try to help her, she'd roll her eyes to the heavens and say, "God is my director!" How can you argue with that?

I will always think of myself as a Hollywood director, not only because I grew up in the American film industry, but also because I believe in making films that will please a mass audience, and not just in making films that express my own personality or ideas. I have always tried to offer an audience something positive in a film and to entertain them as well.

The three most important things about a film are the script, the script, the script.

I was born and raised in Austria. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a musician, but fortunately I discovered in time that I had no musical talent. Then I tried law, and I am not sorry I did because it taught me a method of thinking. Also, since in Austria in those days canon law was required for law students, I later found that very helpful in making films like The Nun's Story (1959) and A Man for All Seasons (1966).