During the 1960s the one element that hastened the inevitable change of American cinema during television's rising, was the death or retirement of so-many key-figures of the golden years of the American film industry. Two of the Marx Brothers, Chico and Harpo, died, as did Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Judy Holliday, Charles Laughton, Judy Garland and Buster Keaton. Producers or directors Michael Curtiz, David O Selznick, Robert Rossen, Jerry Wald, Josef von Sternberg and Leo McCarey each died within a few years of one another. Louis B. Mayer passed away in 1957. Warner made only a few productions after buying the stage success My Fair Lady for screen adaptation.
However, Daryl F. Zanuck achieved an important success as an independent producer with 1962's The Longest Day and subsequently took over the helm at 20th Century Fox again, along with his son Richard until increasing losses at the end of the decade forced Richard's resignation in 1970 and Zanuck's own in the following year.
Sam Goldwyn no longer made films and MGM under the guidance of Kirk Kerkorian appeared markedly less successful in the late Sixties, Universal headed for television and the tourist industry, Paramount was cheaply bought by the conglomerate Gulf + Western in 1966; Warner Brothers was absorbed into the Kinney group. United Artists, which started life as an attempt by four independent directors (Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin,Douglas Fairbanks Sr and D.W. Griffith) to unshackle themselves from the studio confines, paradoxically found new salvation under the corporate umbrella of Transamerica Corporation. The jailers had relieved their inmates of control of the asylum.