Saul Zaentz

Zaentz was born on February 28, 1921, in Passaic, New Jersey, the youngest of five. His parents were Polish Jewish immigrants.

As a child, Zaentz attended William B. Cruz Memorial school number 11 in Passaic. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Zaentz began realizing his passion for music by working for Jazz at the Philharmonic and record company head Norman Granz, a job that included managing concert tours for musicians such as Duke Ellington and Stan Getz. He studied at Rutgers after the war on the GI Bill.

Music career

Creedence Clearwater Revival

In 1955 he joined Fantasy Records, for many years the largest independent jazz record label in the world. In 1967 Zaentz and other partners purchased the label from founders Max and Soul Weiss. The partners signed roots-rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), fronted by former Fantasy warehouseman John Fogerty.

Fantasy Records owned the distribution and publishing rights to CCR's music, so to extricate himself from his original contract with Fantasy, Fogerty signed away even more than the original contract had stipulated. Additionally, bad investments by Zaentz and Fantasy, seemingly on the group's behalf, cost CCR millions of dollars, some of which the group recouped through legal proceedings.

Songs about the experience on Fogerty's 1985 album Centerfield – "Zanz Kant Danz" and "Mr. Greed" – were thinly veiled slams at Zaentz. Defamation of character lawsuits followed for the lyric, "Zanz can't dance but he'll steal your money". The defamation issue was settled with Warner Bros. and Fogerty changing the title and lyric to "Vanz Kant Danz". Fogerty countersued for reimbursement of attorneys' fees and in a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Fogerty v. Fantasy, 510 U.S. 517 (1994), he won.

Zaentz also unsuccessfully sued Fogerty for plagiarism, claiming that the melodic line in "The Old Man Down the Road" (on Centerfield) was a lift from the song "Run Through the Jungle" from CCR's 1970 album Cosmo's Factory; the song was written by Fogerty but Fantasy owned the copyright. Zaentz sought $140 million in damages but lost, in Fantasy, Inc. v. Fogerty, when a jury found Fogerty not liable.

Fogerty continued to maintain that the label misled him about investing and managing his earnings from royalties, resulting in devastating financial loss. Years later, after Zaentz sold his interest in Fantasy, Fogerty almost immediately re-signed with the label.

Zaentz was married twice, first to Celia Mingus, the ex-wife of Charles Mingus. His second wife was Lynda Redfield, widow of actor William Redfield. Both of Zaentz’s marriages ended in divorce.

The Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation launched in 1997. On May 17, 2016, the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) announced a $35.5 million gift from the foundation, calling it "the largest gift ever given to a university to focus on advancing early childhood education, and the largest gift in HGSE's history".

The Hobbit director controversy

Zaentz was peripherally involved in the controversy about who would make a live-action film version of The Hobbit, because of his ownership of the film rights to the novel.

Peter Jackson, who directed the successful The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, was the first person scheduled to direct The Hobbit. However, Jackson's production company Wingnut Films questioned New Line Cinema's accounting methods, bringing in an outside auditor as allowed by the contract, and eventually sued New Line. New Line executive Robert Shaye took great offense, declared that they would never work with Jackson again, and began looking for another director. Jackson said that he could not work on the film until the lawsuit was settled, and that he was apparently off the project indefinitely. MGM, which owned the distribution rights, was more hopeful that a deal could be worked out.

Shaye explained his company's position, saying that New Line's contract with Zaentz was going to expire soon, which forced them to find a new director. If the litigation were resolved by a court or by a settlement the original plan could proceed, but then New Line might need to reorganize to allow someone other than Shaye to deal with Jackson. The situation was made more complex by Zaentz's ongoing dispute with New Line over profits from the Lord of the Rings films. The dispute began shortly after the release of the films. In December 2007 Variety reported that Zaentz was also suing New Line, alleging that the studio has refused to make records available so that he can confirm his profit-participation statements are accurate.

In 2010, it became clear that Peter Jackson would direct The Hobbit films after all.