David left Bantam to work for
Columbia Pictures and
Warner Brothers. While at Warner David acquired
Helen Gurley Brown's book
Sex and the Single Girl for the studio. When one studio executive told him the book had no plot, David replied "I told you that a hundred thousand dollars ago"; the studio had purchased a title, not a plot.
20th Century Fox He became a producer at
20th Century Fox with the 1964 World War II prisoner of war adventure ''
Von Ryan's Express filmed on location in Italy with Frank Sinatra and a strong cast. He then produced three spy-fi films, Our Man Flint (1965), Fantastic Voyage (1966), and In Like Flint'' (1967). All four films were big commercial successes. The plot of
In Like Flint concerns three minutes missing from the life of the President of the United States. Ironically, when Fox edited out three minutes of
In Like Flint to add more depth to the film, David left the studio. Years later David was enraged by seeing ten to fifteen minutes cut from an
Our Man Flint television broadcast that "was not so much re-edited as
lobotomized into senselessness". He wrote to California Senator
George Murphy to say that since a publisher is required to inform readers if they are buying and reading an
abridged works so should television stations inform their viewers they are watching abridged films.
Later Films David produced
Skullduggery (1970) originally for
ABC Pictures, but after a disagreement the film and David went to
Universal Pictures. Though he announced a busy production schedule of five films, none were made. Still interested in science fiction, David recalled the book ''
Logan's Run and produced the film in 1976. Logan's Run'' won a Special Achievement
Academy Award for visual effects, which was presented by actor
Roy Scheider to
L.B. Abbott,
Glen Robinson, and
Matthew Yuricich at the 49th Annual
Academy Awards show on March 28, 1977, at the
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. During his acceptance speech, Abbott said, "I want to very sincerely thank the Board of Directors of the Academy. The producer, Mr. Saul David, and that great host of wonderful helpers made this accolade possible for me." MGM hired David to produce a television version of the film in 1977 but then fired him and "hired an inept team of producers who knew nothing whatever about science fiction," said William F. Nolan. David died of
congestive heart failure in
Culver City, California. == Filmography ==