exiting the office and slamming the door. Days later, the lock to Preminger's office was changed, and his name was removed from the door. Later, a representative of Zanuck offered Preminger a buyout deal which he rejected: Preminger wanted to be paid for the remaining eleven months of his two-year contract. He searched for work at other studios, but received no offers – only two years after his arrival in Hollywood, he was unemployed in the film industry. He returned to New York, and began to re-focus on the stage. Success came quickly on Broadway for Preminger, with long-running productions, including Outward Bound with Laurette Taylor and Vincent Price, My Dear Children with John and Elaine Barrymore and Margin for Error, in which Preminger played a shiny-domed villainous Nazi. Preminger was offered a teaching position at the Yale School of Drama and began commuting twice a week to Connecticut to lecture on directing and acting. 20th Century Fox purchased the screen rights of Margin for Error for approximately $25,000 in the spring of 1941, and William Goetz, who was running Fox in Zanuck's absence, was soon impressed with Preminger and offered him a new seven-year contract calling on his services as both a director and actor. Preminger took full measure of the temporary studio czar, and accepted. He completed production on schedule, although with a slightly increased budget, by November 1942. Critics were dismissive upon the film's release the following February, noting the bad timing of the release, coinciding with the war. Before his next assignment with Fox, Preminger was asked by movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn to appear as a Nazi once more, this time in a Bob Hope comedy, They Got Me Covered. Preminger hoped to find possible properties he could develop before Zanuck's return, one of which was Vera Caspary's suspense novel Laura. Before production would begin on Laura, Preminger was given the green light to produce and direct Army Wives, another B-picture morale booster for a country at war. Its focus was on showing the sacrifices made by women as they send their husbands off to the front. Laura Zanuck returned from the armed services with his grudge against Preminger intact. Preminger was not granted permission to direct Laura, only to serve as producer. Rouben Mamoulian was selected to direct. Mamoulian began ignoring Preminger and started to rewrite the script. Although Preminger had no complaints about the