Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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Joseph Leo Mankiewicz (February 11, 1909 – February 5, 1993) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer.

Mankiewicz had a long career in film and gained the Academy Award for both Best Director and Screenplay for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950). Mankiewicz, who was comfortable in a variety of genres and able to elicit career appearances from actors and actresses alike, teamed ironic, sophisticated scripts with a crisp, stylized mise en scène.

Mankiewicz spent seventeen years as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures and as a producer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before being offered the opportunity to direct at Twentieth Century-Fox.

He made 11 films for Fox, winning consecutive Academy Awards for Screenplay and Direction for both A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve, which were nominated for 14 Academy Awards and winning six. Mankiewicz wrote forty-eight screenplays during his long career in Hollywood.

More than twenty films have been released, including The Philadelphia Story, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1941.

However, he is best known for his films he produced, twice winning the Academy Award for Best Director twice.

Early life

Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Franz Mankiewicz (died 1941), and Johanna Blumenau, Jewish emigrants from Germany and Courland. Erna Mankiewicz Stenbuck (1901-1979) was his older brother, Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897–1953), who accompanied him to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. Citzen Kane (1941), a herman who received an Academy Award for co-writing Citizen Kane (1941).

Mankiewicz and his family immigrated to New York City in 1924, graduating in 1924 from Stuyvesant High School. He followed his brother to Columbia University, where he majored in English and wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator, and after graduating in 1928, he moved to Berlin, where he worked at various occupations, including translating German to English for UFA.

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Hollywood career

Mankiewicz was hired as a writer at Through his brother Herman, he obtained a job at Paraguaya. Herman was one of the writers on The Dummy (1929), on which Mankiewicz wrote titles. He appeared on Close Harmony (1929), The Man I Love (1929), The River of Mirrow (1929), The Mississippin (1929), and The River of Fire (1929) with Gary Cooper (1929).

Mankiewicz first appeared on screenplays for films including Fast Company (1929) starring Jack Oakie and Slightly Scarlet (1930) with Richard Arlen and Paramount on Parade (1930). Mankiewicz wrote The Social Lion (1930) with Oakie, Only Saps Work (1930).

He also wrote scripts for Skippy (1931) with Jackie Cooper, Dude Ranch (1931), and Sooky (1931), a sequel to Skippy. This Reckless Age (1932) (uncredited), Sky Bride (1932) with Arlen and Oakie, Million Dollar Legs (1932) with Oakie and W.C. Fields (1932) (uncredited), If I Had a Million (1932) was followed by This Reckless Age (1932) (uncredited). He was borrowed by RKO for Diplomaniacs (1933) and Emergency Call (1933). With Oakie and Bing Crosby (1933), he returned to Paramount for Too Much Harmony (1933) (uncredited), and Wonderland's all-star Alice (1933).

Mankiewicz has been working with MGM for a long time. He wrote the Manhattan Melodrama (1934), which was a huge success. In 1934, he worked for King Vidor on Our Daily Bread. Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and Robert Montgomery, as well as After Office Hours (1935) with Jean Harlow and William Powell, 1936 (1935), and I Live My Life (1935) with Crawford, 1936).

Mankiewicz was promoted to producer with Three Godfathers (1936). He will be uncredited on the script for the majority of his films as a producer. Fury (1936), Fritz Lang's first American film directed by Mankiewicz, had a commercial and critical success. Mankiewicz produced a series of films starring Crawford: The Gorgeous Hussy (1936), Love on the Run (1936), The Bride Wore Red (1937), and Mannequin (1937).

William Powell and Myrna Loy's Double Wedding (1937) with Margaret Sullavan and Robert Taylor; Three Comrades (1938), with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart; and The Shining Hour (1938) with Sullavan and Crawford, directed by Borzage. He wrote on The Great Waltz (1938) and The Pirate (1948), which became The Pirate (1948).

He made A Christmas Carol (1938) with Mickey Rooney (1939); The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939) with Mickey Rooney; and Strange Cargo (1940) with Gable and Crawford, directed by Borzage. Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart were among his big hits with The Philadelphia Story (1940), starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. It was followed by The Wild Man of Borneo (1941) and The Feminine Touch (1941), then Hepburn's (1942) was followed by her second big success with Woman of the Year (1942). Mankiewicz's last films at MGM were Cairo (1942) with Jeanette MacDonald and Reunion in France (1942) with Crawford and John Wayne.

Mankiewicz was given the opportunity to direct at 20th Century Fox. The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), which he co-authored with Nunnally Johnson and produced, was his first film for the studio. Rose Stradner co-starred in the film.

Mankiewicz made his directorial debut with Dragonwyck (1946), which also wrote; Gene Tierney and Vincent Price appeared. He adapted It with Somewhere in the Night (1946), a film noir co-wrote. He appeared on The Late George Apley (1947) with Ronald Colman, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1948) with Tierney and Rex Harrison (1948) with Harrison and Harrison, and The Escape (1948) with Harrison. All of the scripts were based on Philip Dunne's scripts.

Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives (1949), which he wrote and directed, received Academy Award nominations for both Mankiewicz and directed, as well as Sol Siegel's. He and Siegel collaborated on House of Strangers (1949), on which Mankiewicz did some uncredited writing. Mankewicz wrote and directed No Way Out (1950), which began Sidney Poitier's career; Darryl F. Zanuck was credited as producer. Zanuck also deserved the spotlight on Mankiewicz's next film, All About Eve (1950), which was quickly recognized as a masterpiece.

People Will Talk (1951), also produced by Zanuck, which starred Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain, was adapted and directed by Mankewicz. He did some uncredited work on the script for I'll Never Forget You (1952). 5 Fingers (1952), starring James Mason and Danielle Darrieux, was his last film under Fox contract.

Mankiewicz, a 1951-1996 graduate of Fox, migrated to New York in the hopes of writing for the Broadway stage. Although this aspiration never materialized, he continued to produce films (both for his own production company Figaro and as a director-for-hire) that explored his favorite subjects: the clash of aristocrat with commoner, life as life, and the struggle between people's desire to control their destiny and the contingencies of real life.

Julius Caesar was adapted and directed by him for MGM in 1953, an MGM version of Shakespeare's play written by John Houseman. It received largely positive feedback, and David Shipman of The Story of Cinema characterized it as a "film of quiet excellence," despite the fact that budget constraints hampered the execution of the battle sequences. Marlon Brando's only film of him in a Shakespearean role; he appeared in Mark Antony and received an Academy Award for his performance.

Mankiewicz founded Figaro, his own production company, in 1953. Mankiewicz wrote, produced, and directed The Barefoot Contessa (1954), the first work by the Barefoot Contessa (1954); it starred Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner. Sam Goldwyn was hired to write and direct the film version of the musical Guys and Dolls (1955). This was a massive success but not particularly well-regarded. Frank Sinatra and Jean Simmons appeared alongside Brando in a film.

Mankiewicz wrote and directed The Quiet American for Figaro in 1958, an extension of Graham Greene's 1955 book about American military involvement in the Vietnam War. Mankiewicz, influenced by the times of anti-Communism and Hollywood blacklist, changed Greene's book's message, thereby altering major portions of the plot. According to Greene, a "propaganda film for America" was turned into a cautionary tale about America's blind support for "anti-Communists." The film was both a critical and commercial disappointment.

I Want to Live is Figaro's most popular book of the year. (1958) However, Mankiewicz had little to do with it. From a script by Gore Vidal and a play by Tennessee Williams, he produced Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) for producer Sam Spiegel. Elizabeth Taylor, Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift appeared. It was a hit at the box office but got mixed feedback.

Elizabeth Taylor was cast in 1961, and Fox hired Mankiewicz to replace director Reuben Mamoulian. Mankiewicz accepted a lucrative deal, but he later regretted it. The film, which spanned two years of his life, ended up both derailing his career and adding to the studio's financial loss.

Carol for Another Christmas (1964) for television was produced and directed by Mankiewicz. He wrote and directed The Honey Pot (1967) for United Artists and Charles K. Feldman, as well as doing some uncredited work on King The Honey Pot (1970)... Montgomery to Memphis (1970). In 1972, Mankiewicz received an Oscar nomination for Best Direction in Sleuth, his last directing attempt starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, who also received Oscar nominations.

He was a member of the jury at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival in 1983.

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