Joseph L. Mankiewicz - Biography

Joseph Leo Mankiewicz (11 February 1909 – 5 February 1993) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve (1950), which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J. Mankiewicz who also won an Oscar for co-writing Citizen Kane (1941).

Early life

Joseph Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to Franz Mankiewicz (died 1941) and Johanna Blumenau, Jewish immigrants from Germany. He had a sister, Erna Mankiewicz (1901–1979), and a brother, Herman J. Mankiewicz, who became a screenwriter.

At age four, Mankiewicz moved with his family to New York City where he graduated in 1924 from Stuyvesant High School. In 1928, he obtained a bachelor's degree from Columbia University. For a time he worked in Berlin, Germany, as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune newspaper before entering the motion picture business.

Hollywood career

Comfortable in a variety of genres and able to elicit career performances from actors and actresses alike, Joseph L. Mankiewicz combined ironic, sophisticated scripts with a precise, sometimes stylised mise en scène. Mankiewicz worked for seventeen years as a screenwriter for Paramount and as a producer for MGM before getting a chance to direct at Twentieth Century-Fox. Over six years he made 11 films for Fox, reaching a peak in 1950 and 1951 when he won consecutive Academy Awards for Screenplay and Direction for both A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve.

During his long career in Hollywood, Mankiewicz wrote forty-eight screenplays, including All About Eve, for which he won an Academy Award. He also produced more than twenty films including The Philadelphia Story which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1941. However, he is best known for the films he directed, twice winning the Academy Award for Best Director. In 1944, he produced The Keys of the Kingdom, which starred Gregory Peck, and featured Mankiewicz's then-wife, Rose Stradner, in a supporting role as a nun.

In 1951, Mankiewicz left Fox and moved to New York, intending to write for the Broadway stage. Although this dream never materialised, he continued to make films (both for his own production company Figaro and as a director-for-hire) that explored his favourite themes — the clash of aristocrat with commoner, life as performance and the clash between people's urge to control their fate and the contingencies of real life.

In 1953, he directed Julius Caesar for MGM, an adaptation of Shakespeare's play. It received widely favorable reviews, and David Shipman, author of the book The Great Movie Stars: The Hollywood Years, called it "perhaps the finest Shakespeare film ever made". The film serves as the only record of Marlon Brando in a Shakespearean role; he played Mark Antony, and received an Oscar nomination for his performance.

In 1958, Mankiewicz directed The Quiet American, an adaptation of Graham Greene's 1955 novel about the seed of American military involvement in what would become the Vietnam War. Mankiewicz, under career pressure from the climate of anti-Communism and the Hollywood blacklist, distorted the message of Greene's book, changing major parts of the story to appeal to a nationalistic audience. A cautionary tale about America's blind support for "anti-Communists" was turned into, according to Greene, a "propaganda film for America".

Cleopatra consumed three years of Mankiewicz's life and ended up both derailing his career and causing severe financial losses for the studio, Twentieth Century-Fox. Mankiewicz made more films, however, garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Direction in 1972 for Sleuth, his final directing effort, starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. In 1983, he was a member of the jury at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival.

He was the younger brother of Herman J. Mankiewicz. His sons are Eric Reynal (from his first marriage), the late writer/director Tom Mankiewicz and producer Christopher Mankiewicz. He also has a daughter, Alex Mankiewicz. His great-nephew is radio & television personality Ben Mankiewicz, currently on TCM.

Mankiewicz, who died in 1993, six days before his 84th birthday, was interred in Saint Matthew's Episcopal Churchyard cemetery, Bedford, New York.

Filmography

Director

Writer

• Fast Company (1929) co-writer
• Slightly Scarlet (1930) co-writer
• Paramount on Parade (1930)
• The Social Lion (1931) Adaptation
• Only Saps Work (1931) co-writer
• The Gang Buster (1931)
• Finn & Hattie (1931)
• June Moon (1931) co-writer
• Skippy (1931) co-writer
• Newly Rich (1931) co-writer
• Sooky (1931) co-writer
• This Reckless Age (1932) co-writer
• Sky Bride (1932) co-writer
• Million Dollar Legs (1932) Story
• If I Had A Million (1932) (segments "China Shop", "Three Marines", "Violet") Uncredited
• Diplomaniacs (1933) co-writer
• Emergency Call (1933) co-writer
• Too Much Harmony (1933) Story
• Alice In Wonderland (1933) co-writer
• Manhattan Melodrama (1934) co-writer
• Our Daily Bread (1934) Dialogue
• Forsaking All Others (1934)
• I Live My Life (1935)
• The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) co-writer
• Dragonwyck (1946)
• Somewhere in the Night (1946) co-writer
• A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
• House of Strangers (1949) Uncredited
• No Way Out (1950) co-writer
• All About Eve (1950)
• People Will Talk (1951)
• Julius Caesar (1953) Uncredited
• The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
• Guys and Dolls (1955)
• The Quiet American (1958)
• Cleopatra (1963) co-writer
• The Honey Pot (1967)

Awards

Directed Academy Award Performances

Further reading

• Cheryl Bray Lower: Joseph L. Mankiewicz: Critical Essays and Guide to Resources. Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Co., 2001. ISBN 0-78640-987-8
• Bernard F. Dick: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1983. ISBN 0-80579-291-0
• Oderman, Stuart, Talking to the Piano Player 2. BearManor Media, 2009. ISBN #1-59393-320-7.

External links

• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database