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Joseph Leo Mankiewicz (February 11, 1909 – February 5, 1993) was an American Academy Award-winning director, screenwriter, and producer.
[edit] Biography
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to Franz Mankiewicz and Johanna Blumenau, immigrants from Poland, Mankiewicz moved with his family to New York City where he graduated in 1924 from Stuyvesant High School.[1] 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 being lured into the motion picture business.
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 Directing. In 1944, he produced The Keys of the Kingdom, which starred his wife, Rose Stradner, and Gregory Peck.
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 national audience. A cautionary tale about America's blind support for "anti-Communists" was turned into, according to Greene, a "propaganda film for America."
He was the younger brother of Herman J. Mankiewicz. His sons are writer/director Tom Mankiewicz and producer Christopher Mankiewicz. He also has a daughter named Alexandra Mankiewicz. His great-nephew is radio & television personality Ben Mankiewicz, currently on TCM.
On his passing in 1993, Joseph Mankiewicz was interred in Saint Matthew's Episcopal Churchyard cemetery, Bedford, New York.
[edit] Director and Screenwriter
Comfortable in a variety of genres and able to elicit career performances from actors and actresses alike, Joseph L Mankiewicz combined brilliant scripts with a precise, even clinical, mise en scène to produce one of the most distinctive oeuvres in cinema history. Mankiewicz toiled as a screenwriter (Paramount) and as a producer (MGM) for 17 years before finally getting a chance to direct at Twentieth Century Fox. Over a period of six years he made 11 films for Fox, reaching a peak in 1949 and 1950 when he won consecutive Academy Awards for Screenplay and Direction for A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve. 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 - most especially - the propensity for life to louse up the scripts people write for themselves. And nothing loused up Mankiewicz's personal script more than Cleopatra. The movie consumed three years of his life and ended up both derailing his career and bankrupting a studio. Mankiewicz made more films, however, garnering an Oscar nomination for Best Direction in 1972 for Sleuth. Unfortunately, this was his final production.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Director
[edit] Screenplays
[edit] Further reading
- Jack Brodsky and Nathan Weiss: The Cleopatra Papers. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1963.
- Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Gary Carey: More About 'All About Eve. New York, Random House, 1972.
- Kenneth L. Geist: Pictures Will Talk: The Life and Films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz. New York, Scribners, 1978. ISBN 0-68415-500-1
- 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
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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