Biography for
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Height
5' 10"
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Mini biography
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on February 11, 1909, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz first worked for the movies as a translator of intertitles, employed by Paramount in Berlin, the UFA's American distributor at the time
(1928). He became a dialoguist, then a screenwriter on numerous Paramount productions in Hollywood, most of them Jack Oakie vehicles. Still in his twenties, he produced first-class MGM films, including Philadelphia
Story, The (1940). Having left the Metro after a dipute with its boss Louis B.Mayer over Judy Garland, he then worked for Darryl F.Zanuck at the Fox, producing Keys of the Kingdom, The (1944) when Ernst Lubitsch's
illness first brought him on the director's chair for Dragonwyck (1946). From that day on, Mankiewicz directed 20 films in a 26 year period, succesfully attempted every kind of movie, from Shakespeare adaptation to
western, from urban sociological drama to musical, from epic film with thousands of extras to two character picture. Letter to Three Wives, A (1949) and All About Eve (1950) brought him a wide recognition along with for
each two academy awards as a writer and a director, seven years after his elder brother Herman won for Citizen Kane (1941). More intimate films like Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The (1947), Barefoot Contessa, The (1954) , his
only original screenplay, and Honey Pot, The (1967) are major artistic achievements as well, showing Mankiewicz as a witty dialoguist, a master in the use of flash-back and a talented actors' director (he favoured
English ones and had in Rex Harrison a kind of alter-ego on the screen).
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Spouse
Elizabeth Young (I) (? - ?)
Rose Stradner (? - 27 September 1958) (her death)
'Rosemary Matthews' (1962 - ?)
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Trivia
Father of producer Christopher Mankiewicz
Brother of writer Herman J. Mankiewicz
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Personal quotes
"I
think it can be said fairly that I've been in on the beginning, rise, peak, collapse, and end of the talking picture."
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Writer,
producer, director. (b. Feb. 11, 1909, WilkesBarre, Pa.; d. Feb. 5, 1993.) One of America's wittiest and most urbane filmmakers, Mankiewicz managed to please both critics and audiences with a wide variety of films,
marked by an extraordinary degree of intelligence and sophistication. After working in Berlin, first as a reporter and then as a titles translator of German silent films intended for American distribution, he followed
his older brother Herman to Hollywood in the late 1920s. He wrote (or cowrote) many top films, ranging from wacky comedies such as Million Dollar Legs (1932) and Diplomaniacs (1933) to tear-jerking melodramas such as
Skippy (1931), and from the big-budget gloss of Manhattan Melodrama to the gritty realism of Our Daily Bread (both 1934). In 1936, he began producing as well with the powerful lynch mob drama Fury which was followed
over the next decade by such superior films as The Shopworn Angel (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Woman of the Year (1942), and Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
Mankiewicz finally ascended to the director's
chair in 1946 with the period melodrama Dragonwyck and scored another hit the following year with The Ghost and Mrs. Muir He pulled a still unequaled double hat trick by winning writing and directing Oscars in 1949 for
the superb A Letter to Three Wives and then again the very next year for All About Eve the bitchy backstage comedy-drama starring Bette Davis, still his most famous and revered film. Other noteworthy pictures include
the racial drama No Way Out (1950, Sidney Poitier's first film), an offbeat and cerebral romance, People Will Talk (1951), the espionage tale 5 Fingers (1952, which netted him an Oscar nomination), a moody adaptation of
Julius Caesar (1953), a mordant look at filmmaking, The Barefoot Contessa (1954), the smash musical comedy Guys and Dolls (1955), Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), the gargantuan Cleopatra (1963, which
he took over in mid-production), a modern-day "Volpone" called The Honey Pot (1967), a cynical comic Western, EB> (1970), and a bravura filming of the hit mystery play Sleuth (1972, for which he earned his
final Oscar nomination). Even his lesser films are marked by literate dialogue and fine performances; his best films are as good as any ever made. His son, Tom Mankiewicz, is himself a writer/director whose films
include the 1987 Dragnet
MANN, ANTHONY. Director.<06> (b. June 30, 1906, San Diego, as Emil Anton Bundsmann; d. Apr. 29, 1967.) Celebrated for his often innovative visual style and idiosyncratic approach
to character, Mann is probably best known for the Westerns he directed starring James Stewart: Winchester '73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country and The Man From Laramie (both
1955). (He also directed Stewart in 1954's The Glenn Miller Story Mann's Westerns boast lean, taut narratives driven by the violent, often vengeful actions of desperate men; Stewart has seldom been as hardbitten on
screen as he appears in this director's films. Good as they are, Mann's Westerns represent only part of his work. In the 1940s, working for RKO, Republic, and Eagle-Lion, Mann (often working in tandem with
cinematographer John Alton) crafted a series of low- to medium-budgeted film noir thrillers that are among the best of that influential subgenre: Desperate, T-Men (both 1947), He Walked by Night, Raw Deal (both 1948),
and Follow Me Quietly (1949). In the early 1960s Mann distinguished himself by directing two of the most intelligent, least bombastic historical epics of that era, El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964),
both of which are often cited as examples of wide-screen cinema at its best. (Mann was originally assigned to direct 1960's Spartacus but executive producer/star Kirk Douglas replaced him with Stanley Kubrick.)
At first a New York stage actor and then a director, Mann initially worked for producer David O. Selznick as an assistant director upon moving to Hollywood. He first wielded the megaphone solo on Dr. Broadway (1942), an
entertaining if unimportant Paramount programmer. Respected as a journeyman in his day, Mann became something of a cult figure with the emergence of the auteur school of film criticism and scholarship, and he is still
very popular in France. Mann died during the shooting of 1968's A Dandy in Aspic the film's star, Laurence Harvey, took over the directorial chores.
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