Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Early life and education

Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Franz Mankiewicz (died 1941) and Johanna Blumenau, Jewish emigrants from Germany and Courland, respectively. His siblings were Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897–1953) and Erna Stenbuck (née Mankiewicz, 1901–1979). At age four, Joseph moved with his family to New York City, and graduated in 1924 from Stuyvesant High School. He followed his brother Herman to Columbia University, where he initially wanted to be a psychiatrist. Mankiewicz once stated, "I took a pre-med course at Columbia. Then came the part where you disembowel frogs and earthworms, which horrified and nauseated me. But what really finished me was physics." Mankiewicz failed the course, and switched his major to English and wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator. He graduated in 1928 and moved to Germany. There, he intended to enroll at the University of Berlin and finish his studies at Oxford for a potential career in pedagogy.

However, Mankiewicz abandoned these plans and was hired as an assistant correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. Sigrid Schultz, the Berlin bureau chief for the Tribune, gave Mankiewicz his first assignment to interview explorer Umberto Nobile. Mankiewicz earned another job, translating film intertitles from German to English for UFA, and worked a third job as a stringer for the Variety trade magazine. He relocated to Paris, which Mankiewicz described as the "three most miserable months of my life." After receiving a despondent letter from his brother, Herman encouraged Joseph to move to Hollywood.

Career

1929–1933: Paramount

In 1929, Joseph was hired by Paramount Pictures, becoming the studio's youngest staff writer at the age of 20. Within eight weeks, Joseph wrote titles for 1929's The Dummy (with his brother Herman), The Man I Love, and Thunderbolt. David O. Selznick, then an assistant to Paramount general manager B. P. Schulberg, proposed that Joseph write the dialogue to Fast Company (1929), an adaptation of the 1928 play Elmer The Great by George M. Cohan and Ring Lardner. Mankiewicz's name later appeared in the Los Angeles Record's 1929 list of the ten best dialogue writers. The recognition earned Mankiewicz the assignment of writing several films, which starred Jack Oakie.

At age 22, Joseph was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Skippy (1931), which starred Jackie Cooper. Based on the nomination, Herman petitioned Schulberg to give Joseph a pay raise. Schulberg declined, and Herman threatened to resign. Eventually, Schulberg relented and signed Joseph to a seven-year contract, which earned him a weekly salary of "somewhere between $75 to $100". He co-wrote the screenplay of Sooky (1931), a sequel to Skippy. Meanwhile, Joseph dated actress Frances Dee, who co-starred in June Moon (1931) and This Reckless Age (1932), which he had co-scripted.

Joseph wrote four films with Paramount Pictures in 1932, which included segments for If I Had a Million (1932). The segments included "Rollo and the Roadhogs" which featured W. C. Fields and Alison Skipworth as two retired vaudevillians, and "The Three Marines" with Jack Oakie and Gary Cooper. He also contributed to other segments, including "The China Stop" with Charlie Ruggles as a bookkeeper in a china stop and "The Forger" with George Raft as a runaway criminal who is unable to cash his check. After six months of courtship, Joseph became engaged to Frances Dee but one week before their marriage, Dee eloped with Joel McCrea, whom she co-starred with on The Silver Cord (1933). Feeling devastated, Joseph ran a fever and was hospitalized for a "partial nervous breakdown."

Joseph wrote an original story treatment titled In the Red, which satirized the League of Nations. Paramount studio executives accused him of plagiarizing the next Marx Brothers film Duck Soup (1933), in which Herman was the film's producer. Joseph contested the charge and resigned from Paramount in December 1932. He then moved to RKO Pictures, where Sam Jaffe hired Joe and Henry Myers to complete the script, which was retitled Diplomaniacs (1933). Jaffe later hired Joseph to script Emergency Call (1933). He returned to Paramount for Too Much Harmony (1933) with Jack Oakie and Bing Crosby. Selznick selected Joseph to do uncredited rewrites for MGM's Meet the Baron (1933), which Herman had written the screenplay for.

1934–1942: MGM

Herman began working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in March 1933, and David O. Selznick hired Joseph as a screenwriter with a weekly salary of $750. At the age of 25, Joseph co-wrote Manhattan Melodrama (1934) with Oliver H. P. Garrett, which starred Myrna Loy and William Powell. The film was a critical and commercial success, and two months into its release, federal agents shot John Dillinger who left a Chicago theater. At the 1935 Academy Awards, Arthur Caesar won the Academy Award for Best Story. Meanwhile, Joseph contributed additional dialogue for King Vidor's 1934 film Our Daily Bread.

Mankiewicz's next project was adapting Forsaking All Others (1934) based on the 1933 play by Edward Barry Roberts and Frank Morgan Cavett. Bernard H. Hyman was the producer, and Joe was instructed to write for Loretta Young, George Brent, and Joel McCrea. When Mankiewicz delivered the script, Hyman replied: "We're going to use Joan Crawford, Clark Gable and Robert Montgomery." He told Mankiewicz to arrive at Crawford's residence and read the script to her. Mankiewicz at first declined the offer, but later drove to Crawford's Brentwood home. During the reading, Crawford was delighted at the line: "I could build a fire by rubbing two Boy Scouts together." Forsaking All Others became a success and Mankiewicz was assigned another Joan Crawford vehicle I Live My Life (1935), after Louis B. Mayer told Mankiewicz: "You're the only one on the lot who knows what to do with her."

In the autumn of 1935, having written three successful films, Mankiewicz personally requested Mayer to direct his own feature film. Mayer declined his proposition and instead replied: "You have to learn to crawl before you can walk." Mankiewicz was instead promoted as a film producer, beginning with Three Godfathers (1936). Adapted from the 1913 short story by Peter B. Kyne, the film is a biblically inspired Western about three outlaws—Chester Morris, Lewis Stone and Walter Brennan—rescuing a baby in the Mojave Desert.

Mankiewicz's next project was Fury (1936), which was inspired by a real-life mob lynching in which two suspects, held in a San Jose prison, were hanged for the murder of a department store heir. While in New York, screenwriter Norman Krasna read the story in The Nation. During the summer of 1934, he pitched an adaptation to Mankiewicz and Samuel Marx, who were interested in it. After some time, Krasna had no recollection of the story, so Mankiewicz wrote a ten-page treatment titled Mob Rule and paid Krasner for the screen rights.

1943–1952: 20th Century Fox

By August 1943, Mankiewicz had signed with Twentieth Century-Fox, stipulating his contractual right to write and direct. As a follow-up to The Song of Bernadette (1943), Mankiewicz selected A. J. Cronin's 1941 novel The Keys of the Kingdom as his first production. Rewriting a script by Nunnally Johnson, the tale centered on Father Francis Chisholm, a humble Scottish Catholic priest, in his thirty-five years as a missionary in a small Chinese village. Gregory Peck was cast in the lead role while Ingrid Bergman was the studio's first choice as the Reverend Mother Maria-Veronica. When Bergman became available, Mankiewicz pleaded with Darryl F. Zanuck to instead cast his then-wife Rose Stradner. The film opened in December 1944 to mixed reviews, though it garnered four Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor for Gregory Peck.

Meanwhile, Twentieth Century-Fox acquired the screen rights to Anya Seton's gothic romance novel Dragonwyck, with Ernst Lubitsch as the director. However, Lubitsch collapsed from a heart attack while filming A Royal Scandal (1945). While recuperating, he decided instead to produce and have Mankiewicz direct Dragonwyck (1946). By May 1944, Gregory Peck and Gene Tierney were cast in the leading roles, but Peck dropped out to star in Duel in the Sun (1946) and was replaced by Vincent Price.

Dragonwyck tells of Nicholas van Ryn, the proprietor of the Dragonwyck estate, who poisons his invalid wife and marries his cousin Miranda, in hopes of bearing an heir. When their infant son dies, Nicholas copes with opium and schemes to murder Miranda, who falls for a local doctor. Displeased with Mankiewicz's creative decisions, Lubitsch removed his name from the production credits. "We differed about some of the direction," Mankiewicz explained, "mostly about where I put the camera." Variety applauded Dragonwyck as a "psychological yarn, its mid-19th century American feudal background being always brooding with never a break in its flow of morbidity. Yet, it is always interesting if somewhat too pointed at times in its fictional contrivance." The film earned $3 million at the box office in the United States and Canada.

Somewhere in the Night (1946) originated from Marvin Borowsky's short story "The Lonely Journey". While Zanuck was in Europe, Anderson Lawler came across the story, which impressed Zanuck. Back in the United States, Lawler presented an adaptation script by Howard Dimsdale to Mankiewicz, who was eager to direct his second film. A film noir, John Hodiak plays an amnesiac war veteran who searches for a detective named Larry Cravat, whom he discovers was involved in a murder over two million in Nazi funds funneled into Los Angeles.

1953–1960: Return to MGM; Figaro, Inc.

In December 1951, Mankiewicz signed a three-picture contract with MGM's Dore Schary, with a stipulation he be allowed to produce theatrical stage productions. By 1952, Mankiewicz had three projects he was contemplating—an adaptation of Carl Jonas' novel Jefferson Selleck about a Midwestern businessman experiencing a midlife crisis with Spencer Tracy; The Barefoot Contessa, and a new stage production of La bohème at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. During this time, MGM producer John Houseman approached Mankiewicz about directing a film adaptation of Julius Caesar. He reflected, "Joe was one of the first people I thought of. He is so literate and such a good dialogue writer, I knew he'd be interested."

Casting for the central roles involved several American and British actors, including James Mason as Brutus, John Gielgud as Cassius, and Louis Calhern as Caesar. Marlon Brando's casting as Marc Antony was met with skepticism, so much that Time magazine jokingly wondered if Brando would be "muttering and grumbling his lines in a Polish accent, sound reading the funeral oration?" Against the studio's objections, Houseman chose to photograph in black and white so it would mirror newsreels of Benito Mussolini. Principal photography continued until late October 1952, with the production sets repurposed from Quo Vadis (1951).

Released during the summer of 1953, Julius Caesar received positive reviews from film critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote the film was "a production that pulls the full potential of point and passion from this classic of the stage", and Brando's reciting of Mark Antony's speech was described as a "brilliant, electrifying splurge of bitter and passionate invective". While directing rehearsals for La bohème, disagreements over Jefferson Selleck led to a lapse in Mankiewicz's MGM contract.

In 1951, Mankiewicz relocated his family to New York. Within two years, he established his independent production company Figaro, Inc. Its namesake was taken from the barber in Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro. In Mankiewicz's words, Figaro did "a little bit of everything." In June 1956, NBC acquired a 50 percent stake with the right of first refusal to any proposed film project. United Artists was inked as the distributor, and Mankiewicz proceeded with his two-picture deal with The Barefoot Contessa, which he had been originally written to be a novel.

1961–1963: Cleopatra

By May 1960, Mankiewicz was selected to write and direct a film adaptation of Lawrence Durrell's 1957 novel Justine, the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet. Ava Gardner and David Niven were hired in the lead roles. The premise centered on Darley, an Anglo-Irish schoolmaster and aspiring novelist, who is determined to unravel the truth behind Justine, a beautiful young woman, with whom he had a brief love affair with. Darley later learns Justine was married to her Egyptian husband Nassim, who was involved in a Coptic plot against the Muslims to arm the Zionists in Palestine.

By the winter of 1960, Mankiewicz was vacationing at the Children's Bay Cay—Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy's private island—in The Bahamas. He had completed a 151-page treatment outline and written a partially complete first screenplay draft. On January 18, 1961, he flew north to New York for dinner with his agent Charles Feldman and Spyros Skouras, who requested him to complete Walter Wanger's concurrent troubled production Cleopatra (1963), a film project Mankiewicz's Figaro Inc. had earlier declined to finance. The film's star Elizabeth Taylor had personally requested Mankiewicz to take over the project after Rouben Mamoulian had resigned as director. Mankiewicz declined the request, but Skouras was persistent in hiring him. Feldman persuaded Mankiewicz he could resume Justine after he finished Cleopatra under the advice: "Hold your nose for fifteen weeks and get it over with."

Skouras acquired Figaro, Inc., in which Mankiewicz was paid $1.5 million while NBC (which controlled a 50 percent stake) received the other half for a total of $3 million. On January 25, 1961, Mankiewicz was hired as writer and director. Within a month, he toured the production sets constructed at Pinewood Studios in London. Displeased with the previous script, Mankiewicz decided to write an entirely new script, with a "modern, psychiatrically rooted" approach. Lawrence Durrell and Sidney Buchman were hired to collaborate on the script for Cleopatra. By late April 1961, Mankiewicz was dissatisfied with Durrell's story outlines, while Buchman was instructed to finish the outline. Wanger hired screenwriter Ranald MacDougall to finish the shooting script based on Buchman's outline.

Meanwhile, Twentieth Century-Fox dismantled the Pinewood sets, worth an estimated $600,000 (roughly $6.6 million in 2026). Skouras decided to reshoot the film in California, but Mankiewicz persuaded him to shoot in Rome. By June 30, Skouras reversed his decision and allowed the production to film at Cinecittà, where principal photography for Cleopatra began in September 1961 under Mankiewicz's direction. Because Skouras insisted the production continue, Mankiewicz's revised shooting script was not complete at the start of filming. Therefore, Mankiewicz directed during the day and wrote the script longhand at night, to the point he contracted a dermatological disorder on his hands, which forced him to wear thin protective gloves. To maintain his health regimen for several months, Mankiewicz required daily vitamin B12 shots. One shot accidentally hit his sciatic nerve, rendering him barely able to walk.

1964–1993: Later career

In 1964, Mankiewicz read Frederick Knott's play Mr. Fox of Venice and the novel The Evil of the Day by Thomas Sterling, both of which were adapted from Ben Jonson's 1606 play Volpone. Interested in the subject material, Mankiewicz optioned the works for his next screenplay, tentatively titled Mr. Fox of Venice. Meanwhile, he was approached by Anna Rosenberg, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, to participate in a Xerox-sponsored series of television films promoting the United Nations (UN). The first installment was Carol for Another Christmas (1964) with a teleplay by Rod Serling. A dystopian adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, the telefilm had an ensemble cast featuring Sterling Hayden, Peter Sellers, Godfrey Cambridge, Peter Fonda, Richard Harris, Christopher Plummer, Eva Marie Saint and James Shigeta. Filming began in early September 1964. It was broadcast on ABC on December 28, 1964.

Retitled The Honey Pot (1967), the story centers on Cecil Fox, an eccentric English millionaire, who hires William McFly, a struggling actor, in a scheme modeled after Jonson's play. McFly invites three of Fox's former mistresses to his Venetian palazzo as Fox pretends to be on his deathbed. Filming began on September 20, 1965, at Cinecittà. After the first week of filming, Mankiewicz fired his cinematographer Piero Portalupi and replaced him with Gianni Di Venanzo. Before filming was complete, Di Venanzo died from undiagnosed hepatitis and was replaced by Pasqualino De Santis. Rex Harrison was cast as Fox, and his fourth wife Rachel Roberts attempted suicide after she was turned down in favor of Maggie Smith. Susan Hayward was granted permission to attend to her dying husband back in the United States. In March 1966, Mankiewicz began editing in London and settled on a runtime of 150 minutes. After he heard complaints that the film was overlong, the runtime was reduced to 131 minutes for its New York premiere. Critics complimented Rex Harrison and Maggie Smith's performances but criticized the runtime.

In 1968, Mankiewicz signed a multi-picture deal with Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, with his first project titled The Bawdy Bard and Bill, a biopic about William Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess. However, he became intrigued with an original script tentatively titled War by David Newman and Robert Benton, the screenwriting team of Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Retitled There Was a Crooked Man... (1970), it was the first Western genre film Mankiewicz had directed. He reflected: "It's been a chance to try some muscles I haven't used before. Although, of course, I wrote a lot of Westerns in the old days. The old, old days." The film starred Kirk Douglas as a charming but ruthless convict who is sent to a remote Arizona prison where the conscientious prison warden (Henry Fonda) attempts to reform him. Filming began in March 1969, but six weeks into production, Mankiewicz slipped a disc at his home and directed the rest of the film from a wheelchair.

Personal life

Family history

Joseph was the younger brother of Hollywood screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, the co-writer (with Orson Welles) of Citizen Kane among numerous other films. In 2024, Joseph and Herman were both announced as inductees into the Luzerne County Arts & Entertainment Hall of Fame.

In 1933, Mankiewicz met Elizabeth Young, a New York socialite and descendant of the Schermerhorn family. Young made her film debut in Big Executive (1933) and was borrowed by MGM to appear in Queen Christina (1933). They were married on May 20, 1934, in the backyard garden of Herman and his wife Sara's house. In November 1936, Mankiewicz moved out of their Beverly Hills apartment and issued a press statement stating incompatibility and irreconcilable differences. Shortly after, Young filed for divorce, alleging Mankiewicz had treated her cruelly and telling her he no longer loved her. The divorce was dropped when they resumed living together, but they filed again in May 1937. On the third anniversary of their marriage, their divorce was finalized. They had a son, Eric, who was born on July 1, 1936. In 1943, Young legally had Eric assume his stepfather Eugene Reynal's surname after she had remarried.

Mankiewicz met Austrian actress Rose Stradner, who had been contracted to MGM. There, Mankiewicz was instructed to help improve her English as he had with other German-speaking actresses. The two were married on July 28, 1939, at Mankiewicz's sister's apartment in New York. When they returned to Los Angeles, on Stradner's 26th birthday, MGM studio writers and producers greeted them at the railway station with rice and a ten-piece orchestra. Stradner gave birth to two sons, Christopher, born in 1940, and Tom Mankiewicz, born in 1942. During his marriage to Stradner, Mankiewicz had extramarital affairs with several actresses, including Judy Garland and Linda Darnell. In September 1958, Stradner was found dead at her summer home in Bedford Hills, aged 45. Her death was ruled a suicide through an overdose of sedatives.

In 1954, Mankiewicz met his third wife Rosemary Matthews while filming The Barefoot Contessa in Rome. For several years, they kept in contact, and Matthews served as a production assistant for Cleopatra. On December 14, 1962, the two were married in a New York courthouse. They had a daughter, Alexandra.

Joseph was the uncle of Frank Mankiewicz, a political campaign manager who officially announced the assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. His niece Johanna "Josie" Mankiewicz Davis, worked as a journalist and a novelist. In July 1974, she was struck and killed by a taxicab in New York City at the age of 36.

Death

Mankiewicz died of a heart attack on February 5, 1993, six days before his 84th birthday. He was interred in Saint Matthew's Episcopal Churchyard cemetery in Bedford, New York.

Accolades

Directed Academy Award performances

Under Mankiewicz's direction, these actors have received Academy Award wins and nominations for their performances in their respective roles.

In popular culture

Several fictional films shown in The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) are jokily produced by a fictional movie producer, "Samuel L. Bronkowitz" (a conflation of Samuel Bronston and Joseph L. Mankiewicz).

In Mank (2020), a Netflix biopic of his brother Herman, Joseph is portrayed by Tom Pelphrey.