Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Besides his older sister, Erna Mankiewicz Stenbuck (1901–1979), he had an older brother, Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897–1953), who brought him to Hollywood to become a screenwriter.

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

At age four, Mankiewicz moved with his family to New York City, 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 he graduated in 1928, he moved to Berlin, where he worked at several jobs, including translating film intertitles from German to English for UFA.

In 1929 Mankiewicz got a contract to work as a writer at Paramount, through his brother Herman.

Herman was one of the writers on The Dummy (1929), on which Mankiewicz wrote titles.

He also did titles for Close Harmony (1929) and The Man I Love (1929) with Jack Oakie, The Studio Murder Mystery (1929), Thunderbolt (1929), The River of Romance (1929), The Saturday Night Kid (1929) with Clara Bow, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929), and The Virginian (1929) with Gary Cooper.

Mankiewicz started to be credited on screenplays for films like Fast Company (1929) starring Jack Oakie and Slightly Scarlet (1930) and he worked on the script for The Light of Western Stars (1930) with Richard Arlen and Paramount on Parade (1930).

Mankiewicz wrote The Social Lion (1930) with Oakie, Only Saps Work (1930), The Gang Buster (1931) with Arlen, Finn and Hattie (1931) with Oakie, and June Moon (1931) with Oakie.

He also did the scripts for Skippy (1931) with Jackie Cooper, Dude Ranch (1931) with Oakie, Newly Rich (1931), and Sooky (1931), a sequel to Skippy.

This was followed by This Reckless Age (1932), Sky Bride (1932) with Arlen and Oakie, Million Dollar Legs (1932) with Oakie and W.C. Fields, Night After Night (1932) (uncredited), and If I Had a Million (1932).

He was borrowed by RKO for Diplomaniacs (1933) and Emergency Call (1933).

He returned to Paramount for Too Much Harmony (1933) with Oakie and Bing Crosby, Meet the Baron (1933) (uncredited), and the all-star Alice in Wonderland (1933).

Mankiewicz signed a long-term contract with MGM.

He wrote Manhattan Melodrama (1934), which was a huge hit.

He freelanced for King Vidor to work on Our Daily Bread (1934).

At MGM he wrote Forsaking All Others (1934) with Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Robert Montgomery as well as After Office Hours (1935) with Gable and Constance Bennett, Reckless (1935) with Jean Harlow and William Powell, Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), and I Live My Life (1935) with Crawford.

Mankiewicz was promoted to producer with Three Godfathers (1936).

On most of his films as producer he would work uncredited on the script.

Mankiewicz had a commercial and critical success with Fury (1936), the first American film directed by Fritz Lang.

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).

Mankewicz also produced Double Wedding (1937) with William Powell and Myrna Loy; Three Comrades (1938), with Margaret Sullavan and Robert Taylor and director Frank Borzage, famously rewriting F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Shopworn Angel (1938) with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart; and The Shining Hour (1938) with Sullavan and Crawford, directed by Borzage.

He also did some uncredited writing on The Great Waltz (1938), and the script which became The Pirate (1948).

He produced A Christmas Carol (1938); The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939) with Mickey Rooney; and Strange Cargo (1940) with Gable and Crawford, directed by Borzage.

He also produced more than 20 films, including The Philadelphia Story (1940) which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Woman of the Year (1942), for which he introduced Katharine Hepburn to Spencer Tracy.

He had a huge hit with The Philadelphia Story (1940) starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart.

Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Franz Mankiewicz (died 1941) and Johanna Blumenau, Jewish emigrants from Germany and Courland, respectively.

Herman also won an Oscar for co-writing Citizen Kane (1941).

It was followed by The Wild Man of Borneo (1941), and The Feminine Touch (1941), then he had another big success with Hepburn, Woman of the Year (1942).

Mankiewicz's final productions at MGM were Cairo (1942) with Jeanette MacDonald and Reunion in France (1942) with Crawford and John Wayne.

Mankiewicz received an offer at 20th Century Fox that included the right to direct.

His first film for the studio was The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), which he wrote with Nunnally Johnson and produced.

It co-starred his wife Rose Stradner.

Mankiewicz made his directorial debut with Dragonwyck (1946), which he also wrote; Gene Tierney and Vincent Price starred.

He followed it with Somewhere in the Night (1946), a film noir which he co-wrote.

Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career, and won both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in consecutive years for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950), the latter of which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six.

Comfortable in a variety of genres and able to elicit career performances from actors and actresses alike, Mankiewicz combined ironic, sophisticated scripts with a precise, sometimes stylized mise en scène.

Mankiewicz worked for seventeen years as a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures and as a writer and producer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before getting a chance to direct at 20th Century Fox.

Over six years, he made 11 films for Fox.

During his over 40-year career in Hollywood, Mankiewicz wrote 48 screenplays.