Oscar Profile #397: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Born February 11, 1909 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was the younger brother of Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897-1953), the Oscar-winning co-writer of Citizen Kane.

Young Joe Mankiewicz received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1928 at the age of 19. His college professor father sent him to Berlin to study German drama at the University of Berlin. Instead, he went to work for UFA film studios translating German intertitles into English for distribution by Paramount in the U.S. His brother Herman, then head of Paramount’s scenario department, hired him to write for Paramount in Hollywood where he quickly established himself, earning an Oscar nomination for co-writing 1931’s Skippy.

Mankiewicz moved to MGM in 1934 where he first worked on the screenplay for Manhattan Melodrama. That same year he married first wife actress Elizabeth Young. The marriage would produce one child but was over by 1937. In 1939 he would marry actress Rose Stradner with whom he would have two children.

With a vague promise that he would be given directorial assignments, Mankiewicz became a producer in 1936. Among the classics he produced for MGM were Fury, Three Comrades, A Christmas Carol, The Philadelphia Story and Woman of the Year. Fed up with MGM’s unfulfilled promises that he would be allowed to direct, he moved to Fox in 1944 with the prospect of direction written into his contract. There he wrote and produced The Keys of the Kingdom before being given his first directorial assignment on 1946’s Dragonwyck. Subsequent films he directed at Fox included The Late George Apley, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, A Letter to Three Wives, No Way Out, All About Eve, People Will Talk and Five Fingers.

The period from 1949 through 1952 were the most productive of Mankiewicz’s career as writer and director. He won back-to-back Oscars for both writing and directing both 1949’s A Letter to Three Wives and 1950’s All About Eve. He was also nominated for his story and screenplay for 1950’s groundbreaking anti-racist drama, No Way Out and was President of the Screen Directors Guild from 1950-1951. He received his third Best Director nomination for 1952’s Five Fingers.

From then on, Mankiewicz was an independent writer-producer-director, whose credits included Julius Casesar, The Barefoot Contessa (for which he earned another Oscar nomination for its screenplay), Guys and Dolls, The Quiet American, Suddenly, Last Summer, Cleopatra, There Was a Crooked Man and Sleuth, his final film and his final Oscar nomination.

The emotionally troubled Stradner committed suicide in 1958. Mankiewicz married his third wife, actress Rosemary Mathews, with whom he had a fourth child, in 1962.

Mankiewicz returned to Berlin in 1983 as a juror at the Berlin Film Festival. He died of a heart attack on February 5, 1993 at the age of 83.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM (1944), directed by John M. Stahl

For his first film at Fox, Mankiewicz adapted and produced the film version of A.J. Cronin’s best-seller about a missionary priest in China (Gregory Peck in his star-making role) whose best friends are an atheist doctor (Thomas Mitchell), a faithful Chinese servant (Benson Fong) and an at-first hostile nun (Mankiewicz’s wife Rose Stradner billed here as Rosa Stradner). When called into Daryl Zanuck’s office to meet with a group of Protestant ministers to explain why so many films are being made about Catholic priests and nuns and none about Protestant ministers, he famously said because single priests and nuns are sexy, married ministers aren’t.

A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Only three years after directing his first film, Dragonwyck, Mankiewicz earned Oscars for both writing and directed this Oscar nominated Best Picture narrated by a woman (Celeste Holm) who has just run away with the husband of one of her best friends (Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern). Did she run away with Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas or Jeffrey Lynn? The film is richly detailed in its background scenes with the Darnell-Paul Douglas section featuring Connie Gilchrist as Darnell’s mother and Thelma Ritter in her first major role as Gilchrist’s card-playing friend coming off best.

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

A year after winning writing and directing Oscars for A Letter to Three Wives, Mankiewicz pulled off the same feat with All About Eve which won a total of six Oscars out of its record fourteen nominations. The film’s fourteen nominations remained a record for forty-seven years when it was tied by Titanic and twenty years after that when La La Land became the third film so honored to date. No film has yet beaten that record. The Sarah Siddons award which sets up the film’s narrative was a fictitious one that became a real award when implemented in Chicago two years later.

GUYS AND DOLLS (1955), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Mankiewicz isn’t the first director anyone thinks of when it comes to musicals, but his film version of Frank Loesser’s beloved musical remains one of his most popular films. He was nominated by the Writers Guild for his screenplay and the film itself was nominated for four Oscars. Marlon Brando who had been Oscar nominated for playing Marc Antony in Mankiewicz’s version of Julius Caesar played his one and only musical role as the film’s lead opposite trained singers Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine. Simmons won a Golden Globe for her lovely performance.

SLEUTH (1972), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Mankiewicz spent the remainder of his life trying to find an appropriate follow-up to this, his last film, which was one of the few he directed in which he did not also write the screenplay. It earned him his fourth and final nomination for Best Director. The film was also the first in which all its cast members were nominated for Oscars for their performance, a record it held for just three years. Whereas there were only two actors in Sleuth (Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine), the film that broke its record, Give ’em Hell, Harry, had just one actor in it, James Whitmore as Harry Truman.

JOSEPH L. MANKIEWICZ AND OSCAR

Skippy (1931) – nominated – Best Writing, Adaptation
The Philadelphia Story (1940) – nominated – Best Picture

Note: Technically this was not a nomination for Mankiewicz as credit at the time was given to MGM, but IMDb. and Wikipedia both credit him with the nomination.