Mankiewicz, Joseph Leo

▪ 1994

      U.S. director, screenwriter, and producer (b. Feb. 11, 1909, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.—d. Feb. 5, 1993, Mount Kisco, N.Y.), infused witty and often biting dialogue into his screenplays and as a motion-picture director was especially remembered for his masterful use of flashbacks and sound track narration, notably in A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950), films for which he won four Academy Awards (two each for director and screenplay). Mankiewicz launched his Hollywood career in 1929 when his brother, Herman (co-writer of Citizen Kane), secured him a job as a scriptwriter for Paramount Pictures. His early writing credits included The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929); If I Had a Million (1932), for which he coined W.C. Field's famous phrase "my little chickadee"; and Million Dollar Legs (1932). He was the producer of Fury (1936), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and the first of the snappy Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicles, Woman of the Year (1942). In 1946 Mankiewicz made his directorial debut after replacing the ailing Ernst Lubitsch on Dragonwyck (1946), the first of many films that he both wrote and directed. Others were Somewhere in the Night (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), and The Quiet American (1957), the last of which he also produced. Mankiewicz directed House of Strangers (1950), No Way Out (1950), Five Fingers (1952), the critically acclaimed Julius Caesar (1953), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) before directing and co-writing the lavish Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. After the failure of that film, Mankiewicz directed just a few others: The Honey Pot (1967), There Was a Crooked Man (1970), and Sleuth (1972), his last.

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