Mankiewicz, Joseph L.

▪ American filmmaker

born February 11, 1909, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., U.S.

died February 5, 1993, Mount Kisco, N.Y.

      major American producer, director, and screenwriter known for his witty, literary, urbane dialogue and memorable characters. He worked with many of Hollywood's major stars and earned the reputation of being a talented actor's director, guiding such performers as Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, and Laurence Olivier to some of their most memorable screen performances.

      Before he was 20, Mankiewicz served as a foreign correspondent in Berlin for the Chicago Tribune. While in Germany, he worked for Ufa (Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft) as an English translator of subtitles for German-made films. In 1929 his older brother, Herman J. Mankiewicz (Mankiewicz, Herman), a successful screenwriter, introduced the younger Mankiewicz to Hollywood, where he got his start composing subtitles for silent versions of Paramount talkies, which were distributed to theatres not yet equipped for sound. He soon displayed his gift for comedy, writing material for comic actors Jack Oakie and W.C. Fields (Fields, W.C.). (It was Mankiewicz who coined Fields's signature tag line, “my little chickadee.”) Mankiewicz moved to MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.) in 1934 hoping to be allowed to direct, but studio head Louis B. Mayer (Mayer, Louis B) made him a producer. In his years at MGM, Mankiewicz produced such classics as Fritz Lang (Lang, Fritz)'s Fury (1936), George Cukor (Cukor, George)'s The Philadelphia Story (1940), and George Stevens (Stevens, George)'s Woman of the Year (1942). In 1943 Mankiewicz moved to Twentieth Century Fox (Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation), making his directorial debut that same year with Dragonwyck. At Fox, Mankiewicz directed and wrote the scripts that defined his signature style of intelligent, witty banter and forged his reputation as one of Hollywood's more “literary” directors. Superb examples of his art include the Oscar-winning works A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950), starring Bette Davis (Davis, Bette), as well as House of Strangers (1949) and Julius Caesar (1953).

 Certain technical and thematic elements characterize a typical Mankiewicz film. Chief among these is his radical use of narrative form: multiple narrators tell the stories in All About Eve and The Barefoot Contessa (1954), an unreliable omniscient narrator misleads the viewing audience in The Quiet American (1958), and Elizabeth Taylor's hypnosis-induced flashbacks unravel the underlying mystery in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Also common in Mankiewicz's films is a certain preoccupation with death and its effect upon the living. Films such as The Late George Apley and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (both 1947), Julius Caesar, The Barefoot Contessa, and Suddenly, Last Summer feature dead characters who figure prominently in the story lines, more so than the living in most cases. Though Mankiewicz was to direct and write films in a variety of genres (screwball comedy, westerns, Shakespeare, musicals, epics, and urban drama), it is the aforementioned elements that lend a common voice to the body of his work.

 Mankiewicz left Fox in 1952 to freelance. In 1963 he took over direction from Rouben Mamoulian (Mamoulian, Rouben) of the ill-fated Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor (Taylor, Elizabeth) and Richard Burton (Burton, Richard). Despite his efforts, it became one of Hollywood's most expensive flops and damaged Mankiewicz's directing career. For almost a decade his films were few and far between and of uneven quality. He was back in top form with Sleuth (1972), starring Laurence Olivier (Olivier, Laurence, Baron Olivier of Brighton) and Michael Caine. This film, his last effort, earned him another Oscar nomination for best director. Mankiewicz was the recipient of countless industry awards, including the Directors Guild of America's D.W. Griffith Award in 1986.

Additional Reading

Kenneth L. Geist, Pictures Will Talk: The Life and Films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1978).

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