Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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Joseph Leo Mankiewicz (born February 11, 1909 in Wilkes-Barre , Pennsylvania , † February 5, 1993 in Bedford , New York ) was an American film director , screenwriter and film producer. His career spanned from the 1920s to the early 1970s. For the films A Letter to Three Women (1949) and All About Eva (1950) he won the Oscar in the categories of Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay .

Life

Joseph Mankiewicz was the youngest child of Berlin- born German - Jewish emigrant Franz Mankiewicz, editor of a German-language newspaper in Wilkes-Barre , and his wife Johanna Blumenau. He began his film career at the end of the silent film era, initially as a translator of subtitles for UFA films for the US market. At the beginning of the sound film era he wrote dialogues and later complete scripts for Paramount Pictures .

Working in the writing workshop made him want to realize his own scripts as a director. Therefore Mankiewicz left Paramount Pictures and signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . However, MGM boss Louis B. Mayer was of the opinion that Mankiewicz should first get to know the film business from the side of the producer before he could direct. After a dispute with Louis B. Mayer, Mankiewicz moved to Twentieth Century Fox . Due to illness of Ernst Lubitsch , who was originally commissioned as a director , Mankiewicz was given the first opportunity to direct Weisser Oleander in 1946 . After he was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Picture category as a screenwriter for the film Skippy and in 1941 as a producer for the film The Night Before the Wedding , his great career was only now beginning: in 1950 and 1951 he co-dominated the Oscar ceremony A letter to three women and all about Eva (six Oscars and eight other nominations). He was the only Hollywood screenwriter to receive an Oscar for two consecutive years and was nominated for another in 1951 (screenplay for the racial drama No Way Out , in which the young Sidney Poitier made his film debut).

In the 1950s, Mankiewicz was one of the most important Hollywood directors, he shot the Curt Goetz film People Will Talk (1951) with Cary Grant and the lavish historical drama Julius Caesar (1953), which starred like Marlon Brando , James Mason , Greer Garson , Deborah Kerr and John Gielgud were extremely prominent. Mankiewicz achieved another success in 1959 with Suddenly Last Summer , the daring film adaptation of Tennessee Williams ' play Suddenly Last Summer . Although Williams distanced himself from the film, the film received largely positive feedback from the box office and critics. In the later years, the lavish Cleopatra film with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, made in 1963, caused a sensation. The private lives of the leading actors and the rising film budget generated a great deal of interest from the mass media. However, the film itself was a flop with critics and audiences at its premiere, which at times severely damaged Mankiewicz's career. With his last film Murder with Small Mistakes , a chamber play with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine , he had another notable success in 1972.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz was married three times, including the Austrian actress Rose Stradner from 1939 until her death in 1958 , and was the father of three children. He died of heart failure in 1993. Mankiewicz's brother Herman J. Mankiewicz was a. a. Screenwriter for Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane , his sister Erna Mankiewicz was the wife of the New York surgeon Joseph Benjamin Stenbuck and died in 1979 in Villach / Austria . His son Tom Mankiewicz worked as a screenwriter , as did his nephew Don Mankiewicz .

Filmography

Director

Screenwriter

producer

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joseph L. Mankiewicz
  2. ^ Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives
  3. ↑ Joseph L. Mankiewicz
  4. ↑ nytimes.com
personal data
SURNAME Mankiewicz, Joseph L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mankiewicz, Joseph Leo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film director
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilkes-Barre , Pennsylvania , USA
DATE OF DEATH 5th February 1993
Place of death Bedford , New York , USA