Herman J. Mankiewicz
Encyclopedia
Herman Jacob Mankiewicz was an American screenwriter, who, with Orson Welles
, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane
(1941). Earlier, he was the Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Tribune
and the drama critic for The New York Times
and The New Yorker
. Alexander Woollcott
, said that Herman Mankiewicz was the "funniest man in New York". Both Mankiewicz and Welles received
Academy Awards for their screenplay. It was the only award Citizen Kane received.
He was often asked to fix the screenplays of other writers, with much of his work uncredited. What distinguished his writing from that of other writers were occasional flashes of the "Mankiewicz humor" and satire that became valued in the films of the 1930s. That style of writing included a slick, satirical, and witty humor, which depended almost totally on dialogue to carry the film. It was a style that would become associated with the "typical American film" of that period.
Film author Pauline Kael
credits Mankiewicz with having written, alone or with others, "about forty of the films I remember best from the twenties and thirties," adding, "I hadn’t realized how extensive his career was. . . he was a key linking figure in just the kind of movies my friends and I loved best. These were the hardest-headed periods of American movies. Director and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson
said that the "two most brilliant men he has ever known were George S. Kaufman
and Herman Mankiewicz, and that Mankiewicz was the more brilliant of the two. ...[and] spearheaded the movement of that whole Broadway style of wisecracking, fast-talking, cynical-sentimental entertainment onto the national scene."
Among the screenplays he wrote or worked on, besides Citizen Kane
, were The Wizard of Oz
, Man of the World
, Dinner at Eight
, Pride of the Yankees, and The Pride of St. Louis
.
Mankiewicz's younger brother was Joseph L. Mankiewicz
, also an Oscar-winning Hollywood director, screenwriter, and producer.
in 1897. His parents were of German-Jewish ancestry: his father, Franz Mankiewicz, was born in Berlin
and emigrated to the U.S. from Hamburg
in 1892. He arrived in the U.S. with his wife, a dressmaker named Johanna Blumenau, who was from the German-speaking Kurland region." The family lived first in New York and then moved to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
, where Herman's father accepted a teaching position. In 1909, Herman's brother, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
(who himself would have a career as a successful writer, producer, and director), was born, and both boys and a sister spent their childhood there.
The family moved to New York City
in 1913, and Herman graduated from Columbia University
in 1917. After a period as managing editor of the American Jewish Chronicle, he became a flying cadet with the United States Army
in 1917, and, in 1918, a private first class
with the Marines, A.E.F.
In 1919 and 1920, he became director of the American Red Cross
News Service in Paris
, and after returning to the U.S. married Sara Aaronson, of Baltimore
. He took his bride overseas with him on his next job as a foreign correspondent in Berlin
from 1920 to 1922, doing political reporting for George Seldes
on the Chicago Tribune
.
He was a "bookish, introspective child who, despite his intelligence, was never able to win approval from his demanding father" who was known to belittle his achievements.
His children are screenwriter Don Mankiewicz
, politician Frank Mankiewicz
and the late novelist Johanna Mankiewicz Davis.
, he also sent pieces on drama and books to The New York Times
. At one point, he was hired in Berlin by dancer Isadora Duncan
, to be her publicist in preparation for her return tour in America. At home again in the U.S., he took a job as a reporter for the New York World. He was known as a "gifted, prodigious writer," and contributed to Vanity Fair
, The Saturday Evening Post
and numerous other magazines. While still in his twenties, he collaborated with Heywood Broun
, Dorothy Parker
, Robert E. Sherwood
, and others on a revue, and collaborated with George S. Kaufman
on a play, The Good Fellow, and with Marc Connelly
on The Wild Man of Borneo. From 1923 to 1926, he was at The New York Times backing up George S. Kaufman in the drama department and soon after became the first regular theatre critic for The New Yorker
, writing a weekly column during 1925 and 1926. He was a member of the Algonquin Round Table
. His writing attracted the notice of film producer Walter Wanger
who offered him a motion-picture contract and he soon moved to Hollywood.
’s scenario department, and film author and historian Pauline Kael
writes that "in January, 1928, there was a newspaper item reporting that he was in New York 'lining up a new set of newspaper feature writers and playwrights to bring to Hollywood,' and that 'most of the newer writers on Paramount’s staff who contributed the most successful stories of the past year' were selected by 'Mank.'" Film historian Scott Eyman notes that Mankiewicz was put in charge of writer recruitment by Paramount. However, as "a hard-drinking gambler, he hired men in his own image: Ben Hecht
, Bartlett Cormack, Edwin Justus Mayer
, writers comfortable with the iconoclasm of big-city newsrooms who would introduce their sardonic worldliness to movie audiences.
Becoming a major screenwriter
Kael notes that "beginning in 1926, Mankiewicz worked on an astounding number of films." In 1927 and 1928, he did the titles
(the printed dialogue and explanations) for at least twenty-five films that starred Clara Bow
, Bebe Daniels
, Nancy Carroll
, Wallace Beery
, and other public favorites. By then, sound had come in, and in 1929 he did the script as well as the dialogue for The Dummy, and did the scripts for many directors, including William Wellman and Josef von Sternberg
.
Other screenwriters made large contributions, too, but "probably none larger than Mankiewicz’s," according to Kael. At the beginning of the sound era he was one of the highest-paid writers in the world, because, Kael writes, "he wrote the kind of movies that were disapproved of as "fast" and immoral. His heroes weren’t soft-eyed and bucolic; he brought good-humored toughness to the movies, and energy and astringency. And the public responded, because it was eager for modern American subjects." He was described as "a Promethean
wit bound in a Promethean body, one of the most entertaining men in existence...[and] called the 'Central Park West Voltaire
' by Ben Hecht
.
Writer of satire and comedy
Shortly after his arrival on the West Coast, he sent a telegram to journalist-friend Ben Hecht
in New York: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around." He attracted other New York writers to Hollywood who contributed to a burst of creative, tough, and sardonic styles of writing for the fast-growing movie industry. What distinguished his screenplays were "occasional flashes of the Mankiewicz humor and satire that proved to be a foreshadowing of a new type of slick, satirical, typically American film that depended almost totally on dialogue for its success."
Between 1929 and 1935, he was credited with working on a least twenty films, many of which he received no credit for. Between 1930 and 1932 he was either producer or associate producer on four comedies and helped write their screenplays without credit: Laughter, Monkey Business
, Horse Feathers
, and Million Dollar Legs, which many critics considered one of the funniest comedies of the early 1930s. In 1933, he co-wrote Dinner at Eight
, which was based on the George S. Kaufman/Edna Ferber
play, and became one of the most popular comedies at that time and remains a "classic" comedy.
According to Pauline Kael, Mankiewicz didn’t work on every kind of picture. He didn’t do Westerns, for example, and once, when a studio attempted to punish him for his customary misbehavior by assigning him to a Rin Tin Tin
picture, he rebelled by turning in a script that began with the craven Rin Tin Tin frightened by a mouse and reached its climax with a house on fire and the dog taking a baby into the flames.
The Wizard of Oz
In February 1938, he was assigned as the first of ten screenwriters to work on The Wizard of Oz
. Three days after he started writing he handed in a seventeen-page treatment of what was later known as "the Kansas sequence". While Baum devoted less than a thousand words in his book to Kansas, Mankiewicz almost balanced the attention on Kansas to the section about Oz. He felt it was necessary to have the audience relate to Dorothy in a real world before transporting her to a magic one. By the end of the week he had finished writing fifty-six pages of the script and included instructions to film the scenes in Kansas in black and white. His goal, according to film historian Aljean Harmetz, was to "to capture in pictures what Baum had captured in words—the grey lifelessness of Kansas contrasted with the visual richness of Oz." He was not credited for his work on the film, however.
In looking back on his early films, Kael writes that Mankiewicz had, in fact, written (alone or with others) "about forty of the films I remember best from the twenties and thirties. I hadn’t realized how extensive his career was. ... and now that I have looked into Herman Mankiewicz’s career it’s apparent that he was a key linking figure in just the kind of movies my friends and I loved best. These were the hardest-headed periods of American movies ...[and] the most highly acclaimed directors of that period, suggests that the writers...in little more than a decade, gave American talkies their character." Director and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson
claimed that the "two most brilliant men he has ever known were George S. Kaufman and Herman Mankiewicz, and that Mankiewicz was the more brilliant of the two. ...[and] spearheaded the movement of that whole Broadway style of wisecracking, fast-talking, cynical-sentimental entertainment onto the national scene."
Banned by the Nazis
According to the New York Times, in 1935, while he was a staff writer for MGM, the studio was notified by Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels
, then Minister of Education and Propaganda under Adolf Hitler
, that films written by Mankiewicz could not be shown in Nazi Germany
unless his name was removed from the screen credits.
on the screenplay of Citizen Kane
, for which they both won an Academy Award
and later became a source of controversy over who wrote what. (Pauline Kael
attributed Kanes screenplay to Mankiewicz in an essay for which she did not interview Welles and has since been hotly disputed by Welles and Peter Bogdanovich
.) Much debate has centered around this issue, largely because of the importance of the film itself, which most agree is a fictionalized biography of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst
. According to film biographer David Thomson
, however, "No one can now deny Herman Mankiewicz credit for the germ, shape, and pointed language of the screenplay..."
Mankiewicz biographer Richard Meryman notes that the dispute had various causes, including the way the movie was promoted. When RKO opened the movie on Broadway on May 1, 1941, followed by showings at theaters in other large cities, the publicity programs that were printed included photographs of Welles as "the one-man band, directing, acting, and writing." In a letter to his father afterwards, Mankiewicz wrote, "I'm particulary furious at the incredibly insolent description of how Orson wrote his masterpiece. The fact is that there isn't one single line in the picture that wasn't in writing-writing from and by me-before ever a camera turned."
According to film historian Otto Friedrich, it made Mankiewicz "unhappy to hear Welles quoted in Louella Parsons
's column, before the question of screen credits was officially settled, as saying, 'So I wrote Citizen Kane.' Mankiewicz went to the Screen Writers Guild and declared that he was the original author. Welles later claimed that he planned on a joint credit all along, but Mankiewicz claimed that Welles offered him a bonus of ten thousand dollars if he would let Welles take full credit. ... The Screen Writers Guild eventually decreed a joint credit, with Mankiewicz's name first." Some time later, Welles commented on this allegation:
Hearst's inner circle
He became good friends with Hollywood screenwriter Charles Lederer
who was Marion Davies
's nephew. Lederer grew up as a Hollywood habitué, spending much time at San Simeon, where Davies reigned as William Randolph Hearst's mistress. As one of his admirers in the early 1930s, Hearst often invited Mankiewicz to spend the weekend at San Simeon.
"Herman told Joe [his brother] to come to the office of their mutual friend Charlie Lederer ..." “Mankiewicz found himself on story-swapping terms with the power behind it all, Hearst himself. When he had been in Hollywood only a short time, he met Marion Davies and Hearst through his friendship with Charles Lederer, a writer, then in his early twenties, whom Ben Hecht
had met and greatly admired in New York when Lederer was still in his teens. Lederer, a child prodigy, who had entered college at thirteen, got to know Mankiewicz ..." Herman eventually “saw Hearst as ‘a finagling, calculating, Machiavellian figure.’ But also, with Charlie Lederer, ... wrote and had printed parodies of Hearst newspapers ...”
In 1939, he suffered a broken leg in a driving accident and had to be hospitalized. During his hospital stay, one of his visitors was Orson Welles
, who met him earlier and had become a great admirer of his wit. During the months after his release from the hospital, he and Welles began working on story ideas which led to the creation of Citizen Kane.
Despite Welles' denial that the film was about Hearst, few people were convinced—including Hearst. After the release of Citizen Kane, Hearst pursued a longtime vendetta against Mankiewicz and Welles for writing the story.
"Certain elements in the film were taken from Mankiewicz's own experience: the sled Rosebud was based—according to some sources - on a very important bicycle that was stolen from him....[and] some of Kane's speeches are almost verbatim copies of Hearst's." Most personally, the word "rosebud" was reportedly Hearst's private nickname for Davies' clitoris. Hearst's thoughts about the film are unknown; what is certain is that his extensive chain of newspapers and radio stations blocked all mentions of the film, and refused to accept advertising for it, while some Hearst employees worked behind the scenes to block or restrict its distribution.
Academy Award celebration
Citizen Kane was nominated for an Academy Award in every possible category, including Best Original Screenplay. Meryman writes, "Herman insisted he had no chance to win, though the Hollywood Reporter had given the film first place in ten of its twelve divisions. The fear of Hearst, he felt, was still alive. And Hollywood's resentment and distrust of Welles, the nonconformist upstart, were even greater since he had lived up to his wonderboy ballyhoo." Neither Welles nor Mankiewicz attended the dinner, which was broadcast on radio. Welles was in South America filming Carnival, and Herman refused to attend. "He did not want to be humiliated," said his wife, Sara.
Richard Meryman describes the evening:
George Schaefer
accepted Herman's Oscar. "Except for this coauthor award, the Motion Picture Academy excommunicated Orson Welles...[and] as Pauline Kael put it, 'The members of the Academy ... probably felt good because their hearts had gone out to crazy, reckless Mank, their own resident loser-genius."
The film as a whole
Richard Meryman concludes that "taken as a whole...Citizen Kane was overwhelmingly Welles's film, a triumph of intense personal magic. Herman was one of the talents, the crucial one, that were mined by Welles. But one marvels at the debt those two self-destroyers owe to each other. Without Welles there would have been no supreme moment for Herman. Without Mankiewicz there would have been no perfect idea at the perfect time for Welles ... to confirm his genius... The Citizen Kane script was true creative symbiosis, a partnership greater than the sum of its parts."
and The Pride of the Yankees
), Dinner at Eight
, and Pride of St. Louis.
at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital
in Los Angeles, California
on March 5, 1953, the same day as Joseph Stalin
and Sergei Prokofiev
.
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
(1941). Earlier, he was the Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
and the drama critic for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
. Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table....
, said that Herman Mankiewicz was the "funniest man in New York". Both Mankiewicz and Welles received
Academy Awards for their screenplay. It was the only award Citizen Kane received.
He was often asked to fix the screenplays of other writers, with much of his work uncredited. What distinguished his writing from that of other writers were occasional flashes of the "Mankiewicz humor" and satire that became valued in the films of the 1930s. That style of writing included a slick, satirical, and witty humor, which depended almost totally on dialogue to carry the film. It was a style that would become associated with the "typical American film" of that period.
Film author Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
credits Mankiewicz with having written, alone or with others, "about forty of the films I remember best from the twenties and thirties," adding, "I hadn’t realized how extensive his career was. . . he was a key linking figure in just the kind of movies my friends and I loved best. These were the hardest-headed periods of American movies. Director and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures.Johnson was born in Columbus, Georgia. He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Herald Tribune...
said that the "two most brilliant men he has ever known were George S. Kaufman
George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...
and Herman Mankiewicz, and that Mankiewicz was the more brilliant of the two. ...[and] spearheaded the movement of that whole Broadway style of wisecracking, fast-talking, cynical-sentimental entertainment onto the national scene."
Among the screenplays he wrote or worked on, besides Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
, were The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
, Man of the World
Man of the World (1931 film)
Man of the World is a romantic drama, starring William Powell, Carole Lombard, and Wynne Gibson.-Plot:A young American girl visits Paris accompanied by her fiancee and her wealthy uncle...
, Dinner at Eight
Dinner at Eight (film)
Dinner at Eight is a Pre-Code 1933 comedy of manners/drama produced by MGM Studios. The film was adapted to the screen by Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz from the play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, with additional dialogue supplied by Donald Ogden Stewart. Produced by David O...
, Pride of the Yankees, and The Pride of St. Louis
The Pride of St. Louis
The Pride of St. Louis is a 1952 biographical film of the life of Major League Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jerome Herman "Dizzy" Dean. It starred Dan Dailey as Dean, Joanne Dru as his wife, and Richard Crenna as his brother Paul "Daffy" Dean, also a major league pitcher.Guy Trosper was nominated...
.
Mankiewicz's younger brother was Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...
, also an Oscar-winning Hollywood director, screenwriter, and producer.
Early life
Herman Mankiewicz was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1897. His parents were of German-Jewish ancestry: his father, Franz Mankiewicz, was born in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and emigrated to the U.S. from Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
in 1892. He arrived in the U.S. with his wife, a dressmaker named Johanna Blumenau, who was from the German-speaking Kurland region." The family lived first in New York and then moved to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, where Herman's father accepted a teaching position. In 1909, Herman's brother, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of All About Eve , which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won six. He was brother to screenwriter and drama critic Herman J...
(who himself would have a career as a successful writer, producer, and director), was born, and both boys and a sister spent their childhood there.
The family moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1913, and Herman graduated from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1917. After a period as managing editor of the American Jewish Chronicle, he became a flying cadet with the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
in 1917, and, in 1918, a private first class
Private First Class
Private First Class is a military rank held by junior enlisted persons.- Singapore :The rank of Private First Class in the Singapore Armed Forces lies between the ranks of Private and Lance-Corporal . It is usually held by conscript soldiers midway through their national service term...
with the Marines, A.E.F.
American Expeditionary Force
The American Expeditionary Forces or AEF were the United States Armed Forces sent to Europe in World War I. During the United States campaigns in World War I the AEF fought in France alongside British and French allied forces in the last year of the war, against Imperial German forces...
In 1919 and 1920, he became director of the American Red Cross
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...
News Service in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and after returning to the U.S. married Sara Aaronson, of Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
. He took his bride overseas with him on his next job as a foreign correspondent in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
from 1920 to 1922, doing political reporting for George Seldes
George Seldes
George Seldes was an American investigative journalist and media critic. The writer and critic Gilbert Seldes was his younger brother. Actress Marian Seldes is his niece....
on the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
.
He was a "bookish, introspective child who, despite his intelligence, was never able to win approval from his demanding father" who was known to belittle his achievements.
His children are screenwriter Don Mankiewicz
Don Mankiewicz
Don Mankiewicz is a screenwriter.Born in Berlin, Germany, he is the son of Herman J. Mankiewicz. He was nominated for the 1958 Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for I Want to Live! Among his many television credits are Ironside, for which he wrote the pilot, the original Star Trek and...
, politician Frank Mankiewicz
Frank Mankiewicz
Frank Fabian Mankiewicz II is an American journalist.-Biography:He grew up in Beverly Hills, California. His father, screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, co-wrote Citizen Kane, and his uncle, Joseph Mankiewicz, directed such films as All About Eve and Cleopatra.Mankiewicz received a B.A...
and the late novelist Johanna Mankiewicz Davis.
Early career
While a reporter in Berlin for the Chicago TribuneChicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, he also sent pieces on drama and books to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. At one point, he was hired in Berlin by dancer Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...
, to be her publicist in preparation for her return tour in America. At home again in the U.S., he took a job as a reporter for the New York World. He was known as a "gifted, prodigious writer," and contributed to Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
and numerous other magazines. While still in his twenties, he collaborated with Heywood Broun
Heywood Broun
Heywood Campbell Broun, Jr. was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, now known as The Newspaper Guild. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he is best remembered for his writing on social issues and...
, Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
, Robert E. Sherwood
Robert E. Sherwood
Robert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.-Biography:Born in New Rochelle, New York, he was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a well-known illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood...
, and others on a revue, and collaborated with George S. Kaufman
George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...
on a play, The Good Fellow, and with Marc Connelly
Marc Connelly
Marcus Cook Connelly was an American playwright, director, producer, performer, and lyricist. He was a key member of the Algonquin Round Table, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930.-Biography:...
on The Wild Man of Borneo. From 1923 to 1926, he was at The New York Times backing up George S. Kaufman in the drama department and soon after became the first regular theatre critic for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, writing a weekly column during 1925 and 1926. He was a member of the Algonquin Round Table
Algonquin Round Table
The Algonquin Round Table was a celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929...
. His writing attracted the notice of film producer Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger was an American film producer. An intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas, Wanger's career began at Paramount Pictures in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a...
who offered him a motion-picture contract and he soon moved to Hollywood.
Success in Hollywood
After a month in the movie business, Mankiewicz signed a year’s contract at $400 a week plus bonuses. By the end of 1927, he was head of ParamountParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
’s scenario department, and film author and historian Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
writes that "in January, 1928, there was a newspaper item reporting that he was in New York 'lining up a new set of newspaper feature writers and playwrights to bring to Hollywood,' and that 'most of the newer writers on Paramount’s staff who contributed the most successful stories of the past year' were selected by 'Mank.'" Film historian Scott Eyman notes that Mankiewicz was put in charge of writer recruitment by Paramount. However, as "a hard-drinking gambler, he hired men in his own image: Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...
, Bartlett Cormack, Edwin Justus Mayer
Edwin Justus Mayer
Edwin Justus Mayer was an American screenwriter. He wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for 47 films between 1927 and 1958....
, writers comfortable with the iconoclasm of big-city newsrooms who would introduce their sardonic worldliness to movie audiences.
Becoming a major screenwriter
Kael notes that "beginning in 1926, Mankiewicz worked on an astounding number of films." In 1927 and 1928, he did the titles
Intertitle
In motion pictures, an intertitle is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of the photographed action, at various points, generally to convey character dialogue, or descriptive narrative material related to, but not necessarily covered by, the material photographed.Intertitles...
(the printed dialogue and explanations) for at least twenty-five films that starred Clara Bow
Clara Bow
Clara Gordon Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom in the silent film era of the 1920s. It was her appearance as a spunky shopgirl in the film It that brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl." Bow came to personify the roaring twenties and is described as its leading sex...
, Bebe Daniels
Bebe Daniels
Bebe Daniels was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent movie era as a child actress, became a star in musicals like 42nd Street, and later gained further fame on radio and television in Britain...
, Nancy Carroll
Nancy Carroll
Nancy Carroll was an American actress.-Career:She was christened Ann Veronica Lahiff in New York City. Of Irish parentage, she and her sister once performed a dancing act in a local contest of amateur talent. This led her to a stage career and then to the screen. She began her acting career in...
, Wallace Beery
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...
, and other public favorites. By then, sound had come in, and in 1929 he did the script as well as the dialogue for The Dummy, and did the scripts for many directors, including William Wellman and Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...
.
Other screenwriters made large contributions, too, but "probably none larger than Mankiewicz’s," according to Kael. At the beginning of the sound era he was one of the highest-paid writers in the world, because, Kael writes, "he wrote the kind of movies that were disapproved of as "fast" and immoral. His heroes weren’t soft-eyed and bucolic; he brought good-humored toughness to the movies, and energy and astringency. And the public responded, because it was eager for modern American subjects." He was described as "a Promethean
Prometheus
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...
wit bound in a Promethean body, one of the most entertaining men in existence...[and] called the 'Central Park West Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
' by Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...
.
Writer of satire and comedy
Shortly after his arrival on the West Coast, he sent a telegram to journalist-friend Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...
in New York: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around." He attracted other New York writers to Hollywood who contributed to a burst of creative, tough, and sardonic styles of writing for the fast-growing movie industry. What distinguished his screenplays were "occasional flashes of the Mankiewicz humor and satire that proved to be a foreshadowing of a new type of slick, satirical, typically American film that depended almost totally on dialogue for its success."
Between 1929 and 1935, he was credited with working on a least twenty films, many of which he received no credit for. Between 1930 and 1932 he was either producer or associate producer on four comedies and helped write their screenplays without credit: Laughter, Monkey Business
Monkey Business (1931 film)
Monkey Business is a 1931 comedy film. It is the third of the Marx Brothers' released movies, and the first not to be an adaptation of one of their Broadway shows. The film stars the four brothers: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, and Zeppo Marx, and screen comedienne Thelma Todd. It is...
, Horse Feathers
Horse Feathers
Horse Feathers is a Marx Brothers film comedy. It stars the four Marx Brothers and Thelma Todd. It was written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S. J. Perelman, and Will B. Johnstone. Kalmar and Ruby also wrote some of the original music for the film...
, and Million Dollar Legs, which many critics considered one of the funniest comedies of the early 1930s. In 1933, he co-wrote Dinner at Eight
Dinner at Eight (film)
Dinner at Eight is a Pre-Code 1933 comedy of manners/drama produced by MGM Studios. The film was adapted to the screen by Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz from the play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, with additional dialogue supplied by Donald Ogden Stewart. Produced by David O...
, which was based on the George S. Kaufman/Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
play, and became one of the most popular comedies at that time and remains a "classic" comedy.
According to Pauline Kael, Mankiewicz didn’t work on every kind of picture. He didn’t do Westerns, for example, and once, when a studio attempted to punish him for his customary misbehavior by assigning him to a Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin
Rin Tin Tin was the name given to a dog adopted from a WWI battlefield that went on to star in twenty-three Hollywood films. The name was subsequently given to several related German Shepherd dogs featured in fictional stories on film, radio and television.-Origins:The first of the line Rin Tin...
picture, he rebelled by turning in a script that began with the craven Rin Tin Tin frightened by a mouse and reached its climax with a house on fire and the dog taking a baby into the flames.
The Wizard of Oz
In February 1938, he was assigned as the first of ten screenwriters to work on The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
. Three days after he started writing he handed in a seventeen-page treatment of what was later known as "the Kansas sequence". While Baum devoted less than a thousand words in his book to Kansas, Mankiewicz almost balanced the attention on Kansas to the section about Oz. He felt it was necessary to have the audience relate to Dorothy in a real world before transporting her to a magic one. By the end of the week he had finished writing fifty-six pages of the script and included instructions to film the scenes in Kansas in black and white. His goal, according to film historian Aljean Harmetz, was to "to capture in pictures what Baum had captured in words—the grey lifelessness of Kansas contrasted with the visual richness of Oz." He was not credited for his work on the film, however.
In looking back on his early films, Kael writes that Mankiewicz had, in fact, written (alone or with others) "about forty of the films I remember best from the twenties and thirties. I hadn’t realized how extensive his career was. ... and now that I have looked into Herman Mankiewicz’s career it’s apparent that he was a key linking figure in just the kind of movies my friends and I loved best. These were the hardest-headed periods of American movies ...[and] the most highly acclaimed directors of that period, suggests that the writers...in little more than a decade, gave American talkies their character." Director and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Johnson
Nunnally Hunter Johnson was an American filmmaker who wrote, produced, and directed motion pictures.Johnson was born in Columbus, Georgia. He began his career as a journalist, writing for the Columbus Enquirer Sun, the Savannah Press, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Herald Tribune...
claimed that the "two most brilliant men he has ever known were George S. Kaufman and Herman Mankiewicz, and that Mankiewicz was the more brilliant of the two. ...[and] spearheaded the movement of that whole Broadway style of wisecracking, fast-talking, cynical-sentimental entertainment onto the national scene."
Banned by the Nazis
According to the New York Times, in 1935, while he was a staff writer for MGM, the studio was notified by Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
, then Minister of Education and Propaganda under Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, that films written by Mankiewicz could not be shown in Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
unless his name was removed from the screen credits.
Citizen Kane
Mankiewicz is best known for his collaboration with Orson WellesOrson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
on the screenplay of Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
, for which they both won an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
and later became a source of controversy over who wrote what. (Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
attributed Kanes screenplay to Mankiewicz in an essay for which she did not interview Welles and has since been hotly disputed by Welles and Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
.) Much debate has centered around this issue, largely because of the importance of the film itself, which most agree is a fictionalized biography of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
. According to film biographer David Thomson
David Thomson (film critic)
David Thomson is a film critic and historian based in the United States and the author of more than 20 books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.-Career:...
, however, "No one can now deny Herman Mankiewicz credit for the germ, shape, and pointed language of the screenplay..."
Mankiewicz biographer Richard Meryman notes that the dispute had various causes, including the way the movie was promoted. When RKO opened the movie on Broadway on May 1, 1941, followed by showings at theaters in other large cities, the publicity programs that were printed included photographs of Welles as "the one-man band, directing, acting, and writing." In a letter to his father afterwards, Mankiewicz wrote, "I'm particulary furious at the incredibly insolent description of how Orson wrote his masterpiece. The fact is that there isn't one single line in the picture that wasn't in writing-writing from and by me-before ever a camera turned."
According to film historian Otto Friedrich, it made Mankiewicz "unhappy to hear Welles quoted in Louella Parsons
Louella Parsons
Louella Parsons was the first American news-writer movie columnist in the United States. She was a gossip columnist who, for many years, was an influential arbiter of Hollywood mores, often feared and hated by the individuals, mostly actors, whose careers she could negatively impact via her...
's column, before the question of screen credits was officially settled, as saying, 'So I wrote Citizen Kane.' Mankiewicz went to the Screen Writers Guild and declared that he was the original author. Welles later claimed that he planned on a joint credit all along, but Mankiewicz claimed that Welles offered him a bonus of ten thousand dollars if he would let Welles take full credit. ... The Screen Writers Guild eventually decreed a joint credit, with Mankiewicz's name first." Some time later, Welles commented on this allegation:
God, if I hadn't loved him I would have hated him after all those ridiculous stories, persuading people I was offering him money to have his name taken off...that he would be carrying on like this, denouncing me as a coauthor, screaming around.
Hearst's inner circle
He became good friends with Hollywood screenwriter Charles Lederer
Charles Lederer
Charles Lederer was a prolific and well-connected American film writer and director of the 30s to the 60s, from a prominent theatrical family with close ties to the Hearst dynasty.-Early life:...
who was Marion Davies
Marion Davies
Marion Davies was an American film actress. Davies is best remembered for her relationship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, as her high-profile social life often obscured her professional career....
's nephew. Lederer grew up as a Hollywood habitué, spending much time at San Simeon, where Davies reigned as William Randolph Hearst's mistress. As one of his admirers in the early 1930s, Hearst often invited Mankiewicz to spend the weekend at San Simeon.
"Herman told Joe [his brother] to come to the office of their mutual friend Charlie Lederer ..." “Mankiewicz found himself on story-swapping terms with the power behind it all, Hearst himself. When he had been in Hollywood only a short time, he met Marion Davies and Hearst through his friendship with Charles Lederer, a writer, then in his early twenties, whom Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...
had met and greatly admired in New York when Lederer was still in his teens. Lederer, a child prodigy, who had entered college at thirteen, got to know Mankiewicz ..." Herman eventually “saw Hearst as ‘a finagling, calculating, Machiavellian figure.’ But also, with Charlie Lederer, ... wrote and had printed parodies of Hearst newspapers ...”
In 1939, he suffered a broken leg in a driving accident and had to be hospitalized. During his hospital stay, one of his visitors was Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, who met him earlier and had become a great admirer of his wit. During the months after his release from the hospital, he and Welles began working on story ideas which led to the creation of Citizen Kane.
Despite Welles' denial that the film was about Hearst, few people were convinced—including Hearst. After the release of Citizen Kane, Hearst pursued a longtime vendetta against Mankiewicz and Welles for writing the story.
"Certain elements in the film were taken from Mankiewicz's own experience: the sled Rosebud was based—according to some sources - on a very important bicycle that was stolen from him....[and] some of Kane's speeches are almost verbatim copies of Hearst's." Most personally, the word "rosebud" was reportedly Hearst's private nickname for Davies' clitoris. Hearst's thoughts about the film are unknown; what is certain is that his extensive chain of newspapers and radio stations blocked all mentions of the film, and refused to accept advertising for it, while some Hearst employees worked behind the scenes to block or restrict its distribution.
Academy Award celebration
Citizen Kane was nominated for an Academy Award in every possible category, including Best Original Screenplay. Meryman writes, "Herman insisted he had no chance to win, though the Hollywood Reporter had given the film first place in ten of its twelve divisions. The fear of Hearst, he felt, was still alive. And Hollywood's resentment and distrust of Welles, the nonconformist upstart, were even greater since he had lived up to his wonderboy ballyhoo." Neither Welles nor Mankiewicz attended the dinner, which was broadcast on radio. Welles was in South America filming Carnival, and Herman refused to attend. "He did not want to be humiliated," said his wife, Sara.
Richard Meryman describes the evening:
On the night of the awards, Herman turned on his radio and sat in his bedroom chair. Sara lay on the bed. As the screenplay category approached, he pretended to be hardly listening. Suddenly from the radio, half screamed, came "Herman J. Mankiewicz." Welles's name as coauthor was drowned out by voices all through the audience calling out, "Mank! Mank! Where is he?" And audible above all others was Irene Selznick: "Where is he?"
George Schaefer
George Schaefer (film producer)
George Schaefer was a movie producer and once the president of RKO in 1941 when Orson Welles made his classic film Citizen Kane. Schaefer, a top executive at United Artists, was hired as president of RKO in 1938...
accepted Herman's Oscar. "Except for this coauthor award, the Motion Picture Academy excommunicated Orson Welles...[and] as Pauline Kael put it, 'The members of the Academy ... probably felt good because their hearts had gone out to crazy, reckless Mank, their own resident loser-genius."
The film as a whole
Richard Meryman concludes that "taken as a whole...Citizen Kane was overwhelmingly Welles's film, a triumph of intense personal magic. Herman was one of the talents, the crucial one, that were mined by Welles. But one marvels at the debt those two self-destroyers owe to each other. Without Welles there would have been no supreme moment for Herman. Without Mankiewicz there would have been no perfect idea at the perfect time for Welles ... to confirm his genius... The Citizen Kane script was true creative symbiosis, a partnership greater than the sum of its parts."
Other films
Mankiewicz wrote and co-wrote many other major screenplays (including the original version of Gentlemen Prefer BlondesGentlemen Prefer Blondes (lost film)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was a silent film directed by Mal St. Clair, co-written by Anita Loos based on her novel, and released by Paramount Pictures. No copies are known to exist, and it is now considered to be a lost film...
and The Pride of the Yankees
The Pride of the Yankees
The Pride of the Yankees is a 1942 American film directed by Sam Wood and starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, and Walter Brennan. The film is a tribute to the legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, who died only one year before the film's release, at age 37, from amyotrophic lateral...
), Dinner at Eight
Dinner at Eight (film)
Dinner at Eight is a Pre-Code 1933 comedy of manners/drama produced by MGM Studios. The film was adapted to the screen by Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz from the play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, with additional dialogue supplied by Donald Ogden Stewart. Produced by David O...
, and Pride of St. Louis.
Death
Mankiewicz was a heavy drinker. He died of uremic poisoningUremia
Uremia or uraemia is a term used to loosely describe the illness accompanying kidney failure , in particular the nitrogenous waste products associated with the failure of this organ....
at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Originally established as Kaspare Cohn Hospital in 1902, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit, tertiary 958-bed hospital and multi-specialty academic health science centre located in Los Angeles, California, US. Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital employs a staff of over...
in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
on March 5, 1953, the same day as Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
.
Writing filmography
He was involved with the following films:- Lux Video TheatreLux Video TheatreLux Video Theatre, is a weekly television anthology series that was produced from 1950 until 1959. The series presented both comedy and drama in original teleplays, as well as abridged adaptations of films and plays....
(TV series) — Writer (1 episode, 1955) - The Enchanted CottageThe Enchanted Cottage (1945 film)The Enchanted Cottage is a 1945 romantic film fantasy starring Robert Young, Dorothy McGuire, and Mildred Natwick. It was based on a play by Arthur Wing Pinero...
(1955) — Writer (original screenplay) - The Pride of St. LouisThe Pride of St. LouisThe Pride of St. Louis is a 1952 biographical film of the life of Major League Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jerome Herman "Dizzy" Dean. It starred Dan Dailey as Dean, Joanne Dru as his wife, and Richard Crenna as his brother Paul "Daffy" Dean, also a major league pitcher.Guy Trosper was nominated...
(1952) — Writer (writer) - A Woman's SecretA Woman's SecretA Woman's Secret is a 1949 film noir. It was based on the novel Mortgage on Life by Vicki Baum. It was directed by Nicholas Ray and starred Maureen O'Hara, Gloria Grahame and Melvyn Douglas.-Plot summary:...
(1949) — Writer (screenplay), producer - The Spanish MainThe Spanish MainThe Spanish Main is an adventure film starring Paul Henreid, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Slezak and Binnie Barnes, and directed by Frank Borzage. It was RKO's first all-Technicolor film since Becky Sharp ten years before....
(1945) — Writer (screenplay) - The Enchanted CottageThe Enchanted Cottage (1945 film)The Enchanted Cottage is a 1945 romantic film fantasy starring Robert Young, Dorothy McGuire, and Mildred Natwick. It was based on a play by Arthur Wing Pinero...
(1945) — Writer (writer) - Christmas HolidayChristmas HolidayChristmas Holiday is a 1944 American drama film directed by Robert Siodmak. The black-and-white film noir is loosely based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Producer Felix Jackson chose this project as a dramatic vehicle for Deanna Durbin. The screenplay was adapted by Herman J. Mankiewicz, who...
(1944) — Writer (writer) - The Good Fellows (1943) — Writer (play)
- Stand by for ActionStand by for ActionStand by for Action is a 1942 war film directed by Robert Z. Leonard, starring Robert Taylor, Brian Donlevy and Charles Laughton and featuring Walter Brennan. Suggested by a story by Laurence Kirk, and with an original story by Captain Harvey Haislip and R. C. Sherriff, the film's screenplay was...
(1942) — Writer (screenplay) - The Pride of the YankeesThe Pride of the YankeesThe Pride of the Yankees is a 1942 American film directed by Sam Wood and starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, and Walter Brennan. The film is a tribute to the legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, who died only one year before the film's release, at age 37, from amyotrophic lateral...
(1942) — Writer (screenplay) - This Time for KeepsThis Time for KeepsThis Time for Keeps is an American romantic musical film released in 1947 and produced by MGM. It is about a soldier, returning home from war who does not wish to work for his father's opera company or to continue his relationship with his pre-war lover. It stars Esther Williams, Jimmy Durante,...
(1942) — Writer (characters) - Rise and Shine (1941) — Writer (screenplay)
- Citizen KaneCitizen KaneCitizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
(1941) — Writer (screenplay), Newspaperman (uncredited) - The Wild Man of Borneo (1941) — Writer (play)
- Keeping CompanyKeeping CompanyKeeping Company is a 1940 drama film starring Frank Morgan as a real estate broker with three daughters who all have their own problems. The film was followed by This Time for Keeps .-Cast:*Frank Morgan - Harry C. Thomas...
(1940) — Writer (story) - Comrade XComrade XComrade X is a 1940 lighthearted spy movie, starring Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr and directed by King Vidor.-Plot summary:In the Soviet Union, American reporter McKinley "Mac" Thompson secretly writes unflattering stories, attributed to "Comrade X", for his newspaper...
(1940) — Writer (uncredited) - The Ghost Comes Home (1940) — Writer (contributing writer)
- The Wizard of OzThe Wizard of Oz (1939 film)The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
(1939) — Writer (uncredited) - It's a Wonderful World (1939) — Writer (story)
- My Dear Miss Aldrich (1937) — Writer (original story and screenplay)
- The Emperor's CandlesticksThe Emperor's Candlesticks (film)The Emperor's Candlesticks is a 1937 film starring William Powell and Luise Rainer, based on the novel of the same name by Baroness Orczy. It was directed by George Fitzmaurice.-Plot:...
(1937) — contributor to dialogue (uncredited) - John Meade's Woman (1937) — Writer (writer)
- Love in Exile (1936) — Writer (writer)
- The Show Goes OnThe Show Goes OnThe Show Goes On is a 1937 British musical comedy film directed by Basil Dean and starring Gracie Fields, Owen Nares and John Stuart.-Plot summary:...
(1936) — Writer (writer) - EscapadeEscapade (1935 film)Escapade is a 1935 romantic comedy film starring William Powell and Luise Rainer. A philandering painter falls in love, but a prior affair with a married woman causes complications.-Cast:*William Powell as Fritz*Luise Rainer as Leopoldine Dur...
(1935) — Writer (writer) - After Office HoursAfter Office HoursAfter Office Hours is a 1935 film starring Clark Gable and Constance Bennett and directed by Robert Z. Leonard.-Plot:Jim Branch , news editor, falls for Sharon Norwood while trying to uncover a murder mystery.-Cast:...
(1935) — Writer (writer) - Stamboul Quest (1934) — Writer (screenplay)
- The Show-OffThe Show-OffThe Show-Off is a 1946 film directed by Harry Beaumont. It stars Red Skelton and Marilyn Maxwell. Previously filmed in 1926 as The Show Off starring Ford Sterling, Lois Wilson and Louise Brooks and in 1934 as The Show-Off with Spencer Tracy also with Lois Wilson.-Cast:*Red Skelton as J. Aubrey...
(1934) — Writer (writer) - Duck Soup (1933) — producer (uncredited)
- Meet the BaronMeet the BaronMeet the Baron is a comedy film starring Jack Pearl, Jimmy Durante, Edna May Oliver, Zasu Pitts, Ted Healy and the Three Stooges.-Plot:...
(1933) — Writer (writer) - Dinner at EightDinner at Eight (film)Dinner at Eight is a Pre-Code 1933 comedy of manners/drama produced by MGM Studios. The film was adapted to the screen by Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz from the play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, with additional dialogue supplied by Donald Ogden Stewart. Produced by David O...
(1933) — Writer (screenplay) - Another Language (1933) — Writer (writer)
- Horse FeathersHorse FeathersHorse Feathers is a Marx Brothers film comedy. It stars the four Marx Brothers and Thelma Todd. It was written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S. J. Perelman, and Will B. Johnstone. Kalmar and Ruby also wrote some of the original music for the film...
(1932) — producer (uncredited) - Million Dollar Legs (1932) — producer
- Girl CrazyGirl CrazyGirl Crazy is a 1930 musical with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book by Guy Bolton and John McGowan. Ethel Merman made her stage debut in this musical production....
(1932) — Writer (writer) - Dancers in the DarkDancers in the DarkDancers in the Dark is a 1932 film about a taxi dancer , a big band leader , and a gangster . The movie was written by Herman J...
(1932) — Writer (writer) - The Lost SquadronThe Lost SquadronThe Lost Squadron is a action film starring Richard Dix, Mary Astor, and Robert Armstrong, with Erich von Stroheim and Joel McCrea, and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is about three World War I pilots who find jobs after the war as Hollywood stunt fliers...
(1932) — Writer (additional dialogue) - Monkey BusinessMonkey Business (1931 film)Monkey Business is a 1931 comedy film. It is the third of the Marx Brothers' released movies, and the first not to be an adaptation of one of their Broadway shows. The film stars the four brothers: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, and Zeppo Marx, and screen comedienne Thelma Todd. It is...
(1931) — producer (uncredited) - Ladies' ManLadies' Man (1931 film)Ladies' Man is a 1931 American drama film directed by Lothar Mendes, starring William Powell and Kay Francis. It was released on May 9, 1931 by Paramount.-Cast:*William Powell as Jamie Darricott*Kay Francis as Norma Page*Carole Lombard as Rachel Fendley...
(1931) — Writer (writer) - Man of the World (1931) — Writer (screenplay) (story)
- Jede Frau hat etwas (1931) — Writer (adaptation)
- The Front PageThe Front PageThe Front Page is a hit Broadway comedy about tabloid newspaper reporters on the police beat, written by one-time Chicago reporters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur which was first produced in 1928.-Synopsis:...
(1931) — Bit (uncredited) - Salga de la cocina (1931) — Writer (adaptation)
- The Royal Family of BroadwayThe Royal Family of BroadwayThe Royal Family of Broadway is a comedy film, directed by George Cukor and Cyril Gardner, and released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was adapted by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Gertrude Purcell from the play The Royal Family by Edna Ferber and George S...
(1930) — Writer (adaptation) - LaughterLaughter (film)Laughter is a 1930 film directed by Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast and starring Fredric March, Nancy Carroll and Frank Morgan.The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story.-Plot:...
(1930) — Writer (writer) - Love Among the Millionaires (1930) — Writer (dialogue)
- True to the Navy (1930) — Writer (dialogue)
- Ladies Love BrutesLadies Love BrutesLadies Love Brutes is a 1930 American motion picture starring George Bancroft, Mary Astor, and Fredric March. The film was directed by Rowland V...
(1930) — Writer (screenplay) - HoneyHoneyHoney is a sweet food made by bees using nectar from flowers. The variety produced by honey bees is the one most commonly referred to and is the type of honey collected by beekeepers and consumed by humans...
(1930) — Writer (scenario) (titles) - Men Are Like That (1930) — Writer (adaptation)
- The Vagabond KingThe Vagabond King (1930 film)The Vagabond King is a 1930 American musical operetta film photographed entirely in two-color Technicolor. The plot of the film was based on the 1925 operetta of the same name, which was based on the 1901 play If I Were King by Justin Huntly McCarthy. The play told the story of a renegade French...
(1930) — Writer (screenplay) (story) - The MightyThe MightyThe Mighty is a 1998 drama film based on the book Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick.-Plot:Kevin is a 12-year-old boy who suffers Mucopolysaccharidosis IV, or Morquio syndrome. He is extremely intelligent and prone to flights of fancy, but is physically crippled and is forced to walk with crutches...
(1929) — Writer (titles) - ThunderboltThunderbolt (1929 film)Thunderbolt is a 1929 proto-noir which tells the story of a criminal, facing execution, who wants to kill the man in the next cell for being in love with his girlfriend. It stars George Bancroft, Fay Wray, Richard Arlen, Tully Marshall and Eugenie Besserer....
(1929) — Writer (writer) - The Man I Love (1929) — Writer (story)
- The Dummy (1929) — Writer (writer)
- The Canary Murder CaseThe Canary Murder Case (film)The Canary Murder Case is a crime/mystery film made by Paramount Pictures, directed by Malcolm St. Clair and Frank Tuttle.The screenplay was written by S.S. Van Dine , Albert S. Le Vino and Florence Ryerson, based on novel The Canary Murder Case by S.S...
(1929) — Writer (titles) - The Love Doctor (1929) — Writer (titles)
- Three Weekends (1928) — Writer (titles)
- Gentlemen Prefer BlondesGentlemen Prefer Blondes (lost film)Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was a silent film directed by Mal St. Clair, co-written by Anita Loos based on her novel, and released by Paramount Pictures. No copies are known to exist, and it is now considered to be a lost film...
(1928) — Writer (titles) - The BarkerThe BarkerThe Barker is a 1928 romantic drama film which tells the story of a woman who comes between a man and his estranged son. It stars Milton Sills, Dorothy Mackaill, Betty Compson, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and released by First National Pictures in December 1928...
(1928) — Writer (titles) - AvalancheAvalancheAn avalanche is a sudden rapid flow of snow down a slope, occurring when either natural triggers or human activity causes a critical escalating transition from the slow equilibrium evolution of the snow pack. Typically occurring in mountainous terrain, an avalanche can mix air and water with the...
(1928) — Writer (screenplay) (titles) - The Water HoleThe Water HoleThe Water Hole is a Western film starring Jack Holt, Nancy Carroll, and John Boles, based on a novel by Zane Grey, and released by Paramount Pictures.The film had sequences filmed in Technicolor, and was filmed in Death Valley, California....
(1928) — Writer (titles) - The Mating Call (1928) — Writer (titles), Newspaperman (uncredited)
- The Magnificent Flirt (1928) — Writer (titles)
- The Dragnet (1928) — Writer (titles)
- His Tiger Wife (1928) — Writer (titles)
- Abie's Irish RoseAbie's Irish Rose (film)Abie's Irish Rose is a 1928 early talking film directed by Victor Fleming, based on the play of the same title by Anne Nichols. It tells the story of a Jewish boy, Abie Levy, who falls in love with and secretly marries Rosemary Murphy, an Irish Catholic girl, but lies to his family, saying that...
(1928) — Writer (titles) - A Night of MysteryA Night of MysteryA Night of Mystery is a 1928 silent American drama film directed by Lothar Mendes and starring Evelyn Brent.- Cast :* Adolphe Menjou as Captain Ferreol* Evelyn Brent as Gilberte Boismartel* Nora Lane as Thérèse D'Egremont...
(1928/I) — Writer (titles) - Something Always HappensSomething Always HappensSomething Always Happens is a 1934 British film directed by Michael Powell. It was made as a Quota quickie.- Plot :Peter Middleton is an unemployed car salesman. He maintains his optimism and refuses the charity offered by his friends, saying that having no money would force him to go to work. He...
(1928) — Writer (titles) - The Last CommandThe Last Command (film)The Last Command is a 1928 silent film directed by Josef von Sternberg, and written by John F. Goodrich and Herman J. Mankiewicz, from a story by Lajos Biró. Star Emil Jannings won the very first Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performances in this film and The Way of All...
(1928) — Writer (titles) - Love and Learn (1928) — Writer (titles)
- Two Flaming Youths (1927) — Writer (titles)
- The Gay Defender (1927) — Writer (titles)
- Honeymoon Hate (1927) — Writer (titles)
- The City Gone Wild (1927) — Writer (titles)
- Fashions for Women (1927) — Writer (writer)
- Stranded in Paris (1926) — Writer (adaptation)
Quotations
- "There but for the grace of God - goes God."
- "I don't know how it is that you start working at something you don't like, and before you know it you're an old man."
- "If I hadn't been so rich, I might have been a really great man." (from Citizen Kane)
- "Never care what anybody says." (Told to Oscar LevantOscar LevantOscar Levant was an American pianist, composer, author, comedian, and actor. He was more famous for his mordant character and witticisms, on the radio and in movies and television, than for his music.-Life and career:...
, who admitted: "I took his advice with deleterious results.")
Further reading
- Kael, Pauline, The Citizen Kane Book, (1971) Bantam Books
- Lambert, Gavin, On Cukor (1972) Putnam
- Marion, Frances, Off With Their Heads (1972) Macmillan
- Naremore, James, The Magic World of Orson Welles (1978) Oxford University Press
- Mankiewicz, Herman J. Fiction, "The Big Game," The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, November 14, 1925, p. 11 - Mankiewicz, Herman J. Fiction, "A New Yorker in the provinces," The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, February 6, 1926, p. 16