Joseph L. Mankiewicz Centennial
Four-time Academy Award winner screenwriter-director-producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz will be saluted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a special 50th anniversary screening of a recently restored print of Suddenly, Last Summer, starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor (above, and right, with Mankiewicz), and Montgomery Clift. The screening will take place on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will also celebrate the recent gift of the Joseph L. Mankiewicz Papers to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Turner Classic Movies host and The Young Turks co-creator Ben Mankiewicz, Joseph L.’s great nephew and grandson of Citizen Kane co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, will host the salute, which will include a panel discussion with Mankiewicz’s family and friends prior to the screening.
I’ve seen the majority of the 20 or so feature films directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. There are three things nearly all of them have in common: class, intelligence, and great acting. Before directing his first feature, Mankiewicz went through a long apprenticeship, spanning nearly two decades and several dozen films at three studios.
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 11, 1909, Mankiewicz began his film career writing intertitles at the twilight of the silent era. From there, he graduated to writing screenplays (mostly at Paramount), and by the mid-1930s was producing movies at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Among his MGM credits are classics such as Fritz Lang’s anti-lynching drama Fury (1936), the Oscar-nominated comedy The Philadelphia Story (1940), and the first Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicle, Woman of the Year (1942).
Mankiewicz resumed his writing duties in the mid-1940s, when he switched over to Twentieth Century Fox. Shortly thereafter his directorial career kicked off. He directed Gene Tierney twice — in the Gothic Dragonwyck (1946) and in the romantic fantasy The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) — eliciting one of the actress’ best performances in the latter film.
Additionally, Mankiewicz guided Ronald Colman in The Late George Apley (1947), one of the veteran actor’s last film appearances; provided Edward G. Robinson with one of his last great major roles in the noirish House of Strangers (1949); and won Academy Awards for both directing and writing the dramatic comedy A Letter to Three Wives (above, 1949), in which Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, and Ann Sothern wonder which of them has just lost her husband to another woman. (The best film Oscar that year went to Robert Rossen’s political melodrama All the King’s Men.)
The following year, Mankiewicz would repeat that feat, winning Academy Wards for writing and directing All About Eve, which also won the best picture Oscar. This sparklingly witty (and every now and then somewhat melodramatic) tale of an ambitious actress wannabe who weasels her way into the den of a Broadway star, All About Eve received no less than fourteen Academy Award nominations (a record tied by Titanic nearly half a century later), five of those in the acting categories: Bette Davis (replacing Claudette Colbert) and Anne Baxter (replacing Jeanne Crain) as best actresses; Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter as best supporting actresses; and George Sanders (above, with Baxter, Davis, and Copacabana School of Acting grad Marilyn Monroe) as best supporting actor. (Only Sanders came out victorious.)
Also in 1950, Mankiewicz directed and co-wrote (with Lesser Samuels) No Way Out, a historically important (though dramatically conventional) tale in which ethnic relations play an important role, and which featured Sidney Poitier as a professional black man — a doctor to boot — something that was a rarity in those days.
Personally, I find Mankiewicz’s two All About Eve follow-ups to be — along with The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and The Barefoot Contessa (1954, right, with Ava Gardner) — his best efforts: the adult dramatic comedy People Will Talk (1951), with a uniformly flawless cast that includes Cary Grant, Jeanne Crain (replacing Anne Baxter), and Finlay Currie; and 5 Fingers (1952), an excellent spy thriller starring James Mason and Danielle Darrieux.
Mankiewicz’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1953) earned Marlon Brando an Oscar nomination, while The Barefoot Contessa inexplicably didn’t earn its star, Ava Gardner (in a role inspired by Rita Hayworth’s life), a best actress nod. (Fellow player Edmond O’Brien, however, did go on to win a best supporting actor Oscar.) Though criticized by some for being overlong and superficial, I find The Barefoot Contessa both fascinating and quite profound in its (subtly) caustic look at the trappings of fame.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz Tribute: SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER – Part II
Photos: Courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library
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Tags: 5 Fingers, A Letter to Three Wives, Academy Awards, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, All About Eve, All the King's Men, Ann Sothern, Anne Baxter, Ava Gardner, Ben Mankiewicz, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Celeste Holm, Citizen Kane, Classic Movies, Claudette Colbert, Danielle Darrieux, Dragonwyck, Edmond O'Brien, Edward G. Robinson, Elizabeth Taylor, Finlay Currie, Fritz Lang, Fury, Gay Interest, Gene Tierney, George Sanders, Herman J. Mankiewicz, House of Strangers, James Mason, Jeanne Crain, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Julius Caesar, Katharine Hepburn, Linda Darnell, Los Angeles Screenings, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, No Way Out, People Will Talk, Rita Hayworth, Robert Rossen, Ronald Colman, Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, Suddenly Last Summer, TCM, The Barefoot Contessa, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Late George Apley, The Philadelphia Story, The Young Turks, Thelma Ritter, Turner Classic Movies
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