Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark: NO WAY OUT Screening

Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark in No Way Out

Ruby Dee will be the special guest at a screening of No Way Out (1950), part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Monday Nights with Oscar” series on September 21 at 7 p.m. at the Academy Theater in New York City.
Film historian and scholar Foster Hirsch will host this celebration of the centennial of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s birth and the recent gift of Mankiewicz’ papers to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library.
In the socially conscious No Way Out, Richard Widmark plays a racist patient — and petty criminal — who, following his brother’s death, becomes intent on destroying the life [...]

Sidney Poitier, Martin Landau, Ben Mankiewicz at Joseph L. Mankiewicz Salute

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented "An Academy Centennial Salute to Joseph L. Mankiewicz," on Thursday, May 21, 2009, at the Academy’s headquarters in Beverly Hills.
Pictured above at the reception for the event from left to right:
Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz (nephew); Sidney Poitier, who was featured in Mankiewicz’s 1950 drama No Way Out; Rosemary Mankiewicz (widow, seated); Martin Landau, who had a supporting role in Cleopatra; Academy president Sid Ganis; C.O "Doc" Erickson (seated), production manager during the making of Cleopatra; screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz (son), among whose credits are Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die; and John Mankiewicz (nephew).
Photos: Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S.
Click on the photos [...]

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 [...]

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Tribute: SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Centennial – Part I
And if Guys and Dolls (1955) was a bore — just about everyone in this film musical is miscast, from Brando to Mankiewicz himself — the director recovered his touch with the adult (and bizarre) Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), a psychotic psychological drama adapted by Gore Vidal and (officially) Tennessee Williams from Williams’s own play. (Williams later said he had nothing to do with the film version.)
The story follows a young woman (Elizabeth Taylor) who is sent to a psychiatric hospital after she suffers a nervous breakdown following some horrific traumatic experience. Things can get quite heady — bad pun intended — when you mix traditional Southern [...]

DGA vs. Academy Winners

DGA vs. Academy Winners

Catherine Zeta Jones in Chicago (top); Adrien Brody in The Pianist (bottom)

Since its inception in 1948, 51 out of 59 winners of the Directors Guild Award have gone on to win the best director Academy Award.
The eight exceptions are:
 
1948
DGA – Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives*
AA – John Huston for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
* Mankiewicz won the 1948 DGA for A Letter to Three Wives, as the award period extended into early 1949. He went on to win a 1949 Oscar for that film.
 
1949
DGA – Robert Rossen for All the King’s Men
AA – Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives (see above)
 
1968
DGA – Anthony Harvey [...]

The DGA vs. the Academy: 1950s

DGA vs. Academy nominees

Ann Sothern, Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain in A Letter to Three Wives (top); Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (bottom)

The DGA vs. the Academy: Introduction
Since pre-1970 DGA finalists often consisted of more than five directors, it’s obvious that the DGA’s and the Academy’s lists couldn’t fully match. In the list below, the years before 1970 include DGA finalists who didn’t receive an Academy Award nod and, if applicable, those Academy Award-nominated directors not found in the (usually lengthier) DGA list.
The number in parentheses next to "DGA" indicates that year’s number of DGA finalists if other than five. Source: IMDb.
 

1948
DGA (04): Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives* and Howard Hawks for Red [...]

The DGA vs. the Academy

Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi in Summertime

In 1948, the 12-year-old Directors Guild of America (DGA), then known as the Screen Directors Guild (SDG), began handing out yearly achievement awards. George Sidney, Frank Capra, Delmer Daves, John Ford, H. Bruce Humberstone, Irving Pichel, Norman Taurog, and, ex-officio, Guild president George Marshall took part in the initial Awards Committee, which selected the Directors Guild Award honorees.
Before 1970, the Guild’s yearly list of finalists consisted of a variable number of directors, usually more than five. From 1970 on, when the Directors Guild began restricting its list of nominees to five directors per year, a DGA nod has usually translated into an Oscar nod. There have been, however, quite a few exceptions to [...]

Best Films – 1947

Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrar in Black Narcissus
FILM
Black Narcissus
d, scr: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Cheyenne
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Alan Le May, Thames Williamson
Crossfire
d: Edward Dmytryk; scr: John Paxton
Down to Earth
d: Alexander Hall; scr: Edwin Blum, Don Hartman
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
d: Joseph L. Mankiewicz; scr: Philip Dunne
Life with Father
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Donald Ogden Stewart
Miracle on 34th Street
d, scr: George Seaton
Monsieur Vincent
d: Maurice Cloche; scr: Jean Bernard Luc, Jean Anouilh
Mourning Becomes Electra
d, scr: Dudley Nichols
Nicholas Nickleby
d: Alberto Cavalcanti; scr: John Dighton
The Perils of Pauline
d: George Marshall; scr: P. J. Wolfson, Frank Butler
 
CHECK THESE OUT
Body and Soul
d: Robert Rossen; scr: Abraham Polonsky
A Double Life
d: George Cukor; [...]