1929–1933: Paramount In 1929, Joseph was hired by
Paramount Pictures, becoming the studio's youngest staff writer at the age of 20. Within eight weeks, Joseph wrote titles for 1929's
The Dummy (with his brother Herman),
The Man I Love, and
Thunderbolt.
David O. Selznick, then an assistant to Paramount general manager
B. P. Schulberg, proposed that Joseph write the dialogue to
Fast Company (1929), an adaptation of the 1928 play
Elmer The Great by
George M. Cohan and
Ring Lardner. Mankiewicz's name later appeared in the
Los Angeles Records 1929 list of the ten best dialogue writers. The recognition earned Mankiewicz the assignment of writing several films, which starred
Jack Oakie. At age 22, Joseph was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for
Skippy (1931), which starred
Jackie Cooper. Based on the nomination, Herman petitioned Schulberg to give Joseph a pay raise. Schulberg declined, and Herman threatened to resign. Eventually, Schulberg relented and signed Joseph to a seven-year contract, which earned him a weekly salary of "somewhere between $75 to $100". He co-wrote the screenplay of
Sooky (1931), a sequel to
Skippy. Meanwhile, Joseph dated actress
Frances Dee, who co-starred in
June Moon (1931) and
This Reckless Age (1932), which he had co-scripted. Joseph wrote four films with Paramount Pictures in 1932, which included segments for
If I Had a Million (1932). The segments included "Rollo and the Roadhogs" which featured
W. C. Fields and
Alison Skipworth as two retired vaudevillians, and "The Three Marines" with Jack Oakie and
Gary Cooper. He also contributed to other segments, including "The China Stop" with
Charlie Ruggles as a bookkeeper in a china stop and "The Forger" with
George Raft as a runaway criminal who is unable to cash his check. After six months of courtship, Joseph became engaged to Frances Dee but one week before their marriage, Dee eloped with
Joel McCrea, whom she co-starred with on
The Silver Cord (1933). Feeling devastated, Joseph ran a fever and was hospitalized for a "partial nervous breakdown." Joseph wrote an original story treatment titled
In the Red, which satirized the
League of Nations. Paramount studio executives accused him of plagiarizing the next
Marx Brothers film
Duck Soup (1933), in which Herman was the film's producer. Joseph contested the charge and resigned from Paramount in December 1932. He then moved to
RKO Pictures, where
Sam Jaffe hired Joe and Henry Myers to complete the script, which was retitled
Diplomaniacs (1933). Jaffe later hired Joseph to script
Emergency Call (1933). He returned to Paramount for
Too Much Harmony (1933) with Jack Oakie and
Bing Crosby. Selznick selected Joseph to do uncredited rewrites for MGM's
Meet the Baron (1933), which Herman had written the screenplay for. Joseph's last Paramount film was
Alice in Wonderland (1933), in which he co-authored the screenplay with
William Cameron Menzies. An adaptation of
Lewis Carroll's
1865 novel and
Alice Through the Looking-Glass (1871) combined into a singular film,
Alice in Wonderland featured an ensemble cast of Paramount's contract stars, including
Gary Cooper as
The White Knight,
Cary Grant as the
Mock Turtle,
W. C. Fields as
Humpty Dumpty, and
Edward Everett Horton as the
Mad Hatter. Years later, Joseph reflected: "The result was a disaster, but a well-intentioned disaster. The costumes and the headpieces were so heavy that the actors couldn't carry them, so they had doubles walking through all the
master or long shots."
1934–1942: MGM Herman began working for
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in March 1933, and
David O. Selznick hired Joseph as a screenwriter with a weekly salary of $750. At the age of 25, Joseph co-wrote
Manhattan Melodrama (1934) with
Oliver H. P. Garrett, which starred
Myrna Loy and
William Powell. The film was a critical and commercial success, and two months into its release, federal agents shot
John Dillinger who left a Chicago theater. At the
1935 Academy Awards,
Arthur Caesar won the
Academy Award for Best Story. Meanwhile, Joseph contributed additional dialogue for
King Vidor's 1934 film
Our Daily Bread. Mankiewicz's next project was adapting
Forsaking All Others (1934) based on the 1933 play by Edward Barry Roberts and Frank Morgan Cavett.
Bernard H. Hyman was the producer, and Joe was instructed to write for
Loretta Young,
George Brent, and
Joel McCrea. When Mankiewicz delivered the script, Hyman replied: "We're going to use Joan Crawford, Clark Gable and Robert Montgomery." He told Mankiewicz to arrive at Crawford's residence and read the script to her. Mankiewicz at first declined the offer, but later drove to Crawford's Brentwood home. During the reading, Crawford was delighted at the line: "I could build a fire by rubbing two Boy Scouts together."
Forsaking All Others became a success and Mankiewicz was assigned another Joan Crawford vehicle
I Live My Life (1935), after
Louis B. Mayer told Mankiewicz: "You're the only one on the lot who knows what to do with her." In the autumn of 1935, having written three successful films, Mankiewicz personally requested Mayer to direct his own feature film. Mayer declined his proposition and instead replied: "You have to learn to crawl before you can walk." Mankiewicz was instead promoted as a film producer, beginning with
Three Godfathers (1936). Adapted from the
1913 short story by
Peter B. Kyne, the film is a biblically-inspired
Western about three outlaws—
Chester Morris,
Lewis Stone and
Walter Brennan—rescuing a baby in the
Mojave Desert. Mankiewicz's next project was
Fury (1936), which was inspired by a real-life mob lynching in which two suspects, held in a
San Jose prison, were hanged for the murder of a department store heir. While in New York, screenwriter
Norman Krasna read the story in
The Nation. During the summer of 1934, he pitched an adaptation to Mankiewicz and
Samuel Marx, who were interested in it. After some time, Krasna had no recollection of the story, so Mankiewicz wrote a ten-page treatment titled
Mob Rule and paid Krasner for the screen rights. MGM general manager
Eddie Mannix handed
Fritz Lang the
Mob Rule treatment, with the subsequent drafts written by
Bartlett Cormack. During filming, Lang had an adversarial relationship with the cast and crew. Mankiewicz reflected years later by calling Lang a "a strange man" and a "terrible tyrant on the set." Released in June 1936,
Fury was acclaimed by several film critics and was a box office success, catapulting Mankiewicz with his first major hit as a producer. Mankewicz reteamed with Crawford on the 1936 film
The Gorgeous Hussy—her first costume drama film—as an innkeeper's daughter, with Robert Taylor,
Franchot Tone,
Melvyn Douglas and
James Stewart as potential tutors. Their collaboration continued with
Love on the Run (1936), a romantic comedy with two newspaper men, Clark Gable and Franchot Tone vying for Crawford. Retroactively seen as a pale imitation of
It Happened One Night (1934, which also starred Gable), it was a box office success. Crawford next starred in
The Bride Wore Red (1937), directed by
Dorothy Arzner. Beginning with
Mannequin (1937), Mankiewicz collaborated with director
Frank Borzage in a story about a
Delancey Street working-class girl torn between her chiseler husband (
Alan Curtis) and a shipping magnate (
Spencer Tracy). Their follow-up film,
Three Comrades (1938), with
Margaret Sullavan and Robert Taylor, began
F. Scott Fitzgerald writing the initial script. However, Sullavan complained to Mankiewicz that her dialogue was unspeakable, which caused Mankiewicz and other screenwriters to rewrite Fitzgerald's dialogue. Mankiewicz later joked, "If I go down at all in literary history, in a footnote, it will be as the swine who rewrote F. Scott Fitzgerald." Borzage's next film
The Shining Hour (1938), starring Crawford, Sullavan and Melvyn Douglas, was well received by critics but was a box-office flop. Mankiewicz produced
A Christmas Carol (1938). At least four film versions had already existed before Lionel Barrymore, who had played
Ebenezer Scrooge on the radio, prompted MGM to have his filmed version. However, Barrymore broke his hip after he tripped over a cable while filming
Saratoga (1937). Mankiewicz offered to delay filming for a year, but Barrymore insisted the production continue. Mankiewicz selected
Reginald Owen as Scrooge, who had been hired to portray
Jacob Marley. Production was completed in November 1938 and the film was screened as the Christmas attraction at the
Radio City Music Hall.
Variety wrote the film wielded "superb acting, inspired direction and top production values into an intensively interesting exposition of the Dickens story." Since its release,
A Christmas Carol has become a perennial television favorite. By 1938,
Katharine Hepburn had been labeled "
box office poison" by box office exhibitors after several unsuccessful films. Hepburn departed Hollywood and starred as Tracy Lord in
Philip Barry's 1939 play
The Philadelphia Story. It became one of the year's successful Broadway plays, and
Howard Hughes secured the film rights enabling Hepburn to forge a screen comeback. Several Hollywood studios declined to produce the film because of Hepburn's box office record. Major male actors demurred at being potentially outshone by her. Louis B. Mayer took Hughes's offer on the assurance that Hepburn would appear with "two important male stars."
Cary Grant and
James Stewart were cast in the leading male roles, while
George Cukor was hired to direct. At Hepburn's insistence,
Donald Ogden Stewart wrote a faithful adaptation of Barry's play, though he added two brief scenes based on Mankiewicz's suggestions. Mankiewicz claimed credit for the film's opening scene—a silent comic prologue featuring Grant and Hepburn in a tableau of their temperamental and fracturing marriage. Released in December 1940,
The Philadelphia Story was a critical and commercial success, making it Mankiewicz's biggest hit as a producer. At the
1941 Academy Awards, the film earned six Oscar nominations, including one for
Outstanding Production for Mankiewicz. James Stewart won the
Academy Award for Best Actor, as well as Odgen Stewart winning for
Best Adapted Screenplay. Mankiewicz reteamed with Hepburn on the romantic comedy
Woman of the Year (1942). Deriving inspiration from
his father and newspaper columnist
Dorothy Parker,
Ring Lardner Jr. had written a story outline before collaborating with
Garson and
Michael Kanin. Both men drafted a 99-page script, tentatively titled
The Thing About Women, which they showed to Hepburn. Eager to make it her next film, Hepburn presented the script directly to Mayer, who then consulted Mankiewicz for his opinion. He was enthusiastic for the script, believing it had been written by
Ben Hecht and
Charles MacArthur. for the first time. Retitled
Woman of the Year, the premise involves Tess Harding, a high-browed foreign affairs reporter, pitted against Sam Craig, a sports columnist.
Spencer Tracy was Hepburn's first choice, though he was initially unavailable until
The Yearling (1946) was cancelled. Mankiewicz introduced the two stars, who had never met before. Hepburn greeted Tracy, commenting, "I fear I may be too tall for you, Mr. Tracy." "Don't worry," Mankiewicz chimed in, "He'll cut you down to size." George Cukor was also unavailable as he was directing
Two-Faced Woman (1941) so at Hepburn's behest,
George Stevens was loaned out to MGM from
Columbia Pictures. During test screenings, preview audiences distained the original ending, which had Tess accepting her newfound role as a housewife. Stevens, Mankiewicz, and Mayer agreed that a new ending was needed, with Tess attempting to make breakfast but failing miserably. Hepburn deplored the new scene, but test audiences responded favorably. Released in February 1942,
Woman of the Year was praised by film critics for the chemistry between the stars. At the
1943 Academy Awards, Hepburn was nominated for
Best Actress, while Michael Kanin and Lardner Jr. won for
Best Original Screenplay. By 1942, Mankiewicz was romantically involved with
Judy Garland. As a vehicle for Garland, he began adapting
S. N. Behrman's 1942 play
The Pirate. The adaptation was never completed, but eventually became a
1948 musical unrelated to Mankiewicz's involvement. To reduce Garland's dependency on prescription medicine, Mankiewicz advised her to seek psychiatric therapy sessions with
Ernst Simmel. Garland's mother
Ethel Gumm reported the incident to Mayer, who later called Mankiewicz into his office. There, Mayer chastened him for his involvement, stating, "You mustn't mess with our property." The two fell into an argument, and Mankiewicz decided to quit MGM negotiating for an early termination with one year left on his contract. Mankiewicz's final productions at MGM were
Reunion in France (1942) starring Joan Crawford and
John Wayne, and
Cairo (1942) with
Jeanette MacDonald—the latter film Mankiewicz had his producing credit removed at his request.
1943–1952: 20th Century Fox By August 1943, Mankiewicz had signed with Twentieth Century-Fox, stipulating his contractual right to write and direct. As a follow-up to
The Song of Bernadette (1943), Mankiewicz selected
A. J. Cronin's 1941 novel
The Keys of the Kingdom as
his first production. Rewriting a script by
Nunnally Johnson, the tale centered on Father Francis Chisholm, a humble Scottish Catholic priest, in his thirty-five years as a missionary in a small Chinese village.
Gregory Peck was cast in the lead role while
Ingrid Bergman was the studio's first choice as the Reverend Mother Maria-Veronica. When Bergman became available, Mankiewicz pleaded with
Darryl F. Zanuck to instead cast his then-wife
Rose Stradner. The film opened in December 1944 to mixed reviews, though it garnered four Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor for Gregory Peck. Meanwhile, Twentieth Century-Fox acquired the screen rights to
Anya Seton's gothic romance novel
Dragonwyck, with
Ernst Lubitsch as the director. However, Lubitsch collapsed from a heart attack while filming
A Royal Scandal (1945). While recuperating, he decided instead to produce and have Mankiewicz direct
Dragonwyck (1946). By May 1944, Gregory Peck and
Gene Tierney were cast in the leading roles, but Peck dropped out to star in
Duel in the Sun (1946) and was replaced by
Vincent Price.
Dragonwyck tells of Nicholas van Ryn, the proprietor of the Dragonwyck estate, who poisons his invalid wife and marries his cousin Miranda, in hopes of bearing an heir. When their infant son dies, Nicholas copes with
opium and schemes to murder Miranda, who falls for a local doctor. Displeased with Mankiewicz's creative decisions, Lubitsch removed his name from the production credits. "We differed about some of the direction," Mankiewicz explained, "mostly about where I put the camera."
Variety applauded
Dragonwyck as a "psychological yarn, its mid-19th century American feudal background being always brooding with never a break in its flow of morbidity. Yet, it is always interesting if somewhat too pointed at times in its fictional contrivance." The film earned $3 million at the box office in the United States and Canada.
Somewhere in the Night (1946) originated from
Marvin Borowsky's short story "The Lonely Journey". While Zanuck was in Europe, Anderson Lawler came across the story, which impressed Zanuck. Back in the United States, Lawler presented an adaptation script by Howard Dimsdale to Mankiewicz, who was eager to direct his second film. A
film noir,
John Hodiak plays an amnesiac war veteran who searches for a detective named Larry Cravat, whom he discovers was involved in a murder over two million in Nazi funds funneled into Los Angeles. Over a course of eighteen months, Mankiewicz directed three adaptations by
Philip Dunne—
The Late George Apley (1947),
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1948), and
Escape (1948)—each film "done in rapid succession, not of my writing, in which I concentrated upon learning the technique and craft—indeed, upon dissociating myself as far as possible from the writer's approach." Adapted from
John P. Marquand's
novel of the same name,
The Late George Apley was first produced as a play by Marquand and
George S. Kaufman. Fox purchased the film rights for $275,000, with
Ronald Colman and
Peggy Cummins as the title character and Eleanor Apley, George's daughter. Adapted from
R. A. Dick's 1945 novel,
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir stars
Rex Harrison as the ghost of a sea captain unsuccessfully seeking to frighten Lucy Muir (
Gene Tierney), a young widow who has rented her house at the turn of the century. During filming, Tierney's first two days were reshot at Dunne and Zanuck's request, as Dunne had envisioned her as a "straightforward, practical woman" compared to Tierney's quirkier characterization. More reshoots were done when
Richard Ney was replaced with
George Sanders. Upon its release, film reviewers praised Harrison and Tierney's performances.
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Black and White). Mankiewicz reteamed with Harrison in
Escape (1948), a story about a convict who escapes a
Dartmoor prison. Filmed in Britain under tax regulations, much of the film was shot on location. Producer
Sol C. Siegel had acquired the screen rights to the 1946 novel
A Letter to Five Wives, which first appeared as a short story in
Cosmopolitan magazine. Siegel had intended for Ernest Lubitsch to direct, and hired
Vera Caspary to write a script adaptation. Mankiewicz remembered, "I read [Caspary's script] and knew I had looked upon the
Promised Land. I wrote the screenplay about four wives; Zanuck, in an almost bloodless operation, excised one, so we ended with
A Letter to Three Wives." In May 1949, Mankiewicz was the first recipient of the
Screen Directors Guild (SDG)'s
Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. A year later, he was elected as the president for the Screen Directors Guild.
Cecil B. DeMille, a proponent for the
Hollywood blacklist, proposed that guild members should take an anticommunist loyalty oath. In August 1950, the board approved the measure, while Mankiewicz was vacationing overseas after filming
All About Eve. When Mankiewicz returned, he was shocked DeMille had gone behind his back. "It seems to me that kind of thing only happens in
Moscow," to which DeMille replied, "Well, maybe we need a little of that here." On October 12, DeMille convened a general board meeting where he requested 25 signatures to recall Mankiewicz as the guild president. Mankiewicz's supporters included
John Huston,
William Wyler, and
Billy Wilder. Throughout the night, at the
Beverly Hills Hotel, Mankiewicz survived the recall election but retained the loyalty oath. Meanwhile, Siegel had hired screenwriter
Philip Yordan to adapt
Jerome Weidman's novel, ''I'll Never Go There Anymore
into a feature film titled House of Strangers'' (1949). However, Yordan was fired after writing two-thirds of a first draft. Between assignments, Mankiewicz did an entire rewrite of the script, in which the Screen Writers Guild arbitrated a shared credit between him and Yordan. Mankiewicz angrily disagreed, so Yordan was given the sole credit. Featuring
Edward G. Robinson,
Richard Conte and
Susan Hayward, the story centers on Gino Monetti, an Italian-American ex-convict son of a banking family who seeks revenge against his brothers for turning him in to the police. The film was entered into the
1949 Cannes Film Festival where Robinson won the
Best Actor Award. Following a trend of socially conscious films, including ''
Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and The Snake Pit (1948), Zanuck purchased a story by Lesser Samuels about a racially charged encounter between a Black doctor and a white racist criminal. Yordan had written a script, which Mankiewicz promptly rewrote in six weeks. Titled No Way Out'' (1950), Mankiewicz cast
Sidney Poitier in his screen debut while
Richard Widmark played one of the racist brothers who accuses Poitier's character of medical malpractice.
All About Eve (1950) originated from the 1946
Cosmopolitan short story "The Wisdom of Eve" by
Mary Orr. In 1949, Fox purchased the rights to Orr's story for $5,000, and Mankiewicz began writing the first draft while preparing for
No Way Out. Notably, he secluded himself for six weeks to laboriously write the draft at the
San Ysidro Ranch near
Santa Barbara. On March 7, 1950, Zanuck finished reading Mankiewicz's script and immediately sent a memo: "Without any question of a doubt you have done a remarkable job. The holes that were present in certain sections of the original treatment have disappeared." However, he delivered a lengthier memo, requesting a reduction of fifty pages.
Claudette Colbert was initially cast as Margo Channing, but suffered a back injury and withdrew less than ten days before filming. To replace her, Mankiewicz considered
Gertrude Lawrence. Her attorney
Fanny Holtzmann demanded changes to the script, which Mankiewicz declined to make. Fresh from her mutual split from
Warner Bros.,
Bette Davis read the script, describing it as the best she had ever read, and accepted the role.
Jeanne Crain was originally considered for the part of Eve Harrington, but Mankiewicz felt she lacked the "bitch virtuosity" needed for the role. With Zanuck's approval,
Anne Baxter was instead cast. Filming for
All About Eve began in April 1950 at the
Curran Theatre in
San Francisco, which doubled as the interior and exterior locations of a Broadway theater. Critical reaction for
All About Eve was universally positive, with praise directed towards the cast and Mankiewicz's direction and screenplay. At the
23rd Academy Awards,
All About Eve was nominated for a record fourteen
Academy Awards and won
Best Picture. Mankiewicz and Lester Samuels were also nominated for
Best Story and Screenplay for
No Way Out but lost to
Sunset Boulevard. Mankiewicz won his second consecutive set of Academy Awards for
Best Director and
Best Adapted Screenplay. Bette Davis and Anne Baxter were both nominated for
Best Actress, but lost to
Judy Holliday in
Born Yesterday (1950).
George Sanders won for
Best Supporting Actor. Mankiewicz adapted and directed
People Will Talk (1951), also produced by Zanuck, which starred Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain. Adapted from
Curt Goetz's 1932 play
Dr. Prätorius, Grant plays a physician who is investigated for his unorthodox medical practices led by Professor Ewell (Hume Cronyn). Meanwhile, he falls for Deborah Higgins, an unwed pregnant student contemplating suicide. Though it received favorable reviews, the film was not profitable. Mankiewicz's last film under contract with Fox was
5 Fingers (1952), starring
James Mason and
Danielle Darrieux. Zanuck had enlisted
Henry Hathaway to direct and
Michael Wilson to write a script from
Ludwig Carl Moyzisch's nonfiction book
Operation Cicero. Mankiewicz read Wilson's script and cabled to Zanuck, stating he wanted to rewrite the dialogue, feeling it needed "humor, sex and excitement." Zanuck consented, provided that Mankiewicz would not seek a writing credit and accept
Otto Lang as the film's producer. At Zanuck's insistence, the film was retitled
5 Fingers to avoid association with a
race riot that had occurred in
Cicero, Illinois. On the last day of filming, in September 1951, Mankiewicz declined to renew his contract with Twentieth Century-Fox and decided to become an independent filmmaker. Released in March 1952,
5 Fingers garnered fairly positive reviews.
1953–1960: Return to MGM; Figaro, Inc. In December 1951, Mankiewicz signed a three-picture contract with MGM's
Dore Schary, with a stipulation he be allowed to produce theatrical stage productions. By 1952, Mankiewicz had three projects he was contemplating—an adaptation of
Carl Jonas' novel
Jefferson Selleck about a Midwestern businessman experiencing a
midlife crisis with
Spencer Tracy;
The Barefoot Contessa, and a new stage production of
La bohème at the
Metropolitan Opera in
New York City. During this time, MGM producer
John Houseman approached Mankiewicz about directing
a film adaptation of
Julius Caesar. He reflected, "Joe was one of the first people I thought of. He is so literate and such a good dialogue writer, I knew he'd be interested." Casting for the central roles involved several American and British actors, including James Mason as
Brutus,
John Gielgud as
Cassius, and
Louis Calhern as Caesar.
Marlon Brando's casting as
Marc Antony was met with skepticism, so much that
Time magazine jokingly wondered if Brando would be "muttering and grumbling his lines in a Polish accent, sound reading the funeral oration?" Against the studio's objections, Houseman chose to photograph in black and white so it would mirror newsreels of
Benito Mussolini. Principal photography continued until late October 1952, While directing rehearsals for
La bohème, disagreements over
Jefferson Selleck led to a lapse in Mankiewicz's MGM contract. In 1951, Mankiewicz relocated his family to New York. Within two years, he established his independent production company Figaro, Inc. Its namesake was taken from the barber in
Mozart's opera
The Marriage of Figaro. In Mankiewicz's words, Figaro did "a little bit of everything." In June 1956,
NBC acquired a 50 percent stake with the
right of first refusal to any proposed film project.
United Artists was inked as the distributor, and Mankiewicz proceeded with his two-picture deal with
The Barefoot Contessa, which he had been originally written to be a novel. For his first original screenplay, Mankiewicz is believed to have been inspired by several Hollywood actresses, including
Rita Hayworth,
Linda Darnell, and
Anne Chevalier. Envisioned as a
Cinderella-like story set in Hollywood, the tale centers on the starlet Maria Vargas as her career is told in flashbacks, with one told by Harry Dawes, a veteran film director, played by
Humphrey Bogart.
Ava Gardner was Mankiewicz's first choice for the title role, and she was loaned from MGM for a payment of $200,000 plus ten percent of the box office returns. Principal filming began in early January 1954 at the
Cinecittà studio in
Rome. Bogart was frustrated with Gardner whispering her lines during one take and criticized her acting skills. Bogart himself had severe racking coughs while delivering his lines. When filming concluded, Mankiewicz regretted that he had not built any rapport with Gardner. Upon its release, Gene Arneel of
Variety praised the film as a "dish of ingeniously-fashioned, original entertainment for grown-up viewers. it has a strong show business flavor and a line or two that might be beyond the ken of strangers in movie-making. But its basic story elements are strong and make for substantial fare on anyone's menu." At the
27th Academy Awards, Mankiewicz was nominated for
Best Story and Screenplay while
Edmond O'Brien won for
Best Supporting Actor. Meanwhile, the script was sued twice for plagiarism; one was quickly dismissed and the other, litigated in 1960, alleged similarities to an unpublished manuscript inspired by Chevalier's life. It was also dismissed. In 1954,
Samuel Goldwyn hired Mankiewicz to write and direct
the film version of the Broadway musical
Guys and Dolls. Goldwyn wanted
Gene Kelly for the part of Sky Masterson, but MGM's
Nicholas Schenck vigorously declined to loan out Kelly. Goldwyn suggested Marlon Brando instead, and Mankiewicz convinced Brando to take the part to expand his acting oeuvre.
Frank Sinatra pursued the role as Nathan Detroit, while
Jean Simmons was cast as Sister Sarah Brown after an extensive search.
Guys and Dolls was one of 1955's biggest box office hits, earning $9 million in estimated distributor rentals in the United States and Canada. However, film critics found the film too verbose and were mixed on the musical performances. By the time
Guys and Dolls was released, Mankiewicz's Figaro expanded with its contract with
United Artists to produce nine films, with five films to be written and directed by him within four years. For his second directorial effort with Figaro, Mankiewicz considered a biographical film of
Francisco Goya and an adaptation of Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night with
Audrey Hepburn and
Danny Kaye. He however decided to write and direct
The Quiet American (1958), an adaptation of
Graham Greene's 1955
novel. Set against the backdrop of
Indochina (now known as
Vietnam), Alden Pyle, an idealistic American, vies for the affection of Phuong, a local Vietnamese woman, against Thomas Fowler, a British journalist. The choice role of Thomas Fowler had been offered to
Laurence Olivier, who later declined after reading a draft.
William Holden and James Mason were unavailable thus Mankiewicz turned to
Michael Redgrave.
Montgomery Clift was considered for Alden Pyle, but he was severely injured while filming
Raintree County (1957). Mankiewicz then cast
Audie Murphy and selected Italian actress
Giorgia Moll for Phuong. Mankiewicz, influenced by the climate of
anti-Communism and the
Hollywood blacklist, altered the message of Greene's book, changing major parts of the story. He told film critic
Arthur Knight after filming had wrapped, he wanted to "make the American both more credible and truer to the earnest, hardworking, apolitical types that he found in Indo-China." According to Greene, his cautionary tale about America's blind support for anti-Communists was turned into "propaganda film for America". Upon its release, several American film critics acknowledged Mankiewicz's deviations from Greene's novel but praised the film. However, the film was a commercial disappointment at the box office. While preparing
The Quiet American, in 1956, Mankiewicz recruited film producer
Walter Wanger to work for Figaro. Wanger proposed numerous film projects, but most of these were turned down. After six months of no progress, Wanger proceeded with a star vehicle for
Susan Hayward. By October 1957, Figaro had signed Hayward to star in
I Want to Live! (1958), a real-life account of
Barbara Graham's lethal execution. When a script draft was completed, Mankiewicz recommended several truncations to the script, which were made by his nephew
Don Mankiewicz.
Robert Wise was hired to direct the film. Mankiewicz reunited with Sam Spiegel on
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), an adaptation of
Tennessee Williams's
stage play. Katharine Hepburn portrayed Violet Venable, a wealthy widow, who has her niece Catherine Holly institutionalized after she had witnessed her son Sebastian's death. Bribing the hospital with a one-million donation for renovation, Violet pushes John Cukrowicz, a neurosurgeon, to have Catherine lobotomized to preserve Sebastian's memory.
Elizabeth Taylor was cast as Catherine, and it was Taylor who convinced Spiegel to cast her friend
Montgomery Clift as Cukrowicz. The film earned mixed reviews from film critics but was a box office success, earning $9 million worldwide. At the
32nd Academy Awards, Hepburn and Taylor both received Oscar nominations for
Best Actress.
1961–1963: Cleopatra By May 1960, Mankiewicz was selected to write and direct a film adaptation of
Lawrence Durrell's 1957 novel
Justine, the first volume of
The Alexandria Quartet. Ava Gardner and
David Niven were hired in the lead roles. The premise centered on Darley, an Anglo-Irish schoolmaster and aspiring novelist, who is determined to unravel the truth behind Justine, a beautiful young woman, with whom he had a brief affair with him. Darley later learns Justine is married to her husband Nassim, who is involved in a Coptic plot against the Muslims to arm the Zionists in
Palestine. By the winter of 1960, Mankiewicz was vacationing at the Children's Bay Cay—
Hume Cronyn and
Jessica Tandy's private island—in
The Bahamas. He had completed a 151-page
treatment outline and written a partially complete first screenplay draft. On January 18, 1961, he flew north to New York for dinner with his agent
Charles Feldman and Spyros Skouras, who requested him to complete Walter Wanger's concurrent troubled production
Cleopatra (1963), a film project Mankiewicz's Figaro Inc. had earlier declined to finance. The film's star Elizabeth Taylor had personally requested Mankiewicz to take over the project after
Rouben Mamoulian had resigned as director. Mankiewicz declined the request, but Skouras was persistent in hiring him. Feldman persuaded Mankiewicz he could resume
Justine after he finished
Cleopatra under the advice: "Hold your nose for fifteen weeks and get it over with." Skouras acquired Figaro, Inc., in which Mankiewicz was paid $1.5 million while
NBC (which controlled a 50 percent stake) received the other half for a total of $3 million. On January 25, 1961, Mankiewicz was hired as writer and director. Within a month, he toured the production sets constructed at
Pinewood Studios in
London. Displeased with the previous script, Mankiewicz decided to write an entirely new script, with a "modern, psychiatrically rooted" approach.
Lawrence Durrell and
Sidney Buchman were hired to collaborate on the script for
Cleopatra. By late April 1961, Mankiewicz was dissatisfied with Durrell's story outlines, while Buchman was instructed to finish the outline. Wanger hired screenwriter
Ranald MacDougall to finish the shooting script based on Buchman's outline. Meanwhile, Twentieth Century-Fox dismantled the Pinewood sets, worth an estimated $600,000 (roughly $6.6 million in 2026). Skouras decided to reshoot the film in
California, but Mankiewicz persuaded him to shoot in
Rome. By June 30, Skouras reversed his decision and allowed the production to film at
Cinecittà, where principal photography for
Cleopatra began in September 1961 under Mankiewicz's direction. Because Skouras insisted the production continue, Mankiewicz's revised shooting script was not complete at the start of filming. Therefore, Mankiewicz directed during the day and wrote the script longhand at night, to the point he contracted a dermatological disorder on his hands, which forced him to wear thin protective gloves. To maintain his health regimen for several months, Mankiewicz required daily
vitamin B12 shots. One shot accidentally hit his sciatic nerve, rendering him barely able to walk. On January 22, 1962, Elizabeth Taylor and
Richard Burton filmed their first scene together. Their romantic chemistry was not lost on Mankiewicz, who later told Wanger: "I have been sitting on a volcano all alone for too long, and I want to give you some facts you ought to know. Liz and Burton are not just
playing Antony and Cleopatra." In February 1962, rumors of the
extramarital affair were spreading, and by the spring, it became worldwide news. In June 1962, Skouras was forced out as studio president and replaced with Darryl Zanuck. In October 1962, Mankiewicz screened his rough cut for Zanuck in Paris. Infuriated by Cleopatra's dominance over Marc Antony, Zanuck remarked, "If any woman behaved toward me the way Cleopatra treated Antony, I would cut her balls off." Mankiewicz and Zanuck had planned to discuss the rough cut the next day, but Zanuck cancelled the meeting. Less than two weeks later, Mankiewicz sent a letter to Zanuck requesting an "honest and unequivocal statement of where I stand in relation to
Cleopatra." Zanuck wrote back, stating his services were terminated, and in a memo addressed to the press, he believed Mankiewicz had "earned a well-deserved rest." In response to his public firing, Mankiewicz told
Time magazine: "The actors are almost more upset than I am. They gave three goddam good performances and, badly cut, they'll be ruined." In December 1962, Zanuck rehired Mankiewicz to film reshoots in
Almería,
Spain and complete the final editing. Mankiewicz finished the reshoots on March 5, 1963.
Cleopatra opened at the Rivoli Theatre to mixed reviews, with
Bosley Crowther saying it was "one of the great epic films of our day". On the contrary,
Judith Crist of the
New York Herald Tribune headlined her review calling the film a "monumental mouse." The film's premiere runtime of 243 minutes was reduced to over three hours for its first-run engagements. Regardless,
Cleopatra became the
highest-grossing film of 1963, generating $26 million in distributor rentals. However, the film held a negative cost of $44 million and did not break even until Fox sold the television
broadcasting rights to
ABC in 1966. At the
37th Academy Awards,
Cleopatra was nominated for nine Oscars and won four. The film's notorious production and mixed reception damaged Mankiewicz's professional reputation and self-esteem.
1964–1993: Later career In 1964, Mankiewicz read
Frederick Knott's play
Mr. Fox of Venice and the novel
The Evil of the Day by Thomas Sterling, both of which were adapted from
Ben Jonson's 1606 play
Volpone. Interested in the subject material, Mankiewicz optioned the works for his next screenplay, tentatively titled
Mr. Fox of Venice. Meanwhile, he was approached by
Anna Rosenberg, a former U.S.
Assistant Secretary of Defense, to participate in a
Xerox-sponsored
series of television films promoting the
United Nations (UN). The first installment was
Carol for Another Christmas (1964) with a teleplay by
Rod Serling. A dystopian adaptation of
Charles Dickens's
A Christmas Carol, the telefilm had an ensemble cast featuring
Sterling Hayden,
Peter Sellers,
Godfrey Cambridge,
Peter Fonda,
Richard Harris,
Christopher Plummer,
Eva Marie Saint and
James Shigeta. Filming began in early September 1964. It was broadcast on ABC on December 28, 1964. Retitled
The Honey Pot (1967), the story centers on Cecil Fox, an eccentric English millionaire, who hires William McFly, a struggling actor, in a scheme modeled after Volpone's play. McFly invites three of Fox's former mistresses to his Venetian
palazzo as Fox pretends to be on his deathbed. Filming began on September 20, 1965, at the Cinecittà and ran for five months. Similar to
Cleopatra, the production was troubled. After the first week of filming, Mankiewicz fired his cinematographer
Gianni di Venanzo and replaced him with
Pasqualino De Santis.
Rachel Roberts, then married to Rex Harrison (who was cast as Fox), attempted suicide after she was turned down in favor of
Maggie Smith.
Susan Hayward was granted permission to attend to her dying husband back in the United States. In March 1966, Mankiewicz began editing in London and settled on a runtime of 150 minutes. It was later trimmed to 131 minutes for its New York premiere. Critics complimented Rex Harrison and Maggie Smith's performances but criticized the runtime. In 1968, Mankiewicz signed a multi-picture deal with
Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, with his first project titled
The Bawdy Bard and Bill, a biopic about
William Shakespeare by
Anthony Burgess. However, he was intrigued by an original script tentatively titled
War by
David Newman and
Robert Benton, the screenwriting team of
Bonnie and Clyde. The film was retitled
There Was a Crooked Man... (1970), and it was the first
Western genre film Mankiewicz had directed. He reflected: "It's been a chance to try some muscles I haven't used before. Although, of course, I wrote a lot of Westerns in the old days. The old, old days." The film starred
Kirk Douglas as a charming but ruthless convict who is sent to a remote Arizona prison where the conscientious prison warden (
Henry Fonda) attempts to reform him. Filming began in March 1969, but six weeks into production, Mankiewicz slipped a disk at his home and directed the rest of the film from a wheelchair. Meanwhile, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts underwent corporate restructuring, and the film's release was delayed by over a year. It premiered in London months before its release in the United States on
Christmas Day 1970, with a minimal promotional campaign. Contemporary critical reaction was mixed, though the film has been viewed more favorably in retrospect.
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times wrote the film was "a movie of the sort of taste, intelligence and somewhat bitter humor I associate with Mr. Mankiewicz who, in real life, is one of America's most sophisticated, least folksy raconteurs, especially of stories about the old Hollywood."
Pauline Kael of
The New Yorker however lambasted the film as a "commercialized black comedy nihilism seems to have been written by an evil two-year-old, and it has been directed in the
Grand Rapids style of filmmaking." During post-production on
Crooked Man, in October 1969, Mankiewicz and
Sidney Lumet shot eighteen minutes of interstitial segments of celebrities reading select passages for the 1970 documentary
King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis. Produced by
Ely Landau, the documentary featured
Harry Belafonte,
Ruby Dee,
Ben Gazzara,
Charlton Heston,
James Earl Jones,
Burt Lancaster,
Paul Newman,
Anthony Quinn,
Clarence Williams III, and
Joanne Woodward. The film was screened in select theaters for only one night, March 24, 1970. Later that year,
Anthony Shaffer's 1970 play
Sleuth had a successful Broadway run, and won the
Tony Award for Best Play.
Laurence Olivier portrays Andrew Wyke, a mystery writer, who invites Cockney hairdresser Milo Tindle (
Michael Caine) to his country estate knowing that Milo is having an affair with his wife. From there, a clever mystery game ensues with potentially deadly results. At the time, Mankiewicz was developing a remake of
The Front Page (1931). Filming was scheduled from April to June 1971, but production ran over schedule. Mankiewicz, plagued with back pain, tore his thigh when he fell onto camera equipment. Olivier, with his own health problems, had a real-life injury that was incorporated into the finished film. To qualify as an eligible
Oscar contender,
Sleuth (1972) was rushed into completion and premiered in New York in December 1972. The film received largely positive reviews and was a moderate financial success, earning over $5.7 million at the box office. Two weeks after its premiere,
Edgar Scherick, the film's executive producer, wanted an intermission and cuts made to the film leading into its nationwide release for January 1973. A
Palomar Pictures studio executive notified Mankiewicz about the proposed changes even after an intermission had been inserted, which damaged the negative film. Furious over the alterations,
Sleuth was restored to Mankiewicz's preference. At the
45th Academy Awards, Mankiewicz received his fourth
Best Director nomination. Olivier and Caine received Oscar nominations for
Best Actor. In 1975,
Robert Redford approached Mankiewicz about directing ''
All the President's Men'' (1976). However, Mankiewicz did not like
William Goldman's early draft of the script and decided instead to direct a film adaptation of the 1973 novel
Jane by
Dee Wells. Set in London, the title character unexpectedly becomes pregnant and speculates on the identity of the father. Mankiewicz signed with
Columbia Pictures to write and direct the film, but he was removed during development after completing two-thirds of the script. Meanwhile, in 1978, Kenneth L. Geist published a biography of Mankiewicz titled
Pictures Will Talk, having spent eight years researching his filmography. In 1983, Mankiewicz was a member of the jury at the
33rd Berlin International Film Festival. By 1992, still search of a new project,
The New York Times reported Mankiewicz was "writing in notebooks, transcribing facts, opinions and "tribal customs and taboos" for a probable autobiography. ==Personal life==