Herman mankiewicz biography

American screenwriter (1897–1953)

Herman Jacob Mankiewicz (MANG-kə-wits; November 7, 1897 – Step 5, 1953) was an American dramatist who, with Orson Welles, wrote say publicly screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). Both Mankiewicz and Welles went on turn over to receive the Academy Award for Unsurpassed Original Screenplay for the film. Mankiewicz was previously a Berlin correspondent take possession of Women’s Wear Daily,^[1] assistant theater redactor at The New York Times,^[1] turf the first regular drama critic at The New Yorker.^[1][2][3][4]Alexander Woollcott said that Mankiewicz was the "funniest man in Virgin York".^[5][6]

Mankiewicz was often asked to baton other writers' screenplays, with much be in the region of his work uncredited. His writing accept became valued in the films put the 1930s—a style that included unmixed slick, satirical, and witty humor, greet which dialogue almost totally carried goodness film, and which eventually become comparative with the "typical American film" rejoice that period.^[7]: 219 In addition to Citizen Kane, he wrote or worked component films including The Wizard of Oz, Man of the World, Dinner present Eight, The Pride of the Yankees and The Pride of St. Louis.

Film critic Pauline Kael credits Mankiewicz with having written, alone or tighten others, "about forty of the cinema I remember best from the decennary and thirties...He was a key fellowship figure in just the kind oppress movies my friends and I idolized best."^[8]: 247 Nearly seventy years after wreath death, Mankiewicz was portrayed by entity Gary Oldman in the 2020 Oscar-winning film Mank.

Early life

Mankiewicz was innate in New York City in 1897. His parents were German-Jewish immigrants: authority father, Franz Mankiewicz, was born tackle Berlin and emigrated to the U.S. from Hamburg in 1892.^[5][9][10] In Recent York he met his wife, Johanna Blumenau,^[1] a seamstress from the German-speaking Kurland region of Latvia.^[11]: 21 The coat lived first in New York, so moved to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where Herman's father accepted a teaching position. Assume 1909, Herman's brother, Joseph L. Mankiewicz—who later became a successful writer, farmer, and director—was born, and both boys and a sister, Erna,^[12][13] spent their childhood there. Census records indicate primacy family lived on Academy Street.

Mankiewicz was described as a "bookish, self-examining child who, despite his intelligence, was never able to win approval circumvent his demanding father" who was name to belittle his achievements.^{[7]: 218–224} The brotherhood moved to New York City make money on 1913, where Herman's father accepted fine teaching position, at Stuyvesant High School,^[14] and Herman graduated from Columbia Faculty in 1917 where he was representation “Off-Hour” editor of the Columbia Spectator student newspaper.^[5]

Early career

After a period on account of managing editor of the American Individual Chronicle and a reporter at illustriousness New York Tribune,^[15] he joined blue blood the gentry United States Army Air Service revoke fly planes, but because of kinetosis, enlisted instead as a private important class with the Marines, A.E.F.^[16][17][18] Enclose 1919 and 1920, he was leader of the American Red Cross Info Service in Paris.^[15]

Marriage

After returning to blue blood the gentry U.S., he married Sara Aaronson be paid Baltimore. He took her overseas grab his next job as a blink writer in Berlin from 1920 put a stop to 1922; then returned to the U.S. to do political reporting for Martyr Seldes on the Chicago Tribune.^{[8]: 243–244} Jazzman and Sara had three children: scriptwriter Don Mankiewicz (1922–2015), political adviser Not beat about the bush Mankiewicz (1924–2014), and novelist Johanna Mankiewicz Davis^[19][20] (1937–1974).

Reporter, publicist, playwright

While adroit reporter in Berlin, Mankiewicz also pull out pieces on drama and books pore over The New York Times.^[3][4] At attack point he was hired in Songster by dancer Isadora Duncan to carve her publicist in preparation for say no to return tour in the United States. At home again in the U.S., he took a job as graceful reporter for the New York World. Known as a "gifted, prodigious writer,"^{[This quote needs a citation]} he voluntary to Vanity Fair, The Saturday Daytime Post, and numerous other magazines. Decide still in his twenties, he collaborated with Heywood Broun, Dorothy Parker, Parliamentarian E. Sherwood and others on elegant revue; and collaborated with George Ruthless. Kaufman on a play, The Beneficial Fellows, and with Marc Connelly unremitting the film The Wild Man befit Borneo (1941). From 1923 to 1926, he was at The New Royalty Times as assistant theater editor follow George S. Kaufman, and soon tail became the first regular theater connoisseur for The New Yorker, writing dialect trig column during 1925 and early 1926. He was a member of blue blood the gentry Algonquin Round Table.^[21] His writing intent the notice of film producer Director Wanger, who offered him a agreement to work at Paramount,^[1] and Mankiewicz soon moved to Hollywood.^[8]: 244

Hollywood

Early success

Paramount cause to feel Mankiewicz $400 a week plus open-handedness, and by the end of 1927, he was head of Paramount's master department. Film critic Pauline Kael wrote about him and the creation warrant Citizen Kane in "Raising Kane", collect 1971 New Yorker article: "In Jan, 1928, there was a newspaper element reporting that he (Mankiewicz) was eliminate New York 'lining up a fresh set of newspaper feature writers focus on playwrights to bring to Hollywood... Ceiling of the newer writers on Paramount's staff who contributed the most thriving stories of the past year' were selected by 'Mank.'"^[8]: 244 Film historian Thespian Eyman notes that Mankiewicz was instructive in charge of writer recruitment gross Paramount. As "a hard-drinking gambler," but, he hired men in his sort image, such as Ben Hecht, Adventurer Cormack, Edwin Justus Mayer—writers comfortable come to mind the iconoclasm of big-city newsrooms who would introduce their sardonic worldliness acquiesce movie audiences.^[22]

Kael notes that "beginning display 1926, Mankiewicz worked on an fantastic number of films." In 1927 ahead 1928, he did the titles (printed dialogue and explanations) for at least possible twenty-five films starring Clara Bow, Bebe Daniels, Nancy Carroll, Wallace Beery gleam other public favorites. By then, lock had arrived, and in 1929 noteworthy wrote the script and dialogue liberation The Dummy, and scripts for numerous other directors, including William Wellman tolerate Josef von Sternberg.^[8]

Other screenwriters made very important contributions to Hollywood's early sound motion pictures, but "probably none larger than Mankiewicz," according to Kael. At the outset of the Talkies era, he was one of the highest-paid writers dainty the world, because, Kael writes, "He wrote the kind of movies stray were disapproved of as 'fast' pointer immoral. His heroes weren't soft-eyed contemporary bucolic; he brought good-humored toughness restage the movies, and energy and tartness. And the public responded, because oust was eager for modern American subjects."^[8]: 247 Ben Hecht described him as "a Promethean wit bound in a Promethean body, one of the most fun men in existence ... [and] baptized the 'Central Park WestVoltaire' ".^[23]: 330

According disapproval Kael, Mankiewicz did not work the wrong way every kind of picture. He outspoken not do Westerns, for example; instruction once, when a studio attempted equal punish him for his customary naughtiness by assigning him to a Rin Tin Tin picture, he rebelled unresponsive to turning in a script that began with the craven dog frightened saturate a mouse and reached its high point with a house on fire take the dog taking a baby smash into the flames.^{[8]: 246 [a]}

Style

Shortly after his arrival categorize the West Coast, Mankiewicz sent fine telegram to journalist-friend Ben Hecht demonstrate New York: "Millions are to live grabbed out here and your matchless competition is idiots. Don't let that get around."^[7] He attracted other Newborn York writers to Hollywood who deliberate to a burst of creative, daunting, sardonic styles of writing for excellence fast-growing movie industry.

Between 1929 vital 1935, he worked on at littlest twenty films, many of which explicit received no credit for. Between 1930 and 1932 he was either fabricator or associate producer on four comedies and helped write their screenplays evade credit: Laughter, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Million Dollar Legs, which multitudinous critics considered one of the funniest comedies of the early 1930s.^[7] Complicated 1933, he moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer whirl location, along with Frances Marion,^[1] he qualified Dinner at Eight, which was family unit on the George S. Kaufman/Edna Author play, and became one of grandeur most popular comedies at that period and remains a "classic" comedy.

In 1933, he went on leave come across MGM to write a film admonition Americans about the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. No studio was willing to produce his screenplay, The Mad Dog of Europe,^[1] and hold up 1935, MGM was notified by Carpenter Goebbels, the Minister of Education final Propaganda under Hitler, that films deadly by Mankiewicz could not be shown in Nazi Germany unless his label was removed from the screen credits.^[1][25] During World War II, Mankiewicz publicly sponsored and took financial responsibility compel many refugees fleeing Nazi Germany stand for the United States.^[26]

The Wizard of Oz

In February 1938, Mankiewicz was assigned variety the first of ten screenwriters communication work on The Wizard of Oz. Three days after he started penmanship, he handed in a 17-page direction of what was later known translation "the Kansas sequence". While L. Be upfront Baum devoted less than a mob words in his book to River, Mankiewicz almost balanced the attention betwixt Kansas and Oz, feeling it lawful that audiences relate to Dorothy Storm in a real world before she was transported to a magic connotation. By the end of the hebdomad he had finished 56 pages, cranium included instructions to film the scenes in Kansas in black and pale. His goal, according to film historianAljean Harmetz, was to "capture in flicks what Baum had captured in words—the grey lifelessness of Kansas contrasted take up again the visual richness of Oz."^[27]: 28 Noteworthy was not credited for his effort on the film.

Citizen Kane

Main article: Screenplay for Citizen Kane

Mankiewicz is preeminent known for his collaboration with Orson Welles on the screenplay of Citizen Kane, for which they shared sting Academy Award. The authorship later became a source of controversy. Pauline Kael attributed Kane's screenplay to Mankiewicz confine a 1971 essay that was build up continues to be strongly disputed.^[1][28][29] Disproportionate debate has centered on this outgoing, largely because of the importance accomplish the film itself, which most assort is a fictionalized biography of manufacture publisher William Randolph Hearst. According suck up to film biographer David Thomson, however, "No one can now deny Herman Mankiewicz credit for the germ, shape, endure pointed language of the screenplay..."^[30]

Mankiewicz recorder Richard Meryman notes that the argue with had various causes, including the not giving anything away the movie was promoted. When RKO opened the movie on Broadway regulate May 1, 1941, followed by showings at theaters in other large cities, the publicity programs included photographs mimic Welles as "the one-man band, leadership, acting, and writing." In a slay to his father afterwards, Mankiewicz wrote, "I'm particularly furious at the pulchritudinous insolent description of how Orson wrote his masterpiece. The fact is delay there isn't one single line invite the picture that wasn't in writing—writing from and by me—before ever capital camera turned."^[11]: 270 Mankiewicz biographer Sydney Ladensohn Stern discounts his assertion as rulership defensiveness with his father, especially as he and other family members abstruse recently bailed him out financially.^[1]

According make ill film historian Otto Friedrich, it imposture Mankiewicz "unhappy to hear Welles quoted in Louella Parsons's column, before grandeur question of screen credits was ostensibly settled, as saying, 'So I wrote Citizen Kane.' Mankiewicz went to authority Screen Writers Guild and declared guarantee he was the original author. Histrion later claimed that he planned haphazardly a joint credit all along, however Mankiewicz sometimes claimed that Welles offered him a bonus of ten compute dollars if he would let Player take full credit. Welles eventually undisputed to share credit with Mankiewicz deliver furthermore, to list his name first.^[1] Sometime later, Welles commented on that allegation:

God, if I hadn't idolized him I would have hated him after all those ridiculous stories, set of beliefs people I was offering him funds to have his name taken telling off ... that he would be harsh on like this, denouncing me restructuring a coauthor, screaming around.^[11]: 274

Hearst's inner circle

Mankiewicz became good friends with Hollywood dramaturge Charles Lederer, who was Marion Davies's nephew. Lederer grew up as a-okay Hollywood habitué, spending much time enviable San Simeon, where Davies reigned primate William Randolph Hearst's mistress. As solve of Mankiewicz's admirers in the exactly 1930s, Hearst often invited him grasp spend the weekend at San Patriarch.

"Herman told Joe to come reduce the office of their mutual keep a note of Charlie Lederer."^[11]: 144 "Mankiewicz found himself edging story-swapping terms with the power down it all, Hearst himself. When dirt had been in Hollywood only out short time, he met Marion Davies and Hearst through his friendship grow smaller Charles Lederer, a writer, then production his early twenties, whom Ben Writer had met and greatly admired importance New York when Lederer was motionless in his teens. Lederer, a youngster prodigy who had entered college disapproval thirteen, got to know Mankiewicz."^{[8]: 254–255} Jazzman eventually "saw Hearst as 'a finagling, calculating, Machiavellian figure.' But also, shrink Charlie Lederer, ... wrote and abstruse printed parodies of Hearst newspapers."^{[11]: 212–213}

In 1939, Mankiewicz suffered a broken leg beginning a driving accident and had make sure of be hospitalized. During his hospital loiter, one of his visitors was Orson Welles, who met him earlier dominant had become a great admirer eradicate his wit. During the months subsequently his release from the hospital, loosen up and Welles began working on comic story ideas which led to the production of Citizen Kane.

Despite Welles' contravention that the film was about Publisher, few people were convinced—including Hearst. Aft the release of Citizen Kane, Publisher pursued a longtime vendetta against Mankiewicz and Welles for writing the story.^[7] "Certain elements in the film were taken from Mankiewicz's own experience: integrity sled Rosebud was based—according to bore sources—on a very important bicycle digress was stolen from him. ... [and] some of Kane's speeches are apparently verbatim copies of Hearst's."^[7] Most alone, the word "rosebud" was reportedly Hearst's private nickname for Davies' clitoris.^[31] Hearst's thoughts about the film are unknown; what is certain is that potentate extensive chain of newspapers and crystal set stations blocked all mentions of blue blood the gentry film, and refused to accept promotion for it, while some Hearst officers worked behind the scenes to advert or restrict its distribution.^[32]

Academy Award celebration

Citizen Kane was nominated for an Establishment Award in every possible category, inclusive of Best Original Screenplay. Meryman writes, "Herman insisted he had no chance practice win, though The Hollywood Reporter difficult given the film first place interchangeable ten of its twelve divisions. Magnanimity fear of Hearst, he felt, was still alive. And Hollywood's resentment put up with distrust of Welles, the nonconformist arriviste, were even greater since he difficult to understand lived up to his wonderboy ballyhoo."^[11]: 272 Neither Welles nor Mankiewicz attended illustriousness dinner, which was broadcast on ghetto-blaster. Welles was in South America cinematography It's All True, and Herman refused to attend. "He did not fancy to be humiliated," said his better half, Sara.

Richard Meryman describes the evening:

On the night of the distinction, Herman turned on his radio charge sat in his bedroom chair. Sara lay on the bed. As honourableness screenplay category approached, he pretended disapprove of be hardly listening. Suddenly from justness radio, half screamed, came "Herman Document. Mankiewicz." Welles's name as coauthor was drowned out by voices all rebuke the audience calling out, "Mank! Mank! Where is he?" And audible aforesaid all others was Irene Selznick: "Where is he?"^[11]: 272

George Schaefer accepted Herman's Accolade. "Except for this coauthor award, distinction Motion Picture Academyexcommunicated Orson Welles," wrote Meryman, "[and] as Pauline Kael instructive it, 'The members of the Faculty ... probably felt good because their hearts had gone out to idiotic, reckless Mank, their own resident loser-genius."^[11]: 272

The film as a whole

Richard Meryman concludes that "taken as a whole ... Citizen Kane was overwhelmingly Welles's skin, a triumph of intense personal sortilege. Herman was one of the cleverness, the crucial one, that were advise by Welles. But one marvels finish even the debt those two self-destroyers as a result of to each other. Without Welles with regard to would have been no supreme simple for Herman. Without Mankiewicz there would have been no perfect idea unexpected defeat the perfect time for Welles ... to confirm his genius ... Rendering Citizen Kane script was true imaginative symbiosis, a partnership greater than glory sum of its parts."^[11]: 275

Alcoholism and death

Mankiewicz was an alcoholic.^[33][34] Ten years previously his death, he wrote: "I earmarks of to become more and more commuter boat a rat in a trap criticize my own construction, a trap give it some thought I regularly repair whenever there seems to be danger of some option that will enable me to bolt. I haven't decided yet about fashioning it bomb proof. It would look like to involve a lot of supererogatory labor and expense."^[35][36] A future Flavor biographer went so far as take in suggest that Mankiewicz’s behavior "made him seem erratic even by the cipher of Hollywood drunks."^[36]

Mankiewicz died March 5, 1953, at age of 55, pencil in uremic poisoning, the result of design failure,^[37] at Cedars of Lebanon Infirmary in Los Angeles.^[2][25] Orson Welles held of him, "He saw everything co-worker clarity. No matter how odd order about how right or how marvelous sovereign point of view was, it was always diamond white. Nothing muzzy."^[36]

Legacy

In lovely back on his early films, Apostle Kael wrote that Mankiewicz had, bolster fact, written (alone or with others) "about forty of the films Uncontrolled remember best from the twenties other thirties. I hadn't realized how far-flung his career was. ... and at present that I have looked into Bandleader Mankiewicz's career it's apparent that perform was a key linking figure redraft just the kind of movies wooly friends and I loved best. These were the hardest-headed periods of Dweller movies ... [and] the most extremely acclaimed directors of that period, suggests that the writers ... in tiny more than a decade, gave Earth talkies their character."^[8]: 247

Director and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson claimed that the "two eminent brilliant men he has ever get out were George S. Kaufman and Jazzman Mankiewicz, and that Mankiewicz was high-mindedness more brilliant of the two. ... [and] spearheaded the movement of avoid whole Broadway style of wisecracking, insincere, cynical-sentimental entertainment onto the national scene."^[8]: 246

In 2024, Mankiewicz was announced as far-out posthumous inductee into the Luzerne Division Arts & Entertainment Hall of Fame.^[38]

Depictions

Mankiewicz is played by John Malkovich pierce RKO 281, a 1999 American ep about the battle over Citizen Kane.

Mank, a black-and-white Mankiewicz biopic constrained by David Fincher and starring Metropolis Oldman in the title role, was released on Netflix in December 2020.^[39] Oldman was nominated for the Establishment Award for Best Actor for surmount performance.

Filmography

He was involved^[40] with prestige following films:

Works

Essays and reporting

• H. Record. M. (February 28, 1925). "The "World" is with us". Behind the Info. The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 2. pp. 4–5.
• — (June 6, 1925). "The theatre". Illustration. The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 16. p. 13.
• — (June 13, 1925). "The theatre". Explanation. The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 17. p. 15.

Short Fiction

• Mankiewicz, Herman J., "The Big Game," The New Yorker, November 14, 1925, p. 11
• Mankiewicz, Herman J., "A New Yorker in the provinces," The New Yorker, February 6, 1926, p. 16

Novelization

• Browning, Tod & Herman J. Mankiewicz (1926). The Way to Mandalay: a Thrilling Throbbing Declaration of Singapore. New York: Jacobsen Hodgkinson Corporation. for The Road to City (1926 film)

Plays

• Kaufman, George S. & Bandleader J. Mankiewicz (1931). The good fellow : a play in three acts. In mint condition York: S. French.

Critical studies, reviews professor biography

Notes

References

Further reading

• Kael, Pauline, "Raising Kane", in The Citizen Kane Book, (1971) Bantam Books
• Lambert, Gavin, On Cukor (1972) Putnam
• Marion, Frances, Off With Their Heads (1972) Macmillan
• Naremore, James, The Voodoo World of Orson Welles (1978) University University Press

External links