Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was a movie producer, director as well as screen writer from America. He is well known for directing the pictures A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve. 

Mankiewicz was born on the 11th of February 1909. When he was a fresh graduate from the Columbia University, he was being sent to Germany to learn drama. However, he stayed back in New York Click to look into! >> Read More... for his work with the Germany-based production company UFA of translating subtitles from German to the English Language.

Before directing films, Mankiewicz was engaged with the work of a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures, writing about a total of 48 of them. He worked on a production for the famous media company MGM.  After spending 17 years in screenwriting and production, he finally got the opportunity to direct films for Twentieth Century-Fox. In the six years that he worked for Fox, he directed about eleven movies. It was during this period that he won two Academy Awards for the films A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve. The latter movie earned 14 Academy Award nominations out of which it bagged six.

Mankiewicz has produced some Award winning movies like The Philadelphia Story. In another Hollywood picture he made, Keys of the Kingdom, his wife too played a small role. He set up a production company of his own named Figaro. After his six years at Fox, he started making his own movies in which he explored topics that interested him such as the struggle between the ruling class and the commoners.

In the year 1953, Mankiewicz produced Julius Caesar, inspired by Shakespeare’s original short story of the same name for MGM. This movie received a lot of appreciation by critics. Also, the actor who played the character of

Mark Antony Click to look into! >> Read More... in the motion picture, Marlon Brando Born on April 3, 1924, in Nebraska, U. S, Marlon B >> Read More... , got nominated for an Oscar for his job. He also produced The Quiet American, which was based heavily on the book by the twentieth-century writer Graham Greene Graham Greene was born on 2nd of October, in the y >> Read More... . The original story written by him was about America’s indirect role in the fuelling of the Vietnam War. However, Mankiewicz changed the main idea of the film to a great extent for the purpose of suiting the American audience.

Cleopatra was a movie done by him which failed to succeed among the masses. Fox incurred huge losses due to this failure.  However, he repaired his reputation by directing Sleuth, which  secured an Oscar for Best Direction. He got chosen as one of the judges at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival. His brother, Herman Mankiewicz was in the film industry too as a screenwriter.

On the 5th of February, 1993, Mankiewicz was consumed by a fatal heart attack. Even after 23 years of his death, he is remembered for his extraordinary work in the film industry.