Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1909, Joseph Leo
Mankiewicz first worked for the movies as a translator of intertitles,
employed by Paramount in Berlin, the UFA's American distributor at the
time (1928). He became a dialoguist, then a screenwriter on numerous
Paramount productions in Hollywood, most of them Jack Oakie vehicles.
Still in his 20s, he produced first-class MGM films, including Die Nacht vor der Hochzeit (1940).
Having left Metro after a dispute with studio chief Louis B. Mayer over
Judy Garland, he then worked for Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox, producing
Schlüssel zum Himmelreich (1944), when Ernst Lubitsch's illness first brought him to the director's
chair for Weißer Oleander (1946). Mankiewicz directed 20 films in a 26-year period,
successfully attempted every kind of movie from Shakespeare adaptation
to western, from urban sociological drama to musical, from epic film
with thousands of extras to a two-character picture. Ein Brief an drei Frauen (1949) and
Alles über Eva (1950) brought him wide recognition along with two Academy Awards for
each as a writer and a director, seven years after his elder brother
Herman J. Mankiewicz won Best Screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). His more intimate films like
Ein Gespenst auf Freiersfüßen (1947), Die barfüßige Gräfin (1954)--his only original screenplay--and Venedig sehen - und erben (1967) are major
artistic achievements as well, showing Mankiewicz as a witty
dialoguist, a master in the use of flashback and a talented actors'
director (he favored English actors and had in Rex Harrison a kind of
alter-ego on the screen).
