Richard Brooks was an Academy Award-winning film writer who also earned
six Oscar nominations and achieved success as a film director and
producer.
He was born Reuben Sax on May 18, 1912, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. He graduated from West
Philadelphia HS, attended Philadelphia's Temple University for two
years, before dropping out and later working as a sports reporter and
radio journalist in the 1930s. After a stint as a writer for the NBC
network, he worked for one season as director of New York's Mill Pond
Theatre, and then headed to Los Angeles. There he broke into films as a
script writer of "B" movies,
Maria Montez epics, serials, and
did some radio writing. During the Second World War, he served with the
US Marines for two years.
Richard Brooks made his directorial debut with MGM's
Hexenkessel (1950) starring
Cary Grant. He scripted and directed
Die Brüder Karamasov (1958)
and
Die Katze auf dem heißen Blechdach (1958)
and two years later won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for
Elmer Gantry - Gott ist im Geschäft (1960). He had six
Oscar nominations and 25 other nominations during his film career.
Brooks was a writer and director of Chekhovian depth, who mastered the
use of understatement, anticlimax and implied emotion. His films
enjoyed lasting appeal and tended to be more serious than the usual
mainstream productions. Brooks was regarded as "independent" even
before he officially broke away from the studio system in 1965. In the
1980s, he had his own production company.
Richard Brooks died of a heart failure on March 11, 1992, in Beverly
Hills, California, and was laid to rest in the Hillside Memorial Park
Cemetery in Culver City, California. He has a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame at 6422 Hollywood Blvd., for his contribution to the art
of motion picture.
