The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics

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Herman J. (1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture’s only Academy Award. Joe earned the second pair of his four Oscars for writing and directing All About Eve, which also won Best Picture. Despite triumphs as diverse as Monkey Business and Cleopatra, and Pride of the Yankees and Guys and Dolls, the witty, intellectual brothers spent their Hollywood years deeply discontented and yearning for what they did not have―a career in New York theater. Herman, formerly an Algonquin Round Table habitué, New York Times and New Yorker theater critic, and playwright-collaborator with George S. Kaufman, never reconciled himself to screenwriting. He gambled away his prodigious earnings, was fired from all the major studios, and drank himself to death at fifty-five. While Herman drifted downward, Joe rose to become a critical and financial success as a writer, producer, and director, though his constant philandering with prominent stars like Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, and Gene Tierney distressed his emotionally fragile wife who eventually committed suicide. He wrecked his own health using uppers and downers in order to direct Cleopatra by day and finish writing it at night, only to be very publicly fired by Darryl F. Zanuck, an experience from which Joe never fully recovered. For this first dual portrait of the Mankiewicz brothers, Sydney Ladensohn Stern draws on interviews, letters, diaries, and other documents still in private hands to provide a uniquely intimate behind-the-scenes chronicle of the lives, loves, work, and relationship between these complex men Cover THE BROTHERS MANKIEWICZ Title Copyright Dedication CONTENTS PROLOGUE 1. The End: Joe, 1993 2. The Beginning: Herman, 1926 3. The Real Beginning: Pop, 1891 HERMAN 4. Herman’s Life Begins 5. Glorious Adventures 6. Central Park West Voltaire THE MANKIEWICZ BROTHERS OF HOLLYWOOD 7. In Pursuit of a Lump Sum 8. Gold Safe, However 9. Mad Dogs 10. The Tiffany of Studios 11. Joe’s Black Years 12. Citizen Kane 13. Apprentice Director 14. Promised Land 15. All About Eve 16. Breaking Away 17. Exit Herman JOE 18. Hollywood Cinderella: A Cautionary Fairy Tale 19. New York Crooks and Showgirls: An American Fairy Tale 20. Joe Rewrites Graham Greene 21. Exit Rosa 22. Southern Gothic Horror Story 23. The Toughest Three Pictures I Ever Made 24. The Honey Pot(boiler) 25. Ironic Western 26. Of Page and Screen 27. Honors but No Dough EPILOGUE 28. What They Wrought APPENDIX: Family Tree NOTES FILMOGRAPHY SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PHOTO CREDITS INDEX