The Brothers Mankiewicz
The Brothers Mankiewicz
Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics
Winner of the 2020 Peter C. Rollins Book Award
Longlisted for the 2020 Moving Image Book Award by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation
Named a 2019 Richard Wall Memorial Award Finalist by the Theatre Library Association
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 award-winning 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.
Awards
- , Long-listed - Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards
- , Long-listed - Richard Wall Memorial Award
- , Winner - Peter C. Rollins Book Award
Beautifully researched and deftly structured. . . . This model biography tells a story of two gifted brothers, only one of whom exceeded expectations. But underneath the surface wit and brio, The Brothers Mankiewicz is a harrowing tale of subtly lethal sibling rivalry that ultimately strangled them both.
Given the overlapping arcs of their careers, a dual biography of the two men makes perfect sense, and Sydney Ladensohn Stern, author of The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics, proves far more than equal to the formidable technical challenges of writing it. She succeeds in keeping the narrative strands of their lives sufficiently separate to make for easy reading while simultaneously illuminating the instructive similarities in their personalities, both of which come through with lively clarity. Above all, she tells their tightly entwined stories thoughtfully and well, with a sympathetic but honest appreciation of their talents—and limitations.
This is one of the best of the recent biographies of screenwriters. . . . A particular strength of the book is that it is exactly a dual biography, which means Stern can and does bounce the two brothers off each other. Their relationship was complex, to say the least, something that Stern gets better than the earlier writers.
It’s a novel introduction for those who are unfamiliar with either of them, but for those already well-versed with their respective output, the text serves as an impetus to drive one back to watching items from both of their filmographies.
With her recent publication, Stern has provided a comprehensive account of not only Herman’s life and career, but also that of his younger brother Joseph (1909–1993), called Joe, the director, screenwriter and producer of a range of films that are regarded as ‘classics’ today. This double biography is rich in facts regarding the brothers’ social circle and the films they made or were involved with. . . . I have nonetheless enjoyed learning more about the two brothers and their contributions to film history, and fully recommend this book for fans and researchers of Hollywood cinema and those interested in (film) biographies.
Eleven years apart, and growing up with different family tensions, the Mankiewicz brothers became two of the most brilliant and charismatic men ever to ply their sometimes dubious trade in Hollywood. As allies and competitors, loyal yet also subject to intense mutual irritation, they make for a fascinating dual portrait. In Sydney Ladensohn Stern’s enthralling account, their very social lives, their many enchanting and enchanted females (some of them wives), their witticisms for every occasion, furnish ample entertainment, but her book is also a thorough and judicious assessment of their extraordinary contributions to cinema.
If you want to know everything there is to know about the Golden Age of Cinema, as seen through the eyes of two amazing siblings, read The Brothers Mankiewicz. Herman wrote Citizen Kane, while Joe wrote All About Eve and wrote and directed Liz Taylor in Cleopatra—that’s just for starters. Sydney Ladensohn Stern has done a terrific job writing about the public and private lives of these remarkable men who both became legends. It’s a generous, knowledgeable, fascinating account—I couldn’t put it down.
Sydney Stern does a terrific job with a fascinating pair of subjects. Not only does the book read smooth as butter but it’s full of great film history. I was amazed to find out how much I didn’t know!
Sydney Ladensohn Stern, a New York–based freelance writer, has contributed to the New York Times, Air Mail, Literary Hub, Publishers Weekly, Criterion’s The Current, and many other publications. She is author of Toyland: The High-Stakes Game of the Toy Industry, a Book of the Month Club pick, and Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique. For more information, go to sydneylstern.com.
