Herman J. Mankiewicz

 Herman J. Mankiewicz was often asked to fix the screenplays of other writers, with much of his work uncredited. Occasional flashes of what came to be called the "Mankiewicz humor" and satire distinguished his films, and became valued in the films of the 1930s. The style of writing included a slick, satirical, and witty humor, which depended almost totally on dialogue to carry the film. It was a style that would become associated with the "typical American film" of that period.

While a reporter in Berlin for the Chicago Tribune, he also sent pieces on drama and books to The New York Times. At one point, he was hired in Berlin by dancer Isadora Duncan, to be her publicist in preparation for her return tour in America. At home again in the U.S., he took a job as a reporter for the New York World. He was known as a "gifted, prodigious writer," and contributed to Vanity Fair, The Saturday Evening Post and numerous other magazines. From 1923 to 1926, he was at The New York Times backing up George S. Kaufman in the drama department and soon after became the first regular theatre critic for The New Yorker, writing a weekly column during 1925 and 1926. He was a member of the Algonquin Round Table. His writing attracted the notice of film producer Walter Wanger who offered him a motion-picture contract and he soon moved to Hollywood.

Mankiewicz did not work on every kind of picture. He didn't do Westerns, for example, and once, when a studio attempted to punish him for his customary misbehavior by assigning him to a Rin Tin Tin picture, he rebelled by turning in a script that began with the craven dog frightened by a mouse and reached its climax with a house on fire and the dog taking a baby INTO the flames.

Mankiewicz is best known for his collaboration with Orson Welles on the screenplay of "Citizen Kane" (1941), for which they both won an Academy Award and later became a source of controversy over who wrote what. Critic Pauline Kael attributed Kane's screenplay to Mankiewicz in a 1971 essay that was and continues to be strongly disputed. Much debate has centered on this issue, largely because of the importance of the film itself, which most agree is a fictionalized biography of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. According to film biographer David Thomson, however, "No one can now deny Herman Mankiewicz credit for the germ, shape, and pointed language of the screenplay."

"Citizen Kane" was nominated for an Academy Award in every possible category, including Best Original Screenplay. Mankiewicz biographer Richard Meryman wrote, "Herman insisted he had no chance to win, though The Hollywood Reporter had given the film first place in ten of its twelve divisions. The fear of Hearst, he felt, was still alive. And Hollywood's resentment and distrust of Welles, the nonconformist upstart, were even greater since he had lived up to his wonderboy ballyhoo." Neither Welles nor Mankiewicz attended the dinner, which was broadcast on radio. Welles was in South America filming "It's All True," and Herman refused to attend. "He did not want to be humiliated," said his wife, Sara.

Meryman described the evening: "On the night of the awards, Herman turned on his radio and sat in his bedroom chair. Sara lay on the bed. As the screenplay category approached, he pretended to be hardly listening. Suddenly from the radio, half screamed, came 'Herman J. Mankiewicz.' Welles's name as coauthor was drowned out by voices all through the audience calling out, 'Mank! Mank! Where is he?' And audible above all others was Irene Selznick: 'Where is he?'"

George Schaefer accepted Herman's Oscar. "Except for this coauthor award, the Motion Picture Academy excommunicated Orson Welles," wrote Meryman, "[and] asKael put it, 'The members of the Academy ...probably felt good because their hearts had gone out to crazy, reckless Mank, their own resident loser-genius.'}

"Barbara Stanwyck is my favorite. My God, I could just sit and dream of being married to her, having a little cottage out in the hills, vines around the door. I'd come home from the office tired and weary, and I'd be met by Barbara, walking through the door holding an apple pie she had cooked herself. And wearing no drawers." (Wikipedia)

Happy Birthday, Herman J. Mankiewicz