Joseph L. Mankiewicz

American film director, producer and screenwriter who created many legendary films during Hollywood's golden era of the '30, '40s and '50s. He twice won the Academy Award for both Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950).

Mankiewicz arrived in Hollywood after his brother Herman helped pave the way for intellectual East Coast writers to earn high salaries in the Hollywood screen-writing departments. Joseph Mankiewicz wrote screenplays and produced and directed star features as studios vied for his talents.

Throughout his years in Hollywood, he sported a rivalry with his older brother who earned an Oscar for writing the screenplay of Citizen Kane in 1941. Joseph once said, "Everyone else has a mother or father complex, but I have a Herman complex!" Despite his many box office success stories, Mankiewicz was in charge of one of the biggest film flops of all time, Cleopatra, in 1963.

Joseph's father, Franz, emigrated to New York from Germany in 1892. A German-Jewish news reporter and editor, his dad prized education over everything. He went back to school in his forties and later earned his PhD to became a professor at New York City College. Joseph was the middle child between his older brother Herman and his sister Erna. Artists, intellectuals, and scientists were invited to dinner at the Mankiewicz household.

The boys grew up with heady, intellectual dinner conversations. Their tyrannical father made life a misery for the reckless and irresponsible Herman in spite of his "A" grades in school. Joseph was more disciplined than his brother and was determined to make his father proud of him. Both Herman and Joseph entered Columbia University at age of 15 and graduated at 26. Joseph went to school at the University of Berlin where he studied literature and languages. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and join the teaching profession as an academic scholar.