Few individuals better encapsulated the highs and lows of the Golden Age of Hollywood than the Mankiewicz brothers. Filmmakers Herman (1897–1953) and Joe (1909–1993) are the subjects of the Free Library’s upcoming program Scripting The Movies: The Mankiewicz Brothers in Hollywood, which will occur virtually on Friday, December 6 at 11:00 a.m. 

Herman was a gifted yet troubled "script doctor" who had already produced a pair of Marx Brothers films and contributed to The Wizard of Oz by the time he collaborated with a young Orson Welles on the Academy Award-winning screenplay for Citizen Kane. Though the film is still recognized as one of the greatest of all time and won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, it placed Mankiewicz and Wells in the crosshairs of William Randolph Hearst, the media magnate whose life Kane drew inspiration from.

The younger brother, Joe, would win two Oscars of his own by 1950 for his work on A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve but is best remembered for a different sort of landmark picture, Cleopatra. The film’s record-setting costs and embattled production effectively ended the era of the historical epic and Joe’s Hollywood career.

Our guest for this program is filmmaker Nick Davis, a member of the extended Mankiewicz family and the author of Competing With Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, A Dual Portrait. Davis, who has directed episodes of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series and PBS’s American Masters, will provide his unique insight into the lives and times of his maternal grandfather, Herman, and great-uncle Joe. 

To register for this free program from the Free Library's Central Senior Services, email Dick Levinson at levinsonr@freelibrary.org.