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Herman Jacob Mankiewicz (/ˈmæŋkəwɪts/ MANG-kə-wits; November 7, 1897 – March 5, 1953) was an American screenwriter who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). Both Mankiewicz and Welles went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film. Mankiewicz was previously a Berlin correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily,[1] assistant theater editor at The New York Times,[1] and the first regular drama critic at The New Yorker.[1][2][3][4] Alexander Woollcott said that Mankiewicz was the "funniest man in New York".[5][6]

Key Information

Mankiewicz was often asked to fix other writers' screenplays, with much of his work uncredited. His writing style became valued in the films of the 1930s—a style that included a slick, satirical, and witty humor, in which dialogue almost totally carried the film, and which eventually become associated with the "typical American film" of that period.[7]: 219  In addition to Citizen Kane, he wrote or worked on films including The Wizard of Oz, Man of the World, Dinner at Eight, The Pride of the Yankees and The Pride of St. Louis.

Film critic Pauline Kael credits Mankiewicz with having written, alone or with others, "about forty of the films I remember best from the twenties and thirties...He was a key linking figure in just the kind of movies my friends and I loved best."[8]: 247  Nearly seventy years after his death, Mankiewicz was portrayed by actor Gary Oldman in the 2020 Oscar-winning film Mank.

Early life

[edit]

Mankiewicz was born in New York City in 1897. His parents were German-Jewish immigrants: his father, Franz Mankiewicz, was born in Berlin and emigrated to the U.S. from Hamburg in 1892.[5][9][10] In New York he met his wife, Johanna Blumenau,[1] a seamstress from the German-speaking Kurland region of Latvia.[11]: 21  The family lived first in New York, then moved to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where Herman's father accepted a teaching position. In 1909, Herman's brother, Joseph L. Mankiewicz—who later became a successful writer, producer, and director—was born, and both boys and a sister, Erna,[12][13] spent their childhood there. Census records indicate the family lived on Academy Street.[citation needed]

Mankiewicz was described as a "bookish, introspective child who, despite his intelligence, was never able to win approval from his demanding father" who was known to belittle his achievements.[7]: 218–224  The family moved to New York City in 1913, where Herman's father accepted a teaching position, at Stuyvesant High School,[14] and Herman graduated from Columbia College in 1917 where he was the “Off-Hour” editor of the Columbia Spectator student newspaper.[5]

Early career

[edit]

After a period as managing editor of the American Jewish Chronicle and a reporter at the New York Tribune,[15] he joined the United States Army Air Service to fly planes, but because of airsickness, enlisted instead as a private first class with the Marines, A.E.F.[16][17][18] In 1919 and 1920, he was director of the American Red Cross News Service in Paris.[15]

Marriage

[edit]

After returning to the U.S., he married Sara Aaronson of Baltimore. He took her overseas on his next job as a newspaper writer in Berlin from 1920 to 1922; then returned to the U.S. to do political reporting for George Seldes on the Chicago Tribune.[8]: 243–244  Herman and Sara had three children: screenwriter Don Mankiewicz (1922–2015), political adviser Frank Mankiewicz (1924–2014), and novelist Johanna Mankiewicz Davis[19][20] (1937–1974).

Reporter, publicist, playwright

[edit]

While a reporter in Berlin, Mankiewicz also sent pieces on drama and books to The New York Times.[3][4] At one point he was hired in Berlin by dancer Isadora Duncan to be her publicist in preparation for her return tour in the United States. At home again in the U.S., he took a job as a reporter for the New York World. Known as a "gifted, prodigious writer,"[This quote needs a citation] he contributed to Vanity Fair, The Saturday Evening Post, and numerous other magazines. While still in his twenties, he collaborated with Heywood Broun, Dorothy Parker, Robert E. Sherwood and others on a revue; and collaborated with George S. Kaufman on a play, The Good Fellows, and with Marc Connelly on the play The Wild Man of Borneo (1927). From 1923 to 1926, he was at The New York Times as assistant theater editor to George S. Kaufman, and soon after became the first regular theater critic for The New Yorker, writing a column during 1925 and early 1926. He was a member of the Algonquin Round Table.[21] His writing attracted the notice of film producer Walter Wanger, who offered him a contract to work at Paramount,[1] and Mankiewicz soon moved to Hollywood.[8]: 244 

Hollywood

[edit]

Early success

[edit]

Paramount paid Mankiewicz $400 a week plus bonuses, and by the end of 1927, he was head of Paramount's scenario department. Film critic Pauline Kael wrote about him and the creation of Citizen Kane in "Raising Kane", her 1971 New Yorker article: "In January, 1928, there was a newspaper item reporting that he (Mankiewicz) was in New York 'lining up a new set of newspaper feature writers and playwrights to bring to Hollywood... Most of the newer writers on Paramount's staff who contributed the most successful stories of the past year' were selected by 'Mank.'"[8]: 244  Film historian Scott Eyman notes that Mankiewicz was put in charge of writer recruitment by Paramount. As "a hard-drinking gambler," however, he hired men in his own image, such as Ben Hecht, Bartlett Cormack, Edwin Justus Mayer—writers comfortable with the iconoclasm of big-city newsrooms who would introduce their sardonic worldliness to movie audiences.[22]

Kael notes that "beginning in 1926, Mankiewicz worked on an astounding number of films." In 1927 and 1928, he did the titles (printed dialogue and explanations) for at least twenty-five films starring Clara Bow, Bebe Daniels, Nancy Carroll, Wallace Beery and other public favorites. By then, sound had arrived, and in 1929 he wrote the script and dialogue for The Dummy, and scripts for many other directors, including William Wellman and Josef von Sternberg.[8]

Other screenwriters made large contributions to Hollywood's early sound films, but "probably none larger than Mankiewicz," according to Kael. At the beginning of the Talkies era, he was one of the highest-paid writers in the world, because, Kael writes, "He wrote the kind of movies that were disapproved of as 'fast' and immoral. His heroes weren't soft-eyed and bucolic; he brought good-humored toughness to the movies, and energy and astringency. And the public responded, because it was eager for modern American subjects."[8]: 247  Ben Hecht described him as "a Promethean wit bound in a Promethean body, one of the most entertaining men in existence ... [and] called the 'Central Park West Voltaire' ".[23]: 330 

According to Kael, Mankiewicz did not work on every kind of picture. He did not 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.[8]: 246 [a]

Style

[edit]

Shortly after his arrival on the West Coast, Mankiewicz sent a telegram to journalist-friend Ben Hecht in New York: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around."[7] In the film The Front Page, when the sheriff asks who threw a bucket out the window, Walter Catlett's character replies, "Judge Mankiewicz threw it," a nod to his friend by Hecht.[25] He attracted other New York writers to Hollywood who contributed to a burst of creative, tough, sardonic styles of writing for the fast-growing movie industry.

Between 1929 and 1935, he worked on at least twenty films, many of which he received no credit for. Between 1930 and 1932 he was either producer or associate producer on four comedies and helped write their screenplays without credit: Laughter, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Million Dollar Legs, which many critics considered one of the funniest comedies of the early 1930s.[7] In 1933, he moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where, along with Frances Marion,[1] he adapted Dinner at Eight, which was based on the George S. Kaufman/Edna Ferber play, and became one of the most popular comedies at that time and remains a "classic" comedy.

In 1933, he went on leave from MGM to write a film warning Americans about the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. No studio was willing to produce his screenplay, The Mad Dog of Europe,[1] and in 1935, MGM was notified by Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Education and Propaganda under Hitler, that films written by Mankiewicz could not be shown in Nazi Germany unless his name was removed from the screen credits.[1][26] During World War II, Mankiewicz officially sponsored and took financial responsibility for many refugees fleeing Nazi Germany for the United States.[27]

The Wizard of Oz

[edit]

In February 1938, Mankiewicz was assigned as the first of ten screenwriters to work on The Wizard of Oz. Three days after he started writing, he handed in a 17-page treatment of what was later known as "the Kansas sequence". While L. Frank Baum devoted less than a thousand words in his book to Kansas, Mankiewicz almost balanced the attention between Kansas and Oz, feeling it necessary that audiences relate to Dorothy Gale in a real world before she was transported to a magic one. By the end of the week he had finished 56 pages, and included instructions to film the scenes in Kansas in black and white. His goal, according to film historian Aljean Harmetz, was to "capture in pictures what Baum had captured in words—the grey lifelessness of Kansas contrasted with the visual richness of Oz."[28]: 28  He was not credited for his work on the film.

Citizen Kane

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Main article: Screenplay for Citizen Kane

Mankiewicz is best known for his collaboration with Orson Welles on the screenplay of Citizen Kane, for which they shared an Academy Award. The authorship later became a source of controversy. Pauline Kael attributed Kane's screenplay to Mankiewicz in a 1971 essay that was and continues to be strongly disputed.[1][29][30] 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..."[31]

Mankiewicz biographer Richard Meryman notes that the dispute had various causes, including the way the movie was promoted. When RKO opened the movie on Broadway on May 1, 1941, followed by showings at theaters in other large cities, the publicity programs included photographs of Welles as "the one-man band, directing, acting, and writing." In a letter to his father afterwards, Mankiewicz wrote, "I'm particularly furious at the incredibly insolent description of how Orson wrote his masterpiece. The fact is that there isn't one single line in the picture that wasn't in writing—writing from and by me—before ever a camera turned."[11]: 270  Mankiewicz biographer Sydney Ladensohn Stern discounts his assertion as his defensiveness with his father, especially because he and other family members had recently bailed him out financially.[1]

According to film historian Otto Friedrich, it made Mankiewicz "unhappy to hear Welles quoted in Louella Parsons's column, before the question of screen credits was officially settled, as saying, 'So I wrote Citizen Kane.' Mankiewicz went to the Screen Writers Guild and declared that he was the original author. Welles later claimed that he planned on a joint credit all along, but Mankiewicz sometimes claimed that Welles offered him a bonus of ten thousand dollars if he would let Welles take full credit. Welles eventually agreed to share credit with Mankiewicz and furthermore, to list his name first.[1] Sometime later, Welles commented on this allegation:

God, if I hadn't loved him I would have hated him after all those ridiculous stories, persuading people I was offering him money to have his name taken off ... that he would be carrying on like this, denouncing me as a coauthor, screaming around.[11]: 274 

Hearst's inner circle

[edit]

Mankiewicz became good friends with Hollywood screenwriter Charles Lederer, who was Marion Davies's nephew. Lederer grew up as a Hollywood habitué, spending much time at San Simeon, where Davies reigned as William Randolph Hearst's mistress. As one of Mankiewicz's admirers in the early 1930s, Hearst often invited him to spend the weekend at San Simeon.

"Herman told Joe to come to the office of their mutual friend Charlie Lederer."[11]: 144  "Mankiewicz found himself on story-swapping terms with the power behind it all, Hearst himself. When he had been in Hollywood only a short time, he met Marion Davies and Hearst through his friendship with Charles Lederer, a writer, then in his early twenties, whom Ben Hecht had met and greatly admired in New York when Lederer was still in his teens. Lederer, a child prodigy who had entered college at thirteen, got to know Mankiewicz."[8] : 254–255  Herman eventually "saw Hearst as 'a finagling, calculating, Machiavellian figure.' But also, with Charlie Lederer, ... wrote and had printed parodies of Hearst newspapers."[11]: 212–213 

In 1939, Mankiewicz suffered a broken leg in a driving accident and had to be hospitalized. During his hospital stay, one of his visitors was Orson Welles, who met him earlier and had become a great admirer of his wit. During the months after his release from the hospital, he and Welles began working on story ideas which led to the creation of Citizen Kane.

Despite Welles' denial that the film was about Hearst, few people were convinced—including Hearst. After the release of Citizen Kane, Hearst pursued a longtime vendetta against Mankiewicz and Welles for writing the story.[7] "Certain elements in the film were taken from Mankiewicz's own experience: the sled Rosebud was based—according to some sources—on a very important bicycle that was stolen from him. ... [and] some of Kane's speeches are almost verbatim copies of Hearst's."[7] Most personally, the word "rosebud" was reportedly Hearst's private nickname for Davies' clitoris.[32] Hearst's thoughts about the film are unknown; what is certain is that his extensive chain of newspapers and radio stations blocked all mentions of the film, and refused to accept advertising for it, while some Hearst employees worked behind the scenes to block or restrict its distribution.[33]

Academy Award celebration

[edit]

Citizen Kane was nominated for an Academy Award in every possible category, including Best Original Screenplay. Meryman writes, "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."[11]: 272  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.

Richard Meryman describes 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?"[11]: 272 

George J. Schaefer accepted Herman's Oscar. "Except for this coauthor award, the Motion Picture Academy excommunicated Orson Welles," wrote Meryman, "[and] as Pauline Kael 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."[11]: 272 

The film as a whole

[edit]

Richard Meryman concludes that "taken as a whole ... Citizen Kane was overwhelmingly Welles's film, a triumph of intense personal magic. Herman was one of the talents, the crucial one, that were mined by Welles. But one marvels at the debt those two self-destroyers owe to each other. Without Welles there would have been no supreme moment for Herman. Without Mankiewicz there would have been no perfect idea at the perfect time for Welles ... to confirm his genius ... The Citizen Kane script was true creative symbiosis, a partnership greater than the sum of its parts."[11]: 275 

Alcoholism and death

[edit]

Mankiewicz was an alcoholic.[34][35] Ten years before his death, he wrote: "I seem to become more and more of a rat in a trap of my own construction, a trap that I regularly repair whenever there seems to be danger of some opening that will enable me to escape. I haven't decided yet about making it bomb proof. It would seem to involve a lot of unnecessary labor and expense."[36][37] A future Hollywood biographer went so far as to suggest that Mankiewicz’s behavior "made him seem erratic even by the standards of Hollywood drunks."[37]

Mankiewicz died March 5, 1953, at age of 55, of uremic poisoning, the result of liver failure,[38] at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles.[2][26] Orson Welles said of him, "He saw everything with clarity. No matter how odd or how right or how marvelous his point of view was, it was always diamond white. Nothing muzzy."[37]

Legacy

[edit]

In looking back on his early films, Pauline Kael wrote that Mankiewicz had, in fact, written (alone or with others) "about forty of the films I remember best from the twenties and thirties. I hadn't realized how extensive his career was. ... and now that I have looked into Herman Mankiewicz's career it's apparent that he was a key linking figure in just the kind of movies my friends and I loved best. These were the hardest-headed periods of American movies ... [and] the most highly acclaimed directors of that period, suggests that the writers ... in little more than a decade, gave American talkies their character."[8]: 247 

Director and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson claimed that the "two most brilliant men he has ever known were George S. Kaufman and Herman Mankiewicz, and that Mankiewicz was the more brilliant of the two. ... [and] spearheaded the movement of that whole Broadway style of wisecracking, fast-talking, cynical-sentimental entertainment onto the national scene."[8]: 246 

His friend Ben Hecht wrote this shortly after Mankiewicz's death.

When I remember the dull and inane whom Herman enriched by his presence, and his numbskull "betters" who tried feebly to echo his observations; when I remember his throw-away genius, his modesty, his shrug at adversity; when I remember that unlike the lords of success around him he attacked only the strong with his wit and defended always the weak with his heart, I feel proud to have known a man of importance.[39]

In 2024, Mankiewicz was announced as a posthumous inductee into the Luzerne County Arts & Entertainment Hall of Fame.[40]

Depictions

[edit]

Mankiewicz is played by John Malkovich in RKO 281, a 1999 American film about the battle over Citizen Kane.

Mank, a black-and-white Mankiewicz biopic directed by David Fincher and starring Gary Oldman in the title role, was released on Netflix in December 2020.[41] Oldman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.

Filmography

[edit]

He was involved[42] with the following films:

Works

[edit]

Essays and reporting

[edit]
  • H. J. M. (February 28, 1925). "The "World" is with us". Behind the News. The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 2. pp. 4–5.
  • — (June 6, 1925). "The theatre". Critique. The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 16. p. 13.
  • — (June 13, 1925). "The theatre". Critique. The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 17. p. 15.

Short Fiction

[edit]
  • Mankiewicz, Herman J., "The Big Game," The New Yorker, November 14, 1925, p. 11
  • Mankiewicz, Herman J., "A New Yorker in the provinces," The New Yorker, February 6, 1926, p. 16

Novelization

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  • Browning, Tod & Herman J. Mankiewicz (1926). The Road to Mandalay: a Thrilling Throbbing Romance of Singapore. New York: Jacobsen Hodgkinson Corporation. for The Road to Mandalay (1926 film)

Plays

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  • Kaufman, George S. & Herman J. Mankiewicz (1931). The good fellow : a play in three acts. New York: S. French.

Critical studies, reviews and biography

[edit]

Notes

[edit]

References

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Further reading

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Herman J. Mankiewicz

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from Grokipedia
Herman Jacob Mankiewicz (November 7, 1897 – March 5, 1953) was an American , , , and . Mankiewicz gained prominence in Hollywood after transitioning from New York , where he contributed to publications such as and Vanity Fair. He became one of the highest-paid screenwriters in the industry during the 1930s, producing Marx Brothers comedies including Monkey Business (1931), (1932), and Duck Soup (1933), and scripting films like Dinner at Eight (1933). His most enduring achievement came from co-writing the for Citizen Kane (1941) with , a collaboration that secured the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay despite ongoing debates over the relative contributions of each man. Mankiewicz received another Oscar nomination for (1942) and continued working on projects amid personal struggles with that ultimately curtailed his later productivity.

Early Years

Family Background and Childhood

Herman Jacob Mankiewicz was born on November 7, 1897, in , to German-Jewish immigrants Franz Mankiewicz and Johanna (née ). His father, born in on November 30, 1872, emigrated to the from in 1892 at age 20, initially supporting himself through various means before establishing a career as a teacher of modern languages. The family soon relocated to , where Franz worked in education and the household emphasized intellectual pursuits amid modest circumstances. Mankiewicz was the eldest child; his sister Erna was born soon after, followed by his brother on February 11, 1909, also in Wilkes-Barre. The siblings grew up in an environment shaped by their father's rigorous academic standards and Germanic discipline, with Franz later advancing his own education by earning a degree from at age 41 while teaching. In 1913, the family returned to , where Franz secured a position teaching languages at City College, exposing the children to a vibrant urban intellectual scene. Mankiewicz's early years reflected the challenges of immigrant assimilation, including financial strains and familial expectations for scholarly achievement, which his father enforced stringently, often withholding praise despite the boys' talents. This dynamic fostered a competitive atmosphere among the siblings, particularly between Herman and , influencing their later pursuits in writing and . The household's emphasis on and provided Mankiewicz with foundational exposure to and , though his rebellious streak emerged early, clashing with paternal authority.

Education and Formative Influences

Herman J. Mankiewicz attended , where he majored in English and German. He graduated in 1917 at age 19, demonstrating precocious academic ability fostered by his father's emphasis on intellectual achievement. At Columbia, Mankiewicz engaged in extracurricular writing, contributing to the student newspaper and the , activities that sharpened his satirical wit and narrative skills amid a curriculum rich in literary classics and linguistic analysis. These experiences laid foundational influences for his later journalistic and dramatic pursuits, exposing him to rigorous debate and creative expression in an environment valuing erudition over convention. Following graduation, Mankiewicz spent a year studying in , immersing himself in , theater, and culture, which broadened his cosmopolitan perspective and attuned him to the interplay of , , and . This period, combined with Columbia's , instilled a first-hand appreciation for European intellectual traditions that contrasted with American , influencing his cynical yet incisive evident in subsequent work.

Pre-Hollywood Career

Journalism and Reporting

Following his service in the United States Marines during , Mankiewicz launched his journalism career in , where he served as the Berlin correspondent for the from 1920 to 1922, covering the economic turmoil and political instability of post-war under foreign editor James O'Donnell Bennett. During this period, he also reported for , providing dispatches on European fashion and cultural trends amid and social upheaval. His firsthand observations of 's , including the rise of extremist politics, informed his later writings and demonstrated his aptitude for sharp, on-the-ground analysis rather than rote wire service summaries. Upon returning to New York in 1922, Mankiewicz joined as assistant theater editor, a role that positioned him at the intersection of journalism and criticism during ' theatrical boom. He contributed feature articles to Vanity Fair, including "On Being a Man" in June 1924, which satirized masculine pretensions through ironic first-person reflection, and "The Life of an Assistant Dramatic Editor" in March 1925, critiquing the grind of Broadway coverage and the commercialization of American drama. These pieces showcased his wit and skepticism toward institutional pieties, traits honed in but adapted to domestic cultural reporting; he avoided the era's prevalent boosterism, instead favoring acerbic commentary on theatrical hype and journalistic routines. Mankiewicz's reporting emphasized empirical detail over speculation, as seen in his Berlin work documenting currency devaluation—where a loaf of could cost billions of marks by —and early signs of authoritarian resurgence, insights drawn from direct sourcing rather than secondary accounts. By , he had transitioned toward regular drama criticism, reviewing Broadway openings for and contributing to , where his style prioritized causal analysis of production flaws, such as directorial overreach or script inconsistencies, over mere plot recaps. This phase solidified his reputation among , though his output remained sporadic due to personal indulgences; contemporaries noted his reluctance to file on deadline, preferring polished, contrarian prose. His thus bridged reporting with cultural critique, foreshadowing the narrative sophistication he later brought to , before departing for Hollywood in 1926.

Publicity, Playwriting, and European Sojourns

Following his graduation from in 1917 and brief wartime service, Mankiewicz married Sara Aaronson in April 1920 and soon relocated to , where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the from 1920 to 1922, covering political and cultural developments amid the Weimar Republic's early instability. During this European sojourn, he supplemented his income by serving as a for the dancer , promoting her performances and persona in a period when she sought to revive her career in after personal and professional setbacks. Mankiewicz's dispatches from also included drama and book reviews submitted to , reflecting his growing interest in theatrical criticism. Returning to New York in 1922, Mankiewicz joined as assistant drama editor, a position he held through 1926, during which he honed his wit through editing and contributing satirical pieces on Broadway productions. In parallel, he ventured into playwriting, collaborating with on The Good Fellow, a three-act that premiered at the Little Theatre on October 25, 1926, but closed after just seven performances due to poor reviews and audience disinterest. The play's failure underscored the competitive Broadway landscape, yet Mankiewicz's involvement highlighted his early comedic flair, influenced by his journalistic background and associations with figures like Kaufman, though it yielded no financial success. These efforts in publicity and playwriting bridged his European experiences with emerging opportunities in , amid mounting personal debts from and alcohol that strained his New York tenure.

Personal Life

Marriage and Family Dynamics

Herman J. Mankiewicz married Shulamith Sara Aaronson, a native born on September 7, 1897, on July 1, 1920. The couple relocated briefly to , where Mankiewicz worked as a , before returning to the . Their marriage endured for over three decades until Mankiewicz's death in 1953, marked by Sara's steadfast support amid his personal struggles. The Mankiewiczes had three children: , (known as Don, born 1922), and Francis (known as Frank). Don pursued screenwriting, authoring works like I Want to Live! (1958), while Frank entered and , serving as press secretary to and . Johanna's professional path is less documented in public records, though the family's intellectual bent—rooted in Mankiewicz's journalistic heritage—shaped their trajectories. Family dynamics were strained by Mankiewicz's chronic , compulsive , and recurrent depressions, which Sara later described as "black depressions." These habits led to financial instability and emotional volatility, with his brother observing that Mankiewicz wielded drinking and gambling to vent frustrations toward Sara, his father, and Hollywood figures like . Despite such tensions, Sara remained committed, providing stability as Mankiewicz's career oscillated between acclaim and self-sabotage; no records indicate separation or , underscoring her role in sustaining the household through his excesses. The children witnessed these patterns, yet channeled familial resilience into their own public endeavors, avoiding the full descent into Mankiewicz's vices.

Chronic Alcoholism and Gambling Habits

Mankiewicz exhibited chronic from his early adulthood, a condition that progressively undermined his productivity and led to repeated professional dismissals in Hollywood. His excessive drinking, often conducted in social settings like poker games and parties, impaired his reliability as a , contributing to his pattern of earning high fees only to squander them amid binges. This vice culminated in his death on March 5, 1953, at age 55 from uremic poisoning directly attributable to long-term . Interwoven with his was a compulsive habit that inflicted severe financial strain, with contemporaries estimating losses totaling around one million dollars over his lifetime through betting on horses, cards, and other wagers. Specific incidents underscored the recklessness: in one case, he lost $1,000 on a toss, as detailed in Ben Hecht's autobiography. In September 1939, while contracted to , Mankiewicz sought an advance salary from studio head after exhausting his earnings on . His wife, Sara Aaronson Mankiewicz, actively intervened against his drinking by diluting hidden liquor bottles to reduce his intake, though such measures proved insufficient against his entrenched patterns. These parallel addictions fostered a cycle of fortune-building followed by dissipation, reinforcing his image among peers as a brilliant yet self-destructive figure whose vices mirrored the excesses of the era's .

Hollywood Career

Entry and Early Screenwriting

In April 1926, Herman J. Mankiewicz relocated from New York to Hollywood, where he was promptly employed by to write intertitles for silent films. Shortly after arriving, he dispatched a telegram to fellow journalist and playwright , famously stating: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around." This message, which lured Hecht and other New York writers westward, reflected Mankiewicz's opportunistic view of the burgeoning film industry's demand for literate talent amid the transition from silents to sound. Mankiewicz's initial contributions focused on intertitles, scripting captions for at least 25 silent features between mid-1926 and 1928, including Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command (1928). His first story credit came earlier that year with The Road to Mandalay (1926), a production directed by and starring as a one-eyed Singaporean criminal, adapted from a tale Mankiewicz co-developed with Elliott J. Clawson. Other early Paramount efforts included the adaptation for Stranded in Paris (1926) and the screenplay for Fashions for Women (1927), directed by , marking his shift toward narrative scripting as studios sought sophisticated dialogue for emerging talkies. By 1927, Paramount elevated Mankiewicz to head of its scenario department, a position leveraging his journalistic wit and efficiency in overseeing script development during the chaotic silent-to-sound pivot. In this role, he contributed titles and adaptations to films like A Gentleman of Paris (1927) and recruited East Coast talent, including Hecht, to professionalize screenwriting amid rapid production demands—Paramount released over 60 features annually by the late 1920s. His early output emphasized concise, ironic prose suited to visual storytelling, foreshadowing the verbal precision that later defined his dialogue-heavy adaptations, though his personal excesses already strained studio relations.

Writing Style and Key Non-Kane Contributions

Mankiewicz's was characterized by slick, satirical wit and a heavy reliance on sharp to drive narrative and character development, marking a shift toward more verbal, American-centric comedies in early Hollywood sound films. This approach often infused scripts with cynical humor drawn from his journalistic background, prioritizing verbal sparring over visual spectacle and influencing the "script doctor" role where he refined others' work without formal credit. Among his accredited contributions, Mankiewicz co-wrote the screenplay for Dinner at Eight (1933), adapting and Edna Ferber's play with into a pre-Code comedy-drama that showcased interwoven social through ensemble dialogue, earning praise for its incisive portrayal of upper-class pretensions amid economic turmoil. He also penned the original screenplay for Man of the World (1931), a Paramount drama emphasizing moral ambiguity in expatriate and verbal intrigue. Later, Mankiewicz received sole credit for (1942), a biographical sports film about that balanced inspirational elements with understated pathos through economical, dialogue-driven storytelling. Uncredited, Mankiewicz frequently served as a , polishing drafts for high-profile productions; for instance, he contributed revisions to (1939), enhancing character interactions and transitional scenes to support the film's fantastical elements with grounded wit. Over his career, he worked on approximately 60 films in such capacities, often injecting satirical edge into studio assignments, though much of this labor went unrecognized due to the era's collaborative and hierarchical production norms. One notable unproduced effort was The Mad Dog of Europe (1934), a prescient he wrote while on leave from , which Hollywood deemed too controversial for release amid rising political sensitivities.

The Citizen Kane Collaboration


In 1939, Orson Welles, who had been granted complete artistic control for his first feature film by RKO Pictures, recruited Herman J. Mankiewicz to co-write the screenplay for what would become Citizen Kane. Mankiewicz, leveraging his prior social interactions with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst—including visits to Hearst's San Simeon estate—drew inspiration from Hearst's life to craft the character of Charles Foster Kane. The collaboration began in earnest in early 1940, with Mankiewicz dictating an initial draft titled American over approximately six weeks, much of it from a hospital bed while recovering from a broken leg sustained in a car accident. Welles extensively revised Mankiewicz's draft, incorporating non-linear narrative techniques, multiple flashbacks, and innovative structural elements that transformed the script into its final form. Surviving script versions, including annotated drafts, demonstrate Welles's direct contributions to , scene rearrangements, and thematic depth, countering later assertions that Mankiewicz authored the independently. Mankiewicz sought co-writing credit, leading to tensions; Welles initially preferred not to share on-screen credit but ultimately agreed, resulting in both receiving the 1941 Academy Award for Best Original . Posthumous claims by Mankiewicz's family and Pauline Kael's 1971 essay "" attributing sole authorship to Mankiewicz have been refuted by textual evidence from script revisions and contemporary accounts showing collaborative input. Principal photography commenced in 1940 under Welles's direction, with Mankiewicz uninvolved in production beyond the script. The film premiered on May 1, 1941, in , earning critical acclaim for its technical innovations and storytelling but facing commercial challenges. Hearst, perceiving the film as a libelous portrayal, orchestrated a suppression campaign through his media empire, banning advertisements, reviews, and mentions of in his newspapers and pressuring theaters and the Hollywood establishment to withhold support. Despite these efforts, the film secured nine Academy Award nominations, though it won only for the screenplay.

Script Development and Hearst Connections

In early 1940, commissioned Herman J. Mankiewicz to develop the for his debut at , initially exploring adaptations before settling on an original story inspired by a media tycoon's life. Mankiewicz, sidelined by a broken leg and alcohol-related health issues, dictated the first draft over approximately six weeks from a and later a ranch in . This draft, exceeding 300 pages in subsequent revisions, featured a non-linear structure with flashbacks, multiple narrators, and investigative framing to dissect the protagonist's rise and fall. Mankiewicz's portrayal of drew directly from his social acquaintance with , the newspaper magnate whose opulent lifestyle and political ambitions shaped key elements of the character. As a frequent guest at Hearst's San Simeon castle in the late and , Mankiewicz observed the tycoon's vast art collections, isolation in grandeur, and strained personal relationships, which informed Kane's Xanadu estate, acquisitive obsessions, and failed bid for public office. His access stemmed partly from friendship with , a young and nephew of Hearst's longtime mistress ; Lederer, raised in Davies's household, introduced Mankiewicz to the couple's dynamic, influencing the depiction of Kane's possessive attachment to his companion Susan Alexander, a nod to Davies's comic talents overshadowed by Hearst's influence. Welles contributed to the script's evolution through pre-writing discussions on character arcs and thematic depth, reviewing drafts weekly and proposing structural refinements to heighten dramatic irony and visual motifs, such as the "Rosebud" mystery. Mankiewicz later reflected that these sessions balanced his anecdotal, dialogue-driven approach with Welles's emphasis on cinematic , though Hearst's recognizable traits risked legal and industry reprisals, prompting early codefendant considerations in the contract.

Authorship Credit Dispute

The authorship of the Citizen Kane screenplay became contentious during its pre-production in 1940, when Mankiewicz, having drafted an initial version under a contract that initially stipulated no screen credit for a fee of $10,000, demanded recognition as co-writer. Welles, who had provided detailed outlines and story ideas beforehand, initially sought sole credit himself, viewing Mankiewicz's role as that of a hired script doctor, but compromised on joint billing after arbitration threats from Mankiewicz to the Writers Guild of America. The film premiered on May 1, 1941, with the official credit "Written by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles," and the pair shared the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay on February 26, 1942. The dispute lay largely dormant until 1971, when New Yorker critic Pauline Kael's essay "" asserted that Mankiewicz deserved sole authorship, portraying Welles as having appropriated a near-complete script with minimal revisions while minimizing his own input. Kael relied heavily on accounts from , Mankiewicz's collaborator on the early drafts, who claimed Welles contributed little beyond minor polishes; however, this narrative overlooked surviving script versions and has been criticized for selective sourcing that aligned with Houseman's resentment toward Welles. Scholarly analysis of the screenplay's evolution, particularly Robert L. Carringer's 1978 examination of seven drafts in "The Scripts of Citizen Kane," demonstrates substantial Welles revisions starting with the third draft in July 1940, including the imposition of a non-linear structure with fragmented flashbacks from multiple viewpoints, the addition of key dialogue, the "Rosebud" motif, and scenes like the collapsing breakfast montage, transforming Mankiewicz's more conventional linear draft into the film's innovative form. Carringer concluded that Welles's contributions were "not only substantial but definitive," accounting for roughly half the final script's content through rewrites and additions, while Mankiewicz provided the foundational biographical elements drawn from and his own journalistic experiences. Subsequent studies, including stylometric analysis in J.E. Smyth's 2020 book Who Shot Citizen Kane?, attribute about 58 percent of the final draft's phrasing to Mankiewicz's style but affirm the collaborative nature, with Welles's structural and cinematic innovations integral to the result; these findings counter Kael's minimization of Welles while acknowledging Mankiewicz's core material. The consensus among film historians holds that joint credit reflects the evidence of mutual input, though popular retellings like the 2020 film Mank have revived Mank-centric claims, often echoing Kael without engaging the draft record.

Film Production, Release, and Immediate Aftermath

Principal photography for began on April 29, 1940, at RKO studios in Hollywood and continued through early 1940, spanning about nine weeks of actual shooting amid revisions and innovations. employed pioneering deep-focus techniques, using high-speed lenses and coated optics to maintain sharpness from foreground to background, alongside ceiling sets and extreme low-angle shots to emphasize character dominance and architectural oppression. Limited exteriors were filmed at sites including Balboa Park in for newsreel sequences and in Pasadena for estate grounds, with matte paintings enhancing the fictional Xanadu. The film premiered on May 1, 1941, at the RKO Palace Theatre in , with a nationwide following on September 5, 1941. Initial critical response was overwhelmingly positive, with reviewers praising its narrative innovation and technical virtuosity, though some Hollywood insiders dismissed it as overly experimental. Immediate aftermath involved intense backlash from , who viewed the protagonist as a libelous portrayal of himself and mobilized his media empire to suppress the film through blanket bans on reviews or mentions in his 30+ newspapers, radio stations, and newsreels, alongside smears questioning ' patriotism due to his past associations. Hearst's aides offered RKO $800,000 to buy and destroy prints, threatened exposés of studio scandals, and lobbied the FBI for investigations into Welles, contributing to restricted bookings and by theaters fearing reprisals. Commercially, the film underperformed, earning $1.6 million domestically against an $840,000 , failing to recoup costs amid the curtailed rollout and wartime distractions. RKO executives, under pressure, limited promotion and eventually withdrew it from circulation by 1942, stalling its momentum despite nine Academy Award nominations.

Later Years and Death

Post-Kane Projects and Professional Fade

Following the release of Citizen Kane in 1941, Mankiewicz received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay (shared with Orson Welles), which briefly revitalized his standing in Hollywood. He co-wrote the screenplay for The Pride of the Yankees (1942), a biographical film about baseball player Lou Gehrig starring Gary Cooper, earning another Oscar nomination for Best Original Story. This project aligned with Mankiewicz's interest in baseball, as he had previously covered sports journalism. Subsequent credits included uncredited contributions to The Enchanted Cottage (1945), a romantic fantasy remake, and screenplay work on The Spanish Main (1945), a swashbuckling adventure directed by Frank Borzage. By the mid-1940s, Mankiewicz's output slowed amid escalating personal struggles. His final credited screenplay was for (1952), another baseball biopic depicting pitcher , produced by Allied Artists. Despite earlier financial peaks—once the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood—Mankiewicz's chronic and compulsive eroded his reliability, leading studios to limit assignments and favor more dependable writers. These habits contributed to professional isolation; he often clashed with producers over revisions and deadlines, exacerbating his cynicism toward the industry he had long criticized. In his , Mankiewicz subsisted on sporadic script doctoring and favors rather than lead projects, reflecting a marked decline from his pre-Kane productivity. Health complications from , including injuries from falls, further hampered his ability to work consistently, culminating in reduced visibility by the early 1950s. This fade contrasted sharply with the creative peak of , underscoring how personal vices overrode his undoubted talent in an industry demanding discipline.

Health Decline and Final Days

Mankiewicz's chronic , which had plagued him throughout his career, accelerated his physical decline in the late and early , manifesting in liver damage, kidney impairment, and general debilitation that rendered sustained professional output increasingly difficult. In February 1953, while scripting Mock the Midnight Bell for Twentieth Century-Fox, he suffered a severe of his condition and was hospitalized at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in . He died there on March 5, 1953, at age 55, from uremic poisoning due to precipitated by decades of .

Legacy and Influence

Contributions to Screenwriting Craft

Herman J. Mankiewicz played a pivotal role in elevating screenwriting during Hollywood's transition to sound films, serving frequently as an uncredited script doctor who refined and bolstered initial drafts for greater narrative cohesion and impact. His interventions often addressed structural weaknesses, as seen in his contributions to The Wizard of Oz (1939), where he devised the Kansas sequence in black-and-white with a seamless transition to color in Oz, enhancing visual storytelling through scripted cues. This technique demonstrated his ability to integrate descriptive screenplay elements that guided directors toward innovative cinematic effects, a practice that underscored screenwriting's potential to influence production beyond mere words. Mankiewicz's dialogue style, characterized by rapid, witty, and cynical exchanges drawn from his associations and journalistic roots, infused early talkies with New York sophistication and satirical edge, contrasting the era's prevailing sentimentalism. As head of Paramount's department starting in 1928, he helped pioneer dialogue-heavy comedies, becoming Hollywood's highest-paid writer by the early 1930s through scripts like Dinner at Eight (1933), which featured overlapping banter and social critique. This approach brought journalistic incisiveness to film narratives, enabling layered character revelations via terse, acerbic lines that advanced plot and theme efficiently. His prolific output, spanning nearly 100 films from 1926 to 1953 in writing, producing, and doctoring capacities, established as a collaborative yet intellectually rigorous , influencing the genre-blending and character-focused techniques that later defined Hollywood's . By adapting Broadway sophistication and real-world cynicism into adaptable, image-evoking prose, Mankiewicz modeled how screenplays could serve as blueprints for dynamic, multi-perspective storytelling, even if his foundational revisions often went unacknowledged due to studio practices.

Family and Broader Cultural Impact

Herman J. Mankiewicz married Shulamith Sara Aaronson on July 1, 1920; she outlived him, dying on December 11, 1985, at age 88 in . The couple had three children. Their eldest son, Don M. Mankiewicz (January 20, 1922 – April 25, 2015), became a and , earning an Academy Award nomination for the adaptation of I Want to Live! (1958) and contributing scripts to television series such as Ironside, Marcus Welby, M.D., and a episode. Their second son, Frank F. Mankiewicz (May 16, 1924 – October 23, 2014), pursued a career in journalism and Democratic politics, serving as press secretary to Senator Robert F. Kennedy during his 1968 presidential campaign and as campaign manager for George McGovern's 1972 bid; he later led National Public Radio as president from 1977 to 1983, expanding its reach amid financial challenges. Their daughter, Johanna "Josie" Mankiewicz Davis (October 2, 1937 – July 25, 1974), worked as a researcher at TIME magazine before publishing the novel Life Signs in 1973; she died at age 36 after being struck by a taxi in Greenwich Village while walking with her son. Mankiewicz's younger brother, (February 11, 1909 – February 5, 1993), extended the family's Hollywood footprint as a , , and director, winning four —including for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950)—and helming over 20 films. The siblings' and shared intellectual rigor, rooted in their German-Jewish immigrant parents' emphasis on , fueled competitive achievements that solidified the Mankiewicz name as a Hollywood dynasty. Beyond immediate kin, the family's influence permeated American culture through subsequent generations: Joseph's sons included screenwriter , who penned Superman (1978) and its sequel; Frank's political acumen shaped media strategies in campaigns and public broadcasting; and great-nephew has hosted since 2003, curating classic films including family works to preserve cinematic heritage. This multigenerational legacy underscores transitions from early screenwriting innovation to directing mastery, television production, , and archival stewardship, reflecting broader shifts in 20th-century entertainment and media.

Modern Reassessments and Depictions

The 2020 biographical film Mank, directed by David Fincher and starring Gary Oldman as Mankiewicz, depicts him as a cynical, alcoholic screenwriter whose draft formed the core of Citizen Kane's script, emphasizing his personal and professional conflicts with Orson Welles while portraying Welles as a manipulative newcomer demanding revisions. The film, scripted by Fincher's late father Jack based partly on Pauline Kael's 1971 essay "Raising Kane," assigns primary authorship to Mankiewicz, showing him resisting studio pressures and Hearst-inspired elements drawn from his own experiences. Critics observed that Mank revives the long-standing dispute over Citizen Kane's screenplay credit, with some praising its restoration of Mankiewicz's overlooked role amid Hollywood's collaborative realities, while others faulted it for minimizing Welles' structural innovations and editing contributions to the final film. Quantitative reassessments have bolstered arguments for Mankiewicz's dominant influence on the dialogue and narrative framework. A 2023 study by film scholar Warren Buckland, Who Wrote Citizen Kane? – Statistical Analysis of Disputed Co-Authorship, applied stylometric techniques—including function word frequencies and n-gram patterns—to compare surviving drafts against known works by Mankiewicz and Welles, attributing roughly 58% of the final shooting script's linguistic features to Mankiewicz's style. Buckland's methodology, which analyzed variances in vocabulary richness and syntactic complexity, counters earlier qualitative claims favoring Welles by providing empirical markers of authorship, though it acknowledges Welles' probable revisions for dramatic economy. This data-driven approach contrasts with prior anecdotal accounts, highlighting Mankiewicz's foundational draft—completed in early 1940 while he recovered from injury—as the script's skeletal structure, even as Welles integrated visual motifs during production. Broader modern evaluations frame Mankiewicz as an undercredited architect of Hollywood wit, whose sardonic dialogue influenced films like Dinner at Eight (1933) and (1942), yet whose self-destructive habits obscured his precision in adapting journalistic exposé into cinematic form. Post-Mank discourse, including reviews in outlets like , has prompted reevaluations of studio-era as undervalued labor, with Mankiewicz exemplifying how uncredited "fixers" shaped iconic works amid power imbalances favoring directors. These views, informed by archival releases and Fincher's meticulous period recreation, underscore Mankiewicz's causal role in Citizen Kane's innovations—such as non-linear biography—without resolving whether his contributions warranted sole credit over Welles' synthesis.

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