Herman J. Mankiewicz

Writing

Herman J. Mankiewicz

Born 1897-11-07 · New York City, New York, USA

Herman Jacob Mankiewicz (November 7, 1897 – March 5, 1953; New York City) was an American screenwriter, who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). Earlier, he was the Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the drama critic for The New York Times and The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott said that Herman Mankiewicz was the "funniest man in New York". Both Mankiewicz and Welles received Academy Awards for their screenplay. Mankiewicz's younger brother was Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993), an Oscar-winning Hollywood director, screenwriter, and producer. His nephew Tom Mankiewicz (1942 – 2010) was also a screenwriter and director. He 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. Among the screenplays he wrote or worked on, besides "Citizen Kane", were "The Wizard of Oz", "Man of the World", "Dinner at Eight", "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.". Mankiewicz was an alcoholic. 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". 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.” Herman Mankiewicz died March 5, 1953, of uremic poisoning, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles.

Acting credits

Citizen Kane poster
8.0

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Citizen Kane

1941

The Front Page poster
6.5

Hildy Johnson is an investigative reporter looking for a bigger paycheck. When an accused murderer escapes from custody, Hildy sees an opportunity for the story of a lifetime. But when he finds the criminal, he learns that the man may not be guilty. With the help of his editor, Hildy attempts to hide the convict, uncover the conspiracy and write the scoop of his career.

The Front Page

1931

No artwork available
7.0

A documentary exploring the 1933 screenplay of the same name by Citizen Kane co-writer Herman Mankiewicz, which warned of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, but was rejected by Hollywood studios at the time.

The Mad Dog of Europe

2026

The Battle Over Citizen Kane poster
7.4

Documentary about the battle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst over Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Features interviews with Welles' and Hearst's co-workers also acts as a relatively complete biograph of Hearst's career.

The Battle Over Citizen Kane

1996

The Mating Call poster
6.0

A World War I veteran takes on the Ku Klux Klan when he loses his wife to a womanizing Klansman. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with University of Nevada, Las Vegas Foundation.

The Mating Call

1928

The Complete 'Citizen Kane' poster
NR

Documentary looking at Orson Welles and the production of the film CITIZEN KANE fifty years ago, considering the furore that accompanied it and the real life press baron William Randolph Hearst upon whom Kane is based, and his efforts to halt the film, destroy the negative and persecution of people involved with its production and showing. It includes BBC interviews with Welles made in 1960 and 1982, and film historian Robert Carringer looks at the scenes that never made it to the screen. American film critic Pauline Kael also analyses the film's enduring appeal. Extracts from "The RKO Story" (producer: Rosemary Wilton) and "Yesterday's Whitness" (producers: Christopher Cook and Stephen Peet).

The Complete 'Citizen Kane'

1991

Behind the camera

Citizen Kane poster
8.0

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Citizen Kane

1941

See Here, Private Hargrove poster
6.5

Journalist Marion Hargrove enters the Army intending to supplement his income by writing about his training experiences. He muddles through basic training at Fort Bragg with the self-serving help of a couple of buddies intent on cutting themselves in on that extra income.

See Here, Private Hargrove

1944

Duck Soup poster
7.3

Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.

Duck Soup

1933

San Francisco poster
6.6

A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.

San Francisco

1936

Dinner at Eight poster
6.8

An ambitious New York socialite plans an extravagant dinner party as her businessman husband, Oliver, contends with financial woes, causing a lot of tension between the couple. Meanwhile, their high-society friends and associates, including the gruff Dan Packard and his sultry spouse, Kitty, contend with their own entanglements, leading to revelations at the much-anticipated dinner.

Dinner at Eight

1933

Comrade X poster
6.1

An American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.

Comrade X

1940

Monkey Business poster
6.9

Four stowaways get mixed up with gangsters while running riot on an ocean liner.

Monkey Business

1931

The Pride of the Yankees poster
7.3

The story of the life and career of the baseball hall of famer, Lou Gehrig.

The Pride of the Yankees

1942

Horse Feathers poster
6.9

Quincy Adams Wagstaff, the new president of Huxley U, hires bumblers Baravelli and Pinky to help his school win the big football game against rival Darwin U.

Horse Feathers

1932

A Woman's Secret poster
5.6

A popular singer, Marian Washburn, suddenly and unexplainably loses her voice, causing a shake-up at the club where she works. Her worried but loyal piano player, Luke Jordan, helps to promote a new, younger singer, Susan Caldwell, to temporarily replace Marian. Susan finds some early acclaim but decides to leave the club after a few performances. Soon after Susan quits, she is gunned down, and Marian quickly becomes a suspect.

A Woman's Secret

1949

A Woman's Secret poster
5.6

A popular singer, Marian Washburn, suddenly and unexplainably loses her voice, causing a shake-up at the club where she works. Her worried but loyal piano player, Luke Jordan, helps to promote a new, younger singer, Susan Caldwell, to temporarily replace Marian. Susan finds some early acclaim but decides to leave the club after a few performances. Soon after Susan quits, she is gunned down, and Marian quickly becomes a suspect.

A Woman's Secret

1949

Christmas Holiday poster
6.5

A young femme fatale realizes that the man she married is an incorrigible wastrel.

Christmas Holiday

1944

Thunderbolt poster
5.7

A criminal known as Thunderbolt is imprisoned and facing execution. Into the next cell is placed Bob Moran, an innocent man who has been framed and who is in love with Thunderbolt's girl, without knowing of their relationship. Thunderbolt hopes to stave off the execution long enough to kill young Moran for romancing his girl.

Thunderbolt

1929

The Enchanted Cottage poster
7.4

A homely maid and a scarred ex-GI meet at the cottage where she works and where he was to spend his honeymoon prior to his accident. The two develop a bond and agree to marry, more out of loneliness than love. The romantic spirit of the cottage, however, overtakes them. They soon begin to look beautiful to each other, but no one else.

The Enchanted Cottage

1945

The Enchanted Cottage poster
7.4

A homely maid and a scarred ex-GI meet at the cottage where she works and where he was to spend his honeymoon prior to his accident. The two develop a bond and agree to marry, more out of loneliness than love. The romantic spirit of the cottage, however, overtakes them. They soon begin to look beautiful to each other, but no one else.

The Enchanted Cottage

1945

The Spanish Main poster
6.4

Laurent van Horn is the leader of a band of Dutch refugees on a ship seeking freedom in the Carolinas, when the ship is wrecked on the coast of Cartagene, governed by Don Juan Alvardo, a Spanish ruler. Alvarado has Laurent thrown in prison, but the latter escapes, and five-years later is a pirate leader. He poses as the navigator on a ship in which Contessa Francesca, daughter of a Mexican noble, is traveling on her way to marry Alvarado, whom she has never seen. Laurent's pirates capture the ship and Francesca, in order to save another ship, gives her hand-in-marriage to Laurent, who sails her to the pirate hideout. This irks his jealous pirate comrades Anne Bonney and Captain Benjamin Black. They overpower Laurent and send Francesca to Alvarado, and then Mario du Billar, a trusted right-hand man, makes a deal to deliver Laurent to Alvarado.

The Spanish Main

1945

Street of Shadows poster
6.9

A slippery femme fatale, a spy for Germany during the Great War, is sent to Thessaloniki in Greece and becomes involved with a man on the other side, a French military officer.

Street of Shadows

1937

Live, Love and Learn poster
5.6

A starving, uncompromising artist and an heiress fall in love at first sight and immediately get married. She loves his outrageous behaviour, his strange roommate, and the best apartment poverty can buy.

Live, Love and Learn

1937

Man of the World poster
6.2

A young American girl visits Paris accompanied by her fiancee and her wealthy uncle. There she meets and is romanced by a worldly novelist; what she doesn't know is that he is a blackmailer who is using her to get to her uncle.

Man of the World

1931

The Human Comedy poster
6.2

Teenager Homer Macauley stays at home in the small town of Ithaca, California to support his family while his older brother Marcus prepares to go to war.

The Human Comedy

1943

Operator 13 poster
5.9

American Civil War, 1862. After the disaster of the Second Battle of Bull Run, Major Allen, chief of the Secret Service of the Union, asks actress Gail Loveless to become one of his operators and infiltrate enemy territory.

Operator 13

1934

Stand by for Action poster
7.0

U. S. Navy Lieutenant Gregg Masterman, of The Harvard and Boston Back Bay Mastermans, learned about the sea while winning silver cups sailing his yacht. He climbs swiftly in rank, and is now Junior Aide to Rear Admiral Stephen Thomas.

Stand by for Action

1942

Fast Workers poster
5.0

Gunner and Bucker are friends who work as riveters. Whenever Bucker gets the urge to marry, which is often, Gunner will hit on his girl to see if she is true or not. So far, Gunner hasn't failed. But one night, while Gunner is in jail, Bucker meets Mary, a tough dame with a line. He falls for her, and she falls for his money. But Mary is already a gal pal of Gunner, and no two know about the third one. The trouble starts when the triangle is revealed too late.

Fast Workers

1933

After Office Hours poster
6.5

A managing editor sends a socialite reporter to spy on her boyfriend, mixed up in murder.

After Office Hours

1935