Joseph L. Mankiewicz

For a time he worked in Berlin, Germany, as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune newspaper before entering the motion picture business.

Comfortable in a variety of genres and able to elicit career performances from actors and actresses alike, Joseph L. Mankiewicz combined ironic, sophisticated scripts with a precise, sometimes stylised mise en scène. Mankiewicz worked for seventeen years as a screenwriter for Paramount and as a producer for MGM before getting a chance to direct at Twentieth Century-Fox. Over six years he made 11 films for Fox, reaching a peak in 1950 and 1951 when he won consecutive Academy Awards for Screenplay and Direction for both A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve. Read Less

It received widely favorable reviews, and David Shipman, author of the book The Great Movie Stars: The Hollywood Years, called it "perhaps the finest Shakespeare film ever made". The film serves as the only record of Marlon Brando in a Shakespearean role; he played Mark Antony, and received an Oscar nomination for his performance. Read Less