Mankiewicz, Joseph Leo (1909–1993)

US screenwriter, director, and producer. He is celebrated as the writer and director of one of the wittiest films ever to come out of Hollywood, All About Eve (1950), a satirical melodrama about theatre people. During his career with MGM 1933–43 and 1953–72, and Twentieth Century Fox 1943–53, he produced and directed many memorable films, winning Academy Awards for both A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve. Early successes included The Philadelphia Story (1940; directed by George Cukor).

After Julius Caesar (1953; directed by Mankiewicz, with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony and John Gielgud as Cassius) and The Quiet American (1957), he received poor reviews for such films as Cleopatra (1963), starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. He directed his first musical, Guys and Dolls, in 1955.

Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the younger brother of Herman Mankiewicz (1897–1953), co-author of Citizen Kane. He joined Paramount, in Hollywood, in 1929, and made his producing debut with MGM in 1936, producing Fritz Lang's first US film Fury (1936) later that year, and Three Comrades, partly scripted by F Scott Fitzgerald, in 1938. After moving to Fox, he began directing with Dragonwyck (1946). His last film was an adaptation of Anthony Shaffer's play Sleuth, with Laurence Olivier, in 1972.