Herman J. Mankiewicz Trailers
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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.
Most Popular Herman J. Mankiewicz Trailers
Total trailers found: 100
16 May 1931
Chester Carr, owner of a dude ranch in the Rockies, caters to guests seeking the thrill of the Wild West.
17 April 1941
Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist.
12 March 1932
When World War I comes to an end, three pilots find themselves on hard times. They wind up in Hollywood, where they work as stunt fliers for a sadistic director.
21 November 1941
The college president, the head cheerleader and a gambling gangster try to keep a flunking football e
28 July 1933
A newlywed discovers that she and her husband's snobby family speak different languages.
05 July 1935
A romantic comedy-drama-musical of mistaken identity, infidelity and farce, set in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century.
09 March 1934
Aubrey cons Amy into thinking he's a railroad bigwig. When he loses his job he takes one wearing a sandwich board.
16 November 1929
In this melodrama set during WWI, a gangster joins the army and is promoted to major. He then returns from war torn Europe to tell a family that their beloved son had died in his arms during a battle.
30 September 1927
Le Marquis de Marignan is a French aristocrat and seducer who flirts with every Parisian girl he meets.
17 September 1937
A young woman inherits a newspaper whose editor refuses to hire lady reporters.
19 November 1927
Lizzie Stokes, an obscure and colorless actress, is elevated to stardom through publicity and better coaching from Daniel Hoffman, a theatrical producer.
19 May 1939
Detective Guy Johnson's client, Willie Heywood, is framed for murder. While Guy hides him so he can catch the real killer, both of them are nabbed by the police, tried, convicted and sentenced to jail: Guy for a year with Willie to be executed.
01 January 1936
The Three Maxims are trapeze artists Pat (Anna Neagle), Toni (Tuilio Carminati) and Mac (Leslie Banks).
17 December 1927
Sheriff Ben Holden is in love with hotel owner Madge Malarkey when down-and-out carnival man Gabby Gilfoil shows up hoping to take her for some money.
26 June 1926
Joe, a former sea captain whose wife died during the birth of their child at sea, is now a pockmarked, disreputable divekeeper in Singapore where he indulges in shady operations with Herrick, known as The Admiral.
02 July 1937
Spies on opposite sides fall in love in pre-revolutionary Russia.
13 July 1934
In 1915, German Counter-Intelligence Chief Von Sturm learns that someone is providing the British with critical strategic planning for the Turkish theater.
22 December 1933
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.
17 June 1944
A young femme fatale realizes that the man she married is an incorrigible wastrel.
08 June 1934
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.
25 May 1929
Wellman’s first all-talkie, scripted by Herman Mankiewicz, with arrogant boxer Richard Arlen romancing Mary Brian, then falling for temptress Olga Baclanova (Freaks) on the eve of the big fight.
14 January 1928
In love with political candidate Anthony Cowles, heroine Nancy Blair gets wind of the opposition's scheme to ruin Cowles' reputation.
13 April 1937
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.
24 January 1941
A medicine show man tries to con people into believing he's a legitimate stage actor.
29 October 1937
A starving, uncompromising artist and an heiress fall in love on first sight and immediately get married.
08 March 1940
Comic mayhem results when a small town pet store owner, mistakenly believed killed during a sea voyage, turns up very much alive.
22 March 1930
A loud-mouthed lout alienates everyone except his patient wife.
22 November 1935
A strait-laced country vicar is very embarrassed by his father's naughty exploits with a lively actress.
26 March 1927
Celeste de Givray is renowned throughout Europe as the most beautiful and best-dressed model in all Paris.
22 February 1935
A managing editor sends a socialite reporter to spy on her boyfriend, mixed up in murder.
12 November 1933
Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs.
04 April 1931
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.
27 December 1940
Wholesome comedy about newlyweds (and the bride's understanding--but sometimes interfering--parents) discovering married life isn't always bliss.
11 August 1943
The title of Grand Caesar in the Ancient Order of Noblest Romans of Wakefield, Indiana keeps Jim "Pop" Helton so involved and distracted that he forgets to pay the family's bills, nearly makes a shambles of a real estate deal his oldest daughter, Ethel is working on, almost wrecks her romance with Captain Tom Drayson, and gets involved in a game with a pool shark in an effort to raise the remaining $75 of the $6,750 needed (that they didn't have) by the Wakefield Lodge to host the national convention of the Noblest Romans.
13 December 1926
American shop-girl Julie McFadden, wins a free passage to Paris; en route she meets Robert Van Wye, who has to kiss her when she loses a sack race.
10 December 1927
Real-life outlaw Joaquin Murietta, who (according to this film, anyway) is a latter-day Robin Hood, dedicated to driving land-grabbers and corrupt politicians out of Spanish California.
24 March 1931
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.
12 November 1927
Hard-boiled underworld melodrama, with gang wars and gunfights, in which criminal lawyer turns prosecutor to avenge a friend's death.
25 May 1930
Ruby is a counter girl at the San Diego Soda Shop with a habit of being a girlfriend to Sailors stopping by.
20 October 1933
A charlatan posing as Baron Munchhausen is invited to be guest speaker at a girls' school.
10 October 1935
Con men Calvin Churchill and Clip McGurk know how to fix a horse-race or boxing match. Calvin wants to go straight and win back his estranged wife, but first the men must dodge a dogged IRS agent and bilk a bunch of aviation investors out of the backing boodle for a balloon excursion into the stratosphere.
23 March 1934
"Lucky" Davis, a ladies-man and a devil-may-care U. S. Marine Sergeant, is leading a Marine-squadron on an expedition through a Phillipine jungle where an outlaw bandit is leading a guerilla-war rebellion.
22 December 1930
Julie Cavendish comes from a family of great Broadway actors. Her mother Fanny staunchly continues acting.
31 December 1942
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.
26 June 1936
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.
14 July 1942
The story of the life and career of the baseball hall of famer, Lou Gehrig.
12 July 1935
Steve Grey, reporter for the Daily Star, has a habit of scooping all the other papers in town. When Henry Mander is investigated for the murder of his shady business partner, Grey is one step ahead of the police to the extent that he often dictates his story in advance of its actual occurrence.
13 December 1940
An American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.
02 October 1928
A successful carnival barker deals with the arrival of his eager son, who he'd hoped would stay far from the carnival world, his son's entanglement with a showgirl, and his own jealous mistress.
01 October 1945
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.
21 January 1928
A former Imperial Russian general and cousin of the Czar ends up in Hollywood as an extra in a movie directed by a former revolutionary.
18 March 1944
Journalist Marion Hargrove enters the Army intending to supplement his income by writing about his training experiences.
16 April 1931
A society gigolo goes after a rich mother and her daughter, but tries to find true happiness with his girlfriend, who is neither rich nor in "society.
19 August 1932
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.
28 April 1945
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.
19 September 1931
Four stowaways get mixed up with gangsters while running riot on an ocean liner.
29 March 1930
A once-wealthy sister and brother rent out their Southern mansion and stay on as cook and butler.
20 June 1929
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.
08 July 1932
A small country on the verge of bankruptcy is persuaded to enter the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics as a means of raising money.
16 May 1976
Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire present more golden moments from the MGM film library, this time including comedy and drama as well as classic musical numbers.
