Joseph L. Mankiewicz Trailers
Stardust: The Bette Davis Story TrailerBackstory: 'All About Eve' TrailerPreminger: Anatomy of a Filmmaker Trailer
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz (/ˈmæŋkəwɪts/ MANG-kə-wits; February 11, 1909 – February 5, 1993) was an American filmmaker. A four-time Academy Award winner, he is best known for his witty and literate dialogue and his preference for voice-over narration and narrative flashbacks. Also known as an actor's director, Mankiewicz directed several prominent actors, including Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Elizabeth Taylor, to several of their memorable onscreen performances.
Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Mankiewicz studied at Columbia University and graduated in 1928. He moved overseas to Europe, where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and translated German intertitles into English for UFA. On the advice of his screenwriter brother Herman, Mankiewicz moved back to the United States, and was hired by Paramount Pictures as a dialogue writer. He then became a screenwriter, writing for numerous films starring Jack Oakie. He next moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), where he served as a producer for several films, including The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Woman of the Year (1942). Mankiewicz left MGM after a dispute with Louis B. Mayer.
In 1944, Mankiewicz began working for Twentieth Century-Fox, where he produced The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). He made his directorial debut with Dragonwyck (1946) after Ernst Lubitsch had dropped out due to illness. Mankiewicz remained at Fox, directing a broad range of genre films. Consecutively, in 1950 and 1951, he won two Academy Awards each for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950). In 1953, Mankiewicz formed his own production company Figaro, where he independently produced, as well as wrote and directed, The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and The Quiet American (1958).
In 1961, Mankiewicz took over direction from Rouben Mamoulian for Cleopatra (1963). Production was beset with numerous difficulties, including a heavily publicized extramarital affair between stars Taylor and Richard Burton. Relatively late into production, Darryl F. Zanuck reassumed control of Fox as studio president and briefly fired Mankiewicz for excessive overruns. Released in 1963, Cleopatra became the year's highest-grossing film and earned mixed reviews from critics. Mankiewicz's reputation suffered, and he did not return to direct another film until The Honey Pot (1967).
Mankiewicz then directed There Was a Crooked Man... (1970) and the documentary King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis (1972), sharing credit with Sidney Lumet on the latter. His final film Sleuth (1972), starring Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier, earned Mankiewicz his fourth and final Oscar nomination as Best Director. In 1993, Mankiewicz died in Bedford, New York, at the age of 83.
Most Popular Joseph L. Mankiewicz Trailers
Total trailers found: 87
24 June 1933
A surgeon and an ambulance driver fight racketeers who take over their hospital.
31 December 1983
Joseph L. Mankiewicz discusses his career in a feature-length interview recorded at his New England home and the 1983 Berlin Film Festival.
02 July 1931
Two small town widows bring their children to Hollywood, where their children become competing film stars.
12 June 1963
Determined to hold on to the throne, Cleopatra seduces the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. When Caesar is murdered, she redirects her attentions to his general, Marc Antony, who vows to take power—but Caesar’s successor has other plans.
09 March 1986
In this tribute to her frequent co-star and longtime love, Katharine Hepburn hosts a behind-the-scenes look at Spencer Tracy's personal and professional life that features intimate personal accounts, interviews and clips from his most acclaimed work on the silver screen.
21 March 1931
An ordinary Joe has ambitions to become a Tin Pan Alley writer.
19 April 1932
Barnstorming pilots Speed Condon, Bill Adams, and Eddie Smith travel the country with their manager, Alec Dugan, performing at fairs and air shows and hawking rides for the locals.
20 September 1988
Tony Palmer's award-winning feature-length documentary profile of Richard Burton.
25 December 1942
Frenchwoman Michele de la Becque, an opponent of the Nazis in German-occupied Paris, hides a downed American flyer, Pat Talbot, and attempts to get him safely out of the country.
09 November 1988
After Lee Strasberg’s death in 1982, the most prestigious talents from the Actors Studio assumed the leadership of this exceptional organization.
09 November 1950
From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Eve Harrington is determined to take the reins of power away from the great actress Margo Channing.
01 July 1949
Ruthless Italian-American banker Gino Monetti is engaged in a number of criminal activities. Three of his four grown sons refuse to help their father stay out of prison after he's arrested for his questionable business practices.
25 April 1931
Skippy, the mischievous son of a wealthy doctor, meets Sooky in poverty-ridden Shantytown, and together they try to save Sooky's pet from a cruel dogcatcher.
10 April 1946
A simple Connecticut farm girl is recruited by a distant relative, an aristocratic patroon, to be governess to his young daughter in his Hudson Valley mansion.
07 February 2017
From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Catherine Moreau is determined to take the reins of power away from the great actress Adeline Margaux.
05 December 1940
When a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself.
29 August 1951
A successful, unorthodox doctor befriends a young woman with suicidal ideations due to her pregnancy by her ex, a military reservist killed in action.
03 March 1985
Biography of the legendary filmmaker directed by his son.
04 June 1953
The growing ambition of Julius Caesar is a source of major concern to his close friend Brutus. Cassius persuades him to participate in his plot to assassinate Caesar but both have sorely underestimated Mark Antony.
12 March 1951
A documentary short film depicting the work of the motion picture director. An anonymous director is shown preparing the various aspects of a film for production, meeting with the writer and producer, approving wardrobe and set design, rehearsing scenes with the actors and camera crew, shooting the scenes, watching dailies, working with the editor and composer, and attending the first preview.
11 June 1948
A girl is engaged to the local richman, but meanwhile she has dreams about the legendary pirate Macoco.
04 May 1934
The friendship between two orphans endures even though they grow up on opposite sides of the law and fall in love with the same woman.
20 January 1949
A letter is addressed to three wives from their 'best friend', announcing that she's running away with one of their husbands – but she doesn't specify which one.
24 January 1941
A medicine show man tries to con people into believing he's a legitimate stage actor.
24 March 1970
A presentation of key events in the life of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. Beginning with the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, MLK is followed through major steps in his struggle to promote racial equality.
04 February 1931
The Haddocks are going on a European vacation and from their reception at the station, where the whole town goes to see them off, it is clear who wears the pants in the family - it's their daughter Mildred.
28 April 1933
Barbers Willy Nilly and Hercules Glub have opened a barbershop in an Indian reservation, where they have no customers.
21 May 1990
A celebrity benefit for The Actors' Fund of America, featuring music, songs, dance and comedy.
25 May 1947
In 1900, young widow Lucy Muir learns that her seaside cottage is haunted and forms a unique relationship with the ghost.
23 December 1955
In New York, a gambler is challenged to take a Salvation Army missionary to Havana, and unexpectedly they fall for each other.
16 August 1950
Two hoodlum brothers are brought into hospital for gunshot wounds, and when one dies, the other accuses their Black doctor of murder.
18 September 1970
A charming but ruthless criminal is sent to a remote Arizona prison, where he enlists the help of his cellmates in an escape attempt with the promise of sharing his hidden loot.
16 December 1938
Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways.
10 December 1972
A man who loves games and theatre invites his wife's lover to meet, setting up a battle of wits with potentially deadly results.
21 May 1967
In Venice, a millionaire hires an actor to help him prank three greedy exes into thinking he's dying and leaving his fortune to one of them.
22 February 1952
During WWII, the valet to the British Ambassador to Ankara sells British secrets to the Germans while trying to romance a refugee Polish countess.
17 August 1942
Reporter Homer Smith accidently draws Marcia Warren into his mission to stop Nazis from bombing Allied Conwoys with robot-planes.
22 December 1959
The only son of wealthy widow Violet Venable dies while on vacation with his cousin Catherine. What the girl saw was so horrible that she went insane; now Mrs.
18 December 1933
In Victorian England, a bored young girl dreams that she has entered a fantasy world called Wonderland, populated by even more fantastic characters.
29 September 1954
A washed-up filmmaker gets a second chance at stardom when he discovers stunning peasant Maria Vargas dancing in a Madrid nightclub.
28 October 1991
This documentary, hosted by actor Burgess Meredith, explores the life and career of movie director Otto Preminger, whose body of work includes such memorable films as Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Laura, Forever Amber, Advise and Consent, In Harm's Way, The Moon Is Blue, The Man with the Golden Arm, and many other movies made from the '30s through the '70s.
01 March 1948
A convict sentenced to three years for killing a detective escapes and goes on the lam, aided by a local girl.
28 December 1964
Wealthy industrialist and fierce isolationist Daniel Grudge, long embittered by the loss of his son in World War II, is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve who lead him to reconsider his attitude toward his fellow man.
17 January 1931
Naïve insurance agent 'Cyclone' Case falls in love with Sylvia Martine, whose father has a dispute with gangster Mike Slade.
15 October 1937
A bohemian free spirit helps meek Waldo win back his fiancée and falls in love with her over-controlling sister in the process.
09 January 1932
Donald Ingals and his wife Eunice are conventional and loving parents who are shocked when their son Bradley comes home from college with ideas that they consider to be outrageous.
08 February 1958
Cynical British journalist Fowler falls in love with a young Vietnamese woman but is dismayed when a naïve U.
29 October 1932
A successful ex-boxer opens a high-class speakeasy in what once was the childhood home of a formerly rich society girl.
10 February 1939
Huckleberry Finn, a rambunctious boy adventurer chafing under the bonds of civilization, escapes his humdrum world and his selfish, plotting father by sailing a raft down the Mississippi River.
05 June 1936
Joe, who owns a gas station along with his brothers and is about to marry Katherine, travels to the small town where she lives to visit her, but is wrongly mistaken for a wanted kidnapper and arrested.
01 January 1992
From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Catherine Moreau is determined to take the reins of power away from the great actress Adeline Margaux.
06 March 1936
In a town called New Jerusalem, three bandits hold up a bank. After a gun battle with the townspeople, the three robbers retreat into the scorching Arizona desert.
22 April 1930
This 1930 film, a collection of songs and sketches showcasing Paramount Studios' contract stars, cres
19 March 1947
Bostonites George and Catherine Apley live a proper life in a social circle. However, their daughter Eleanor's love for Howard Boulton and their son John's union with Myrtle threatens their home.
18 November 1932
An elderly business tycoon, believed to be dying, decides to give a million dollars each to eight strangers chosen at random from the phone directory.
03 May 2006
Combining unprecedented access to Davis' vast personal archives with original interviews, this documentary reveals a startling portrait of one of Hollywood's most gifted and enigmatic stars.
11 March 2019
From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Eve Harrington is determined to take the reins of power away from the great actress Margo Channing.
01 March 1940
Convicts escaping from Devil's Island come under the influence of a strange Christ-like figure.
18 November 1938
A nightclub dancer shakes the foundations of a wealthy farming family after she marries into it.
02 November 1983
A documentary about and an interview with Hollywood actress Bette Davis about her life and career from the late 1920s to the 1980s on stage and mostly before the camera.
