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Herman Mankiewicz, and Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz in Mank. And in 1933, Mankiewicz wrote and attempted to make The Mad Dog of Europe, an anti-Nazi film whose targets were so thinly veiled that the villain was named “Adolf Mitler.” On the other hand, he was an isolationist who thought the United States stood no chance against the German war machine, going so far as to declare himself “an ultra-Lindbergh.”. I used what I wanted of Mank’s and, rightly or wrongly, kept what I liked of my own. Still a wielder of some influence at this point, Hearst banned his newspapers from even so much as mentioning the film, and even had Welles sued for libel, while he also prevented several movie theaters from showing it too. Herman J. Mankiewicz, now known primarily as the man who co-wrote Citizen Kane (1941) with Hollywood's greatest wunderkind, Orson Welles, was one of the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood and the head of Paramount's screen-writing department in the late 1920s and early '30s. Not the newsreels: Thalberg really produced them, and they really ran in theaters all over the state, where they were presented to audiences as actual interviews. The movie he is shooting at the end of Mank, It's All True, was one of several wartime pictures Welles produced, before he left for Europe in the late 1940s, where he would spend much of his career able to work with independents outside of the big Hollywood studio system. It depends who you ask. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Upton Sinclair had become a household name in 1906 for writing The Jungle, a novel about the meatpacking industry that helped spark health and safety reforms, and by the time by the time he moved to California in the 1920s, he was the country’s most prominent socialist. The authorship of Citizen Kane has been a subject of dispute since before a single frame was shot, and given the film’s reputation, a bunch of people claim paternity. The Mankiewicz family got to know newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his mistress, actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), through Davies’ nephew Charles Lederer, and one of the film’s highlights is its lavish recreation of Hearst holding court at his ludicrous castle in San Simeon. In real life, however, his conscience seems to have been untroubled and his ploy worked: He directed short films throughout the 1930s before stepping up to features in the 1940s, moving on to television in the 1950s. The three hundred is peanuts. It’s straightforward, thematically apt, and gives the protagonist exactly the motivation the screenplay’s structure requires. This is true, although he didn’t save an entire village, as Mank suggests. While it's a classic piece of Mank wit - something that's historically known and clearly displayed throughout the film - it also speaks to what that "magic" really is and, in truth, is clearly viewed as anything but magical. In Mank, a version of the telegram is sent to Charles Lederer (Joseph Cross) in 1930 and another character remarks that Herman has been sending them to “anyone who can rub three words together,” but I couldn’t find any evidence this happened in real life. Mank also gets Mankiewicz’s friendship with Marion Davies more or less right: They bonded over their shared alcoholism, although according to Sara Mankiewicz, Herman mostly felt sorry for her. It's the "magic" that led to Mankiewicz writing Citizen Kane in the first place, to Welles sharing a credit, and to one of the greatest movies of all time being almost completely overlooked by the Academy Awards. In “Raising Kane,” Kael reprinted a rumor she’d heard from filmmaker Nunnally Johnson that Welles had offered Mankiewicz $10,000 to take his name off the film, which Welles has always denied. Mank's ending is the bittersweet culmination of what follows. Herman J. Mankiewicz, Writer: Citizen Kane. A one-stop shop for all things video games. Herman J Mankiewicz Biography. Although neither he nor Welles attended the Academy Award ceremony where they shared the Oscar for Best Screenplay—the only award Kane got—he later said that his acceptance speech would have been, “I am very happy to accept this award in Mr. Welles’ absence, because the script was written in Mr. Welles’ absence.” That’s the position Pauline Kael argued in her 1971 New Yorker essay “Raising Kane,” for which she interviewed John Houseman and Rita Alexander but not Orson Welles or any of his assistants. Much of what’s on screen in both periods is more or less factual, but the screenplay, by Fincher’s late father, Jack Fincher, draws a connection between those two battles that required a few adjustments to the historical record. In that telling, there were two first drafts, as Welles explained: We’d started to waste too much time haggling. Photos by MGM/, Orson Welles, and Tom Burke as Orson Welles in, Photo illustration by Slate. He came West in 1926 to write for the movies and never really left, although he also never really came to terms with being a screenwriter. Davies was even more hurt than Hearst was by Citizen Kane. By this time, he was on the outs from the other major studios, and clearly happy to have the work. Since he was being brought on as a script doctor, with all credit intended to go to Orson Welles - the multi-hyphenate on whom the hopes of RKO were pinned - then Mankiewicz's name wouldn't be in the movie. Photos by Exhibitors Herald/, William Randolph Hearst, and Charles Dance as Hearst in, Photo illustration by Slate. Mankiewicz died 12 years later in 1953 at age 55, his profession having largely fizzled out. Click the button below to start this article in quick view. The line is bound to re-ignite one of the oldest debates in Hollywood: who truly deserves the screenplay credit for Citizen Kane? In Mank, a radio broadcast of Welles while working on the movie All Is True in Rio de Janeiro plays, where he has a message for his co-writer: "Mank, you can kiss my half. In 1933 a Santa Monica businessman convinced him to run for the governorship as a Democrat. As Hearst tells him at the end of this sequence, he is the monkey, not the organ-grinder; he's there to amuse, not to influence. One of Herman’s sons, Don M. Mankiewicz ’42, was the Oscar-nominated co-author of I Want to Live! It’s not necessarily a great question to hang a movie on—Herman J. Mankiewicz’s life was defined by hostility laundered through wit—but Mank finds an answer in the 1934 California gubernatorial race, and it’s here that the film’s relationship with history becomes more dubious (and more interesting). But the director also cuts through such notions that it was better then while also not arguing that it's better now: his cynicism, arguably even contempt, for the major studios and the people who are responsible for green lighting movies but have little passion for them, is clear in a portrayal of a broken system that would ultimately fail, yet rise again in an altered form. Gary Oldman, who won his Oscar in 2018 for “Darkest Hour,” is just as effortless in his portrayal as Herman J. Mankiewicz as you would expect from an actor of his stature. There’s no question he later decided he wanted to be credited, argued with Welles about it, and eventually got his screen credit. In The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, author Greg Mitchell identifies several writers who refused to donate to Merriam: Sam Marx, Frances Goodrich, and Albert Hackett at MGM as well as John Wexley and John Howard Lawson at Columbia, but not Herman Mankiewicz. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and is best known as the writer-director of the Oscar-winning All About Eve.He was brother to the equally famous screenwriter and drama critic Herman J. Mankiewicz who also won an Oscar ? Again, this goes back to the idea of Mankiewicz reclaiming a sense of value in both his work and in himself as a person that had previously been lost, seemingly for good. The Mankiewicz family legacy. Photos by International News/, Joseph Mankiewicz, and Tom Pelphrey as Joseph Mankiewicz in, Photo illustration by Slate. Louis B. Mayer really did throw an election night party at the Trocadero, as seen in the movie, but if Herman Mankiewicz attended, it doesn’t seem to have been documented. Photos by 20th Century Fox/, Louis B. Mayer, and Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer in, Photo illustration by Slate. Writer: Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman portrays screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who co-wrote the iconic film masterpiece Citizen Kane with director Orson Welles. While the director does acknowledge in his note that he does not write for Mankiewicz, the fact he tells him to "kiss his half" could be seen as disrespectful (especially without the intended retort), and shows that he does also believe himself worthy of the credit, and that the screenplay truly is half his. The preceding years had not been kind to Hearst: while the circus party viewers see him at in Mank is lavish, in reality he was facing financial ruin after a series of bad movie investments. (“Asking” is not really accurate: Rank-and-file employees simply had their “donations” deducted from their paychecks. Fincher also draws other modern parallels - much like Citizen Kane has remained timeless, there's a relevancy to his work, be it the auteur struggling under the weight of the studio, fighting for control (in an era where reshoots and director cuts are so prevalent), while the attack ads are literally fake news, and his politics come through as well as Mank, the audience's viewpoint and smartest person in the room, supports the politician who'll actually make real societal change. It was already clear before the ending that he was eclipsing his older brother, at least in terms of achievements if not talent. (AP Photo) In a note the director sent to Mankiewicz from Rio, he wrote: Hereâs what I wanted to wire you after the Academy Dinner: âYou can kiss my half.â, I dare to send it through the mails only now I find it possible to enclose a ready-made retort. Hearst and Harry Chandler railed against Sinclair in their papers and Joseph Schenck, president of Twentieth Century Pictures, announced that he’d move his business to Florida if Sinclair were elected. In fact, Mankiewicz, along with Welles, would share the sole Oscar … Citizen Kane could have been where Herman J. Mankiewicz faded out of existence for good, and in some ways it was - as the cards at the end note, he didn't do much afterwards. When then asked how come Welles shared credit, Mankiewicz dryly responds: "Well that, my friend, is the magic of the movies." Hollywood didn’t just support Merriam financially. Photos by Self scan from the American Magazine for June 1938/, John Houseman, and Sam Troughton as Houseman in, I am very happy to accept this award in Mr. Welles’ absence, because the script was written in Mr. Welles’ absence, Conservatives Are Mad That Children’s Cartoons Can’t Be Horny Anymore. That is certainly what Mank achieves with Herman J. Mankiewicz: the movie doesn't delve into his earlier years, and even after watching viewers may be left wondering just what other movies he actually wrote. Herman J. Mankiewicz Celebrity Profile - Check out the latest Herman J. Mankiewicz photo gallery, biography, pics, pictures, interviews, news, forums and blogs at Rotten Tomatoes! In some ways the Finchers go even further than Kael—and David Fincher has said in interviews that his father’s original script was even more of an anti-Welles broadside. And although Mankiewicz would bet on anything, none of his biographers mention a bet with Mayer or Thalberg over the election results. This itself isn't too surprising: Mank was known to have written or helped write dozens of scripts without receiving a credit for them, usually due to him being brought in to fix or touch up other screenplays with a dose of his trademark humor. Fast-forward to the ending of Mank, and the writer has had a change of heart. Here’s the first film in what became a series of three. The end of the year brings joy with holidays and other celebrations, and for film lovers, a plethora of "Oscar bait." Not only is it a chance for some of Mank's greatest wordplay - "the white wine came up with the fish" - but it is also the scene that best captures the movie's titular character's life up to that point and the decisions he makes afterwards. Over the course of the 1930s, he drank, gambled, and insulted himself out of friendships and jobs, leaving his long-suffering wife, Sara (Tuppence Middleton), to pick up the pieces. Finally, Mankiewicz did once say, after being violently ill, “Don’t worry … the white wine came up with the fish,” but he wasn’t at Hearst Castle. Herman’s brother, Joseph Mankiewicz CC 1928, wrote and directed the Academy Award-winning A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve (in Mank, he is played by Tom Pelphrey). Here’s what’s true, what’s half-true, and what’s entirely invented. All contents © 2021 The Slate Group LLC. I donât presume to write your jokes for you, but you ought to like this: âDear Orson: You donât know your half from a whole in the ground.â. Instead, that line tells of Mankiewicz's - and Fincher's - disapproving view of the studio system, and of the bureaucracy and politics involved in making a motion picture. Alexander told her Welles “didn’t write (or dictate) one line of the shooting script of Citizen Kane.” Then there’s the version Orson Welles told in 1972, for Peter Bogdanovich’s Esquire article “The Kane Mutiny.” Written in response to “Raising Kane” with input from Welles, it spends nearly as much time demolishing Kael’s journalism as it does on the creation of Citizen Kane. Herman J. Mankiewicz’s Oscar Speech Explained In contrast to Orson Welles' very brief remark, Herman J. Mankiewicz gives a slightly longer speech when he accepts his own Oscar statue, saying: "I am very happy to accept this award in the manner in which the screenplay was written, which is to say, in the absence of Orson Welles. (Screenshot from YouTube) (photo credit: SCREENSHOT FROM YOUTUBE/JTA) ... It’s already being considered a front-runner for several Oscar nominations. Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) began his literary career as a journalist and sometime playwright, a member of the Algonquin Round Table who served as the original theater critic for the New Yorker. There's a sly brilliance in the juxtaposition of costumes and meaning: at the party, Mank is the only character not wearing circus attire, and yet it's here where his true role as the court jester for Hearst, Louis. ), All of that is shown in Mank in one way or another, but the Finchers steal a little valor to put Herman Mankiewicz in the middle of the fight. At the end, naturally, I was the one who was making the picture, after all—who had to make the decisions. In Hollywood, Mankiewicz quickly became legendary for his scathing wit and self-destructive behavior. Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Those events are the political backdrop Mank is playing with, and they’re all true, but Herman J. Mankiewicz’s relationship to those events seems to be Jack Fincher’s invention. It's true in a sense, with Fincher painstakingly and loving crafting his movie to resemble something of a bygone and ostensibly better age. By December the two men settled on the idea of writing something about the life of a newspaper baron based on Hearst. In a broader sense, it's tempting to see Mank as a love letter to the Hollywood of old. Welles was contractually guaranteed sole credit by RKO, but in the end, Mankiewicz asked and Welles relented, cementing his collaborator’s legacy. Mank was a complicated figure, but his ending gives him a sense of renewed power and a final Hollywood victory. Ca. If you asked Herman J. Mankiewicz, he’d tell you he was the sole author. Thanks for signing up!