The Brothers Mankiewicz

Winner of the 2020 Peter C. Rollins Book Award Longlisted for the 2020 Moving Image Book Award by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Named a 2019 Richard Wall Memorial Award Finalist by the Theatre Library Association Herman J. (1897–1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture’s only Academy Award. Joe earned the second pair of his four Oscars for writing and directing All About Eve, which also won Best Picture. Despite triumphs as diverse as Monkey Business and Cleopatra, and Pride of the Yankees and Guys and Dolls, the witty, intellectual brothers spent their Hollywood years deeply discontented and yearning for what they did not have—a career in New York theater. Herman, formerly an Algonquin Round Table habitué, New York Times and New Yorker theater critic, and playwright-collaborator with George S. Kaufman, never reconciled himself to screenwriting. He gambled away his prodigious earnings, was fired from all the major studios, and drank himself to death at fifty-five. While Herman drifted downward, Joe rose to become a critical and financial success as a writer, producer, and director, though his constant philandering with prominent stars like Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, and Gene Tierney distressed his emotionally fragile wife who eventually committed suicide. He wrecked his own health using uppers and downers in order to direct Cleopatra by day and finish writing it at night, only to be very publicly fired by Darryl F. Zanuck, an experience from which Joe never fully recovered. For this award-winning dual portrait of the Mankiewicz brothers, Sydney Ladensohn Stern draws on interviews, letters, diaries, and other documents still in private hands to provide a uniquely intimate behind-the-scenes chronicle of the lives, loves, work, and relationship between these complex men.

"A dual biography of brothers Herman and Joseph Mankiewicz, each a Hollywood legend"--

This is a detailed look at the up-and-down life of writer Herman Mankiewicz.

“A treasure trove of observations and anecdotes about Hollywood from the 1960s to the 1980s and the people who made the movies back then.” —Associated Press The son of famed director and screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz and the nephew of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, Tom Mankiewicz was genuine Hollywood royalty. He grew up in Beverly Hills and New York, spent summers on his dad’s film sets, had his first drink with Humphrey Bogart, dined with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, went to the theater with Ava Gardner, and traveled the world writing for Brando, Sinatra, and Connery. Although his family connections led him to show business, Tom “Mank” Mankiewicz forged a career of his own, becoming a renowned screenwriter, director, and producer of acclaimed films and television shows. He wrote screenplays for three James Bond films—Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973), and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)—and made his directorial debut with the hit TV series Hart to Hart (1979-1984). My Life as a Mankiewicz is a fascinating look at the life of an individual whose creativity and work ethic established him as a member of the Hollywood writing elite. My Life as a Mankiewicz illuminates his professional development as a writer and director, detailing his friendships and romantic relationships with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars as well as his struggle with alcohol and drugs. With the assistance of Robert Crane, Mankiewicz tells a story of personal achievement and offers an insider’s view of the glamorous world of Hollywood during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

The twenty-first century has witnessed a resurgence of economic inequality, racial exclusion, and political hatred, causing questions of collective identity and belonging to assume new urgency. In Making Worlds, Claudia Breger argues that contemporary European cinema provides ways of thinking about and feeling collectivity that can challenge these political trends. Breger offers nuanced readings of major contemporary films such as Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, Fatih Akın’s The Edge of Heaven, Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, and Aki Kaurismäki’s refugee trilogy, as well as works by Jean-Luc Godard and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Through a new model of cinematic worldmaking, Breger examines the ways in which these works produce unexpected and destabilizing affects that invite viewers to imagine new connections among individuals or groups. These films and their depictions of refugees, immigrants, and communities do not simply counter dominant political imaginaries of hate and fear with calls for empathy or solidarity. Instead, they produce layered sensibilities that offer the potential for greater openness to others’ present, past, and future claims. Drawing on the work of Latour, Deleuze, and Rancière, Breger engages questions of genre and realism along with the legacies of cinematic modernism. Offering a rich account of contemporary film, Making Worlds theorizes the cinematic creation of imaginative spaces in order to find new ways of responding to political hatred.

Superman has fought for nearly seven decades to conquer radio, television, and film--but his battles behind the scenes have proved a far greater threat than any fictional foe. For the first time, one book unearths all the details of his turbulent adventures in Tinseltown. Based on extensive interviews with producers, screenwriters, cast members, and crew, Superman vs. Hollywood spills the beans on Marlon Brando's eccentricities; the challenges of making Superman appear to fly; the casting process that at various points had Superman being played by Sylvester Stallone, Neil Diamond, Nicolas Cage, Ashton Kutcher, and even Muhammad Ali; and the Superman movies, fashioned by such maverick filmmakers as Kevin Smith and Tim Burton, that never made it to the screen.

An account of the world of toys, examining the successes and failures of the products of many toy companies.

Includes a new afterword: A “richly detailed” biography of the iconic feminist based on interviews with friends, family, colleagues, and Steinem herself (The Washington Post). Going beyond Gloria Steinem’s public persona, this biography provides an in-depth portrait of the famed activist—covering her family of origin, Smith College education, travels in India, founding of Ms. magazine, and much more—drawn from fifty hours of interviews with Steinem, as well as conversations with more than two hundred people in her life. “Stern’s biography is sympathetic but critical about the woman who was once perhaps the foremost figure of American feminism. . . . Follows its subject from her childhood with a mentally ill mother and ne’er-do-well father through her rise in the women’s movement.” —The New York Times Book Review “Feminist icon, goddess, social climber, bunny—who is Gloria Steinem? All of the above, according to [this] serious new biography. . . . A real look at Steinem off the public platform.” —Kirkus Reviews “Avoiding esoteric psychological or feminist theorizing, Stern still provides a clear context for Steinem’s development both as a public figure and as an exemplar of the movement that seeks to have women define themselves as autonomous individuals.” —Library Journal Includes photographs