If Hollywood had an aristocracy, Tom Mankiewicz was one of its progeny. His father was the illustrious writer and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve, Guys and Dolls) and uncle Herman co-wrote the most acclaimed Hollywood film ever made (Citizen Kane). Cousin Don was an Oscar nominated screenwriter, Cousin John wrote for “Miami Vice” and “House,” Cousin Ben is a host on TCM, and his mother, Rosa Stradner, was a Viennese stage actress who picked up a few roles in Hollywood. Tom didn’t just sit back and watch. He wrote the screenplay for Diamonds are Forever, directed the popular “Hart to Hart” TV series and worked in the industry in many capacities.
He didn't live to see the publication of his memoir, My Life as a Mankiewicz: An Insider's Journey through Hollywood (out now in paperback from the University Press of Kentucky). Perhaps he died before completing the manuscript, with the result being choppy prose that reads almost like a transcribed interview, yet a steady voice comes through collaborator Robert Crane's arrangement of the late man's memories.
Mankiewicz realized he was a hell of a lucky guy, placed by birth in the lap of a successful, glamorous career. Admittedly, life had its trials. Mankiewicz's mother was schizophrenic, his father “a serial philanderer” (Loretta Young, Judy Garland and Joan Crawford were among his lovers) and his parents' marriage deteriorated under many pressures.
And yet he grew up on the lot of 20th Century Fox at a time when the big studios were less workplaces than “self-contained sovereign states.” According to his father, the most important man on the lot was Henry the Bootblack, who shined the shoes of the executives and overheard everything. Henry also served as the studio's pimp, recruiting “a posse of downtown African American hookers who were bused to Fox several nights a week.”
Tom Mankiewicz had a great run. “This was the perfect time for me to have lived, both as a writer and director, aesthetically and politically,” he concludes. He had seen Hollywood change from a craft industry into a subsidiary of faceless trans-nationals; he witnessed the magicians exit and the magic evaporate, leaving only rude dullards and spreadsheets. It was great while it lasted and Mankiewicz had a wonderful life, even if he was more a backbencher than a leader.
