Tom Mankiewicz - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Mankiewicz was born in Los Angeles on June 1, 1942. His parents were Austrian-born actress Rosa Stradner and the celebrated screenwriter/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. In 1950, his father, after winning four Oscars in two years for the screenplays and direction of A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve, decided to move his family back to New York City where he had been raised, the son of a German immigrant language professor.

Mankiewicz was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy (1955–59) and Yale University (1959–63). He majored in drama at Yale, completing the first two years of the Yale Drama School while still an undergraduate.

During vacations he worked at the Williamstown Summer Theater in Massachusetts both in production and as an actor. In 1960, he was hired as a third Assistant Director on The Comancheros, a film starring John Wayne and Lee Marvin, which was shot in the Monument Valley of Utah, the last film directed by the legendary Michael Curtiz.

In 1963, two young producers, Stuart Millar and Lawrence Turman, took Mankiewicz on as their assistant while making The Best Man, the 1964 film version of Gore Vidal’s Broadway play starring Henry Fonda. He was involved in virtually every aspect of the film, receiving his first on-screen credit as “Production Associate.”

He began to write, finishing an original screenplay, Please, about the last ninety minutes in the life of a suicidal young actress. It was optioned at times by three different studios, never made, but served as an example of his talent and was responsible for his first writing assignment, a Bob Hope Chrysler Theater directed by Stuart Rosenberg. He received a credit as “Thomas F. Mankiewicz,” but thought it looked so pretentious on the screen he became “Tom” Mankiewicz for the rest of his career.

In 1967, Mankiewicz joined forces with a friend, Jack Haley Jr. to come up with a musical television special tailored for the then hugely popular Nancy Sinatra: Movin' with Nancy, co-starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Lee Hazelwood. Mankiewicz was the sole writer and Haley won the Emmy for directing. This was followed by The Beat of the Brass, starring Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass in 1968.

Simultaneously, 20th Century Fox had optioned his original screenplay and after reading it, producer Joe Pasternak hired him to write The Sweet Ride about the California surfing community, starring Anthony Franciosa, Bob Denver, and introducing Jacqueline Bisset.

The combination of that screenplay and the TV specials led Broadway producer Fred Coe to ask Mankiewicz to write the book for the musical version of the film Georgy Girl. It opened at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1970, was nominated for three Tony Awards, but closed after four performances.