Herman J. Mankiewicz Quotes

Herman Jacob Mankiewicz was an American screenwriter, who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane . Earlier, he was the Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the drama critic for The New York Times and The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott said that Herman Mankiewicz was the "funniest man in New York". Both Mankiewicz and Welles received

Academy Awards for their screenplay.He was often asked to fix the screenplays of other writers, with much of his work uncredited. Occasional flashes of what came to be called the "Mankiewicz humor" and satire distinguished his films, and became valued in the films of the 1930s. The style of writing included a slick, satirical, and witty humor, which depended almost totally on dialogue to carry the film. It was a style that would become associated with the "typical American film" of that period.Among the screenplays he wrote or worked on, besides Citizen Kane, were The Wizard of Oz, Man of the World, Dinner at Eight, Pride of the Yankees, and The Pride of St. Louis.

Mankiewicz's younger brother was Joseph L. Mankiewicz , also an Oscar-winning Hollywood director, screenwriter, and producer.

Film critic Pauline Kael credits Mankiewicz with having written, alone or with others, "about forty of the films I remember best from the twenties and thirties. ... he was a key linking figure in just the kind of movies my friends and I loved best." Wikipedia

✵ 7. November 1897 – 5. March 1953

Herman J. Mankiewicz: 3 quotes 0 likes

Famous Herman J. Mankiewicz Quotes

“I don't know how it is that you start working at something you don't like, and before you know it you're an old man.”

Herman J. Mankiewicz

Source: Halliwell, Leslie, Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies http://books.google.com/books?id=cnMelOEV10YC, 4th ed. (2006) HarperCollins

“There, but for the grace of God, goes God.”

Herman J. Mankiewicz

On Orson Welles, quoted in the New York Times, 11 October 1985

“Never care what anybody says.”

Herman J. Mankiewicz

Told to Oscar Levant, who admitted: "I took his advice with deleterious results."
Source: [Levant, Oscar, Oscar Levant, The Memoirs of an Amnesiac, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1965, New York, 98]