My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  She had been voluntarily committed to the Menninger Clinic right after I was born in 1942. For the first year or so of my life, any form of maternal care was provided by my nanny, a wonderful woman named Jeannie Smith who coincidentally shared the same birth date with me, June 1. I don't think Mother ever got over the guilt of not being there for me then. This led to a bizarre relationship in which I was on the one hand the favorite child, and on the other, the one singled out as the primary recipient of her rage and desperation. It was also deeply sexual, though never physically incestuous. She was intensely concerned about where, when, and with whom I'd lose my virginity. In the fifties we'd have long conversations in her bedroom dressing room, often with her wearing only her underwear as she put on her makeup, preparing to go out for the evening. She was so wonderfully attentive to me that when I became the principal object of her uncontrollable rage, it was doubly terrifying.

  The most lasting and life-altering effect she had on me, however, was putting me on an endless quest to find her again somewhere and cure her. I developed a strange form of radar that could immediately recognize a troubled woman (almost always an actress) and elicit an instant, receptive, silent reaction from her signifying that she recognized me too. Later on, after I'd had many disastrous affairs with troubled women, Natalie Wood joked: “Mank, you could take three different women, dress them identically, have them sit motionless on separate chairs with gags over their mouths, and like a pig with truffles, you could pick out the crazy one.” I was psychoanalyzed twice in my life. I knew all about my central problem but was either unwilling or unable to do anything about it. Much more about Mother later.

  Uncle Herman

  Several books have already been written about him: brilliantly witty, master of many forms of writing, intensely self-destructive, and hopelessly addicted to alcohol and gambling. He died penniless. Dad became the main support of his widow, Sara, and put their daughter, Johanna (Josie), through Wellesley College.

  Herman was addicted to insulting studio executives, the more powerful the better. Darryl Zanuck, the absolute ruler of 20th Century Fox, had two noticeably protruding front upper teeth. Herman: “Darryl, you're the only man in the world who could eat a tomato through a tennis racket and never spill a drop.” To Harry Rapf, an MGM executive with a huge nose: “Harry, you're the only guy I know who could keep a cigar lit in a shower.” He once told Rapf about the brilliant new screenplay he was working on, about a little boy whose nose grew each time he told a lie. The nose became larger and larger…Rapf chased Herman out of his office. Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, began life in New York as a streetcar conductor. As it happened, the studio executive dining room was shaped like a train car. Whenever Herman was eating in there and Cohn entered, Herman would call out: “Ding, ding! Fares, please!” Cohn fired Herman several times, notably after he (Cohn) pronounced a certain Columbia film exactly seventeen minutes too long because “I shifted my ass in my seat seventeen minutes ago, and when I shift my ass, the movie's over.”

  From out of the screening room darkness came a voice: “Imagine that. One hundred sixty million people in this country wired in to Harry Cohn's ass.”

  Without turning, Cohn said, “That's Mankiewicz, and he's fired.”

  When Herman first arrived in Hollywood, he sent a famous telegram to his friend the playwright Ben Hecht, in New York: “You must come out at once. There's millions to be made and your only competition is idiots.” Hecht and his writing partner, Charles MacArthur (who later married Helen Hayes) came out immediately. One notable evening, Herman and MacArthur were invited to an elegant dinner party at the home of Arthur Hornblow Jr., a sophisticated producer with a wife named Bubbles. They arrived dead drunk and continued to drink during dinner. Suddenly, Herman vomited on the table. There was a deafening silence. Herman wiped his mouth, looked at the Hornblows and said: “I'm terribly sorry, Arthur. But don't worry, Bubbles. The white wine came up with the fish.”

  Years later I saw this incident immortalized in the form of an unpublished James Thurber cartoon on the wall of the office of Dave Chasen, the famous Hollywood restaurateur. Chasen's began as a chili stand in the thirties. Dave had been a “straight man” in vaudeville, moved out to Los Angeles, and changed professions. His chili was legendary. Movie people would pick some up in the morning on Beverly Boulevard (then little more than a field with a few houses), take it to the studio, and reheat it for lunch. Years later Elizabeth Taylor asked for Chasen's chili during the filming of Cleopatra. It was flown over by Pan Am pilots and delivered to Cinecittà Studios in Rome. When Dave decided to expand to a real restaurant, Dad was one of his original investors. As soon as I could afford it, I became a frequent patron there. Dave remembered Dad well and was welcoming. After he died, so was his widow, Maude. I always had access to the private office and was seated in the favored front section. During the sixties I attended a few Sunday-night Sinatra family dinners there. At the end of the meal, Frank was handed an envelope filled with freshly minted $100 bills. He liked the feel of new money and they simply added the amount to his check. Many of those new bills disappeared on his way out the door and the parking lot. Frank was a generous tipper.

  Herman almost lived at Chasen's, drank there, and often slept it off in Dave's office when he was too drunk to drive home. On those occasions Dave would call Herman's wife, Sara, to report on his status. One morning he asked Herman, “How is Sara, by the way?”

  “Sara?” Herman replied. “Don't you mean poor Sara?” The name he gave her stuck. Many of their friends referred to them afterward as “Herman and poor Sara.”

  Herman was a compulsive gambler. He loved to bet on the ponies. He and Dad were at Santa Anita one day, trying to dope out a race. Herman looked out at the tote board and observed: “I don't know why it says five-to-one and eight-to-one out there. Every bet is even money. Either the horse wins or it doesn't.” What a brilliant rationale for a disastrous betting system.

  The most poignant remark of Herman's I remember was one passed on to me by Dad. Herman was dying of multiple causes in a Los Angeles hospital. He was only in his fifties. Dad had flown out from New York (where we were living at the time) to see him. They talked for a while. There was a lapse in the conversation. Herman looked up at Dad and said: “You know what? I never had a bad steak in my life. Some were better, some were worse, but I never had a bad one.”

  Aunt Sara

  “Poor” Sara was an absolutely delightful person, totally dedicated to Herman and her children, Don, Frank, and Josie. I saw a great deal of her when I came out in the early sixties and often had dinner at her house. She had two idiosyncratic expressions I've never forgotten. If you told her you'd run into someone she knew or was interested in, she'd say, “So tell me from hello-hello.” And if you agreed to have dinner on a certain night, she'd say, “So I'm inking you in for Thursday.” She had deeply adoring memories of Herman. She could talk about him for hours, and you'd never know he ever made a bet or had a drink.

  Cousin Josie

  My favorite family member ever, Herman's youngest child. Beautiful, devastatingly funny in a dry, smart way, and so very kind and attentive to me. We became extremely close. Dad once actually called it “an unhealthy relationship.” Josie was four years older than me and as luck would have it, in the mid-fifties went to Wellesley College while I was going to Exeter, a prep school just across the New Hampshire border. She'd often have me down on weekends, when I would repeatedly “fall in love” with one of her friends, who all seemed so desirable, mature, and attractive. There's a terrible gulf between men and women at that age. The four years between sixteen and twenty might as well be forty, especially if you're the guy.

  Josie graduated with honors. Dad, who'd put her through college, got her a job at Time magazine, working for the legendary editor Henry Gruenwald. She eventually became the first woman to be credited as an editor in the history of the magazine. Josie wrote an acclaimed novel, Life Signs. She married Peter Davis, later f
amous for making the Oscar-winning anti-Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds. They had two sons, Nick and Tim.

  In the last summer of her life, she rented a house just up the road from my place in Malibu. I'd go with her to watch the kids play Little League, and we'd talk for hours on end. When she returned to New York later that year, she was walking on the street with Nick and Tim when a taxi went out of control, jumped the curb, and killed her in front of her children. I was devastated at the news. Suicide and death were invading my life like a plague at that time. This loss was totally unacceptable. I called Sara and told her I couldn't go to the funeral. I simply didn't have the strength. Sara knew how close we were and understood completely.

  Aunt Erna

  Pop's only female child. Pushy, forceful—I suppose it wasn't easy competing for Pop's attention while two overachievers like Herman and Dad were around—she made her presence known. Married to a doctor and living in New York, she occasionally came out to California, usually staying with Herman. Once my mother asked me (at about age six) to call over there and welcome her. She dialed and handed me the phone. Herman answered.

  “Hi, Uncle Herman,” I said. “Is Aunt Erna there?”

  “If she was, wouldn't she have answered the phone?” he replied.

  Years later, after Mother's suicide, I suppose Erna considered herself the ranking female Mankiewicz and was bitterly disappointed when Dad married Rosemary—she never liked her, and she showed it. Dad got Erna various jobs over the years and was virtually her sole financial support for the last decades of her life.

  Cousins Don and Frank

  Herman's sons. After serving in the army in World War II, Frank went to law school at Berkeley, ran for the California State Assembly, lost, became a successful lawyer, then quit his practice to join the Peace Corps as a worker in Peru. He soon became head of the Peace Corps for Latin America, then served as Robert Kennedy's press secretary until the tragic assassination. He later ran the Peace Corps with Sergeant Shriver, was a newspaper columnist and a TV political host, and is now vice chairman of Hill & Knowlton, a powerful Washington lobbying firm.

  Don made impressive use of the Mankiewicz family writing gene. He wrote a Harper Prize novel, See How They Run, and the pilots for two enduring television series, Ironside and Marcus Welby, M.D. He was Oscar nominated for the screenplay of I Want to Live, served on the board of the Writers Guild, and like his father, remains one of the most dedicated handicappers in the history of horse racing.

  Josh, Ben, and John

  Frank's son Josh has had a notable career in broadcast journalism and is presently a senior correspondent on NBC's Dateline. Josh's younger brother, Ben, has been a sportswriter, had his own satellite radio show, took a turn as a television movie critic, and is the present host of Turner Classic Movies, as well as the CNN movie critic on weekends. Don's son, John, has been a masterful writer-producer in television, from the original Miami Vice to House and The Mentalist.

  Pop should be beaming with pride somewhere. No matter what it cost them emotionally—no matter how badly the pursuit of excellence could screw them up—everyone was somebody.

  Our Religion

  Dad, the son of Jewish parents, was a confirmed atheist most of his life. Mother was a fairly observant Roman Catholic, her own mother a devout one. Her religion insisted on any children she had being brought up Catholic—not to do so meant her marriage wouldn't be recognized in the eyes of the church. Chris and I were baptized at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Dad always insisted he wouldn't have cared if we were brought up as Buddhists; he just wanted to marry the woman. But he drew the line at nuns. We were not to be taught by nuns. When Dad married Rosemary several years after Mother died, she happened to be the daughter of the Episcopal archdeacon of London. Jews, Catholics, Episcopalians, and atheists—quite an ecumenical family.

  I went to church regularly as a child. The Catholic religion was uncompromising in the forties—if you ate a cheeseburger on a Friday, the clouds would part and lightning would strike you in the head. Dad always insisted that if I really had faith, he'd envy me. I never believed him. I stopped going to church after we moved to New York, except on the “big days” like Easter and Christmas. Since then I've shot filmed sequences in churches several times and entered many more, and I've always dipped my fingers in the holy water, genuflected, and made the sign of the cross every time I walked in, whether out of respect or fear I'm not sure. I never understood how the God and Jesus I knew could let such misery exist in the world, especially when suffered by innocents. I remember how chilled I felt in my early teens when I went to a performance of Archibald MacLeish's J.B., a modern version of the book of Job. In the cast was a young Christopher Plummer playing the part of the Devil. At one point he leans in to the anguished Job and whispers in his ear: “If God is God, he is not good. If God is good, he is not God.” That line left an impression on me. When I found myself directing Chris Plummer in Dragnet some thirty-five years later, I quoted the line to him—he remembered it as if it were yesterday.

  Dad and Rosemary agreed they would be buried next to each other in an Episcopal cemetery in Bedford, New York. Shortly before his death, Dad was visited by the local minister, who told him how delighted he would be to have him. Dad asked, “May I be buried with a few of my favorite books?” No problem. “I've smoked a pipe my whole life—I'd like to include a few of my favorites and my tobacco.” No problem. “And there, in that urn on the mantle, are the ashes of my dog, Brutus, who was my companion for many years. I'd like them buried with me too.”

  “I'm afraid not,” came the reply. “Nothing to do with our religion, but you can't bury animal remains in a human cemetery—it's a state law. Sorry.”

  Dad nodded. The day of his burial he was lowered into the ground with books and pipes. Inside the tobacco pouches were the ashes of Brutus. Dad always liked to have the last word.

  2

  The 1940s

  Growing Up

  The difference between life and the movies is that scripts have to make sense and life doesn't.

  —Joseph L. Mankiewicz

  In the 1940s Beverly Hills was almost a bucolic community compared to today. A small, prosperous town with a trolley car running along Santa Monica Boulevard that could take you all the way to downtown L.A., what there was of it then. Benedict and Coldwater Canyons were paved for only a mile or so before they turned into dirt roads. Many people kept horses up there, and some preferred to ride into town on errands. Shops on Rodeo and Beverly Drives actually had the occasional hitching post to accommodate the equestrians who also used the grass median strip (still there) in the middle of Sunset Boulevard to make their turn onto the proper cross street. I remember up Benedict Canyon was the estate of Tom Mix. Tony the Wonder Horse could be spotted grazing there from time to time. Coming full circle, I spent many a night on part of that property during the past two decades in a house belonging to close friends.

  I grew up in a substantial home on the corner of North Mapleton Drive and Sunset Boulevard. Tennis court, swimming pool, huge lawn, beautiful gardens—the whole nine yards. Our neighbors included Alan Ladd next door plus Harry James and Betty Grable across the street. Around the corner, on Faring Drive, lived Fanny Brice. From time to time my brother and I would walk up to the front door and ring the bell, and she would come out and do Baby Snooks for us from her famous radio show.

  Because of an accident of birth, my brother Chris (born in October) was destined to be two years ahead of me (born in June) in school, even though he was only a year and a half older. He was already in the first grade before I'd been to kindergarten. According to Dad, I was so upset by this and so anxious to be going to school along with Chris that he had the prop department at MGM make up a fake birth certificate showing me eligible for the first grade. The exclusive El Rodeo School in Beverly Hills accepted the document without a question. I skipped kindergarten. When Chris started the second grade I was one year behind him, in first grade
. A few years later Dad confessed to his “mistake,” but since I'd been doing well academically, the school agreed it would be silly to hold me back at that point. As I said, Beverly Hills was a much smaller town then.

  What consistently strikes me is all the different ways I came “full circle” despite growing up mainly in New York and not really returning to Los Angeles until I'd graduated Yale in 1963. The house I grew up in was later owned by Aaron Spelling, for whom (along with Leonard Goldberg) I cowrote and directed the two-hour television movie-pilot of the series Hart to Hart more than thirty years later. I remember giving Aaron a picture of myself as a kid on the diving board of what was now his swimming pool. I never knew Alan Ladd Jr. (who was somewhat older than me) while he lived next door, but I either wrote, produced, or directed three films at two different studios while he was head of production, and a damn good one too. The Fanny Brice home on Faring became the home of Jerry Moss, cofounder (with Herb Alpert) of A&M Records, for whom I wrote a musical Tijuana Brass television special in 1968. Jerry became and continues to be one of the closest friends I've ever had. Thomas Wolfe once observed, “You can't go home again.” I guess he didn't know what he was talking about.

  Timber

  My closest pal in the forties was our dog, Timber, a magnificent German shepherd who was so smart, loving, and protective to my brother Chris and me. The school bus would let us off at the corner of Mapleton and Sunset around three thirty, and Timber would be waiting there to escort us up the street and the long, steep driveway home. To me it was magical, as if he secretly carried a watch. We'd explore the neighborhood together, poking around vacant lots, once even dislodging a grounded hornet's nest. The angry swarm pursued us all the way home, stinging us repeatedly as we ran.