Don Mankiewicz, 1922-2015

The death has been announced of screenwriter Don Mankiewicz, member of one of the prominent families in behind-the-scenes Hollywood history. He was 93.

Don was the son of Herman, who wrote Citizen Kane (don't believe what the estate of Orson Welles would tell you), and nephew of Joseph, who won a pair of Oscars for directing A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve. This would make TCM's Ben Mankiewicz the nephew of Don.

As for Don himself, he had a substantial career writing for television; for the movies he wrote the screenplay to I Want to Live!, a movie that I'm sorry to say I have a deep place in my heart against. As I mentioned in my blog post back in 2008, even though I tend to have sympathy for the views presented in the film, the way they're presented in the film is so strident and heavy-handed thatg it detracts from the movie. But that's the movie that got Mankiewicz his Oscar nomination. I think I'd rather remember him for having written the novel that became Trial (he also wrote the screenplay). There's also the prison escape movie House of Numbers that I could swear I'd blogged about before, but apparently not.