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The Brothers Mankiewicz
- Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Herman J. (1897-1953) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1993) wrote, produced, and directed over 150 pictures. With Orson Welles, Herman wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane and shared the picture's only Academy Award. Joe earned the second pair of his four Oscars for writing and directing All About Eve, which also won Best Picture.
Despite triumphs as diverse as Monkey Business and Cleopatra, and Pride of the Yankees and Guys and Dolls, the witty, intellectual brothers spent their Hollywood years deeply discontented and yearning for what they did not have - a career in New York theater. Herman, formerly an Algonquin Round Table habitué, New York Times and New Yorker theater critic, and playwright-collaborator with George S. Kaufman, never reconciled himself to screenwriting. He gambled away his prodigious earnings, was fired from all the major studios, and drank himself to death at 55. While Herman drifted downward, Joe rose to become a critical and financial success as a writer, producer, and director, though his constant philandering with prominent stars like Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, and Gene Tierney distressed his emotionally fragile wife who eventually committed suicide. He wrecked his own health using uppers and downers in order to direct Cleopatra by day and finish writing it at night, only to be very publicly fired by Darryl F. Zanuck, an experience from which Joe never fully recovered.
For this first dual portrait of the Mankiewicz brothers, Sydney Ladensohn Stern draws on interviews, letters, diaries, and other documents still in private hands to provide a uniquely intimate behind-the-scenes chronicle of the lives, loves, work, and relationship between these complex men.
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What listeners say about The Brothers Mankiewicz
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Morton
- 04-02-20
Golden age Hollywood comes alive.
Herman and Joe were at the center of 20th Century culture: From the 20’s in New York to Hollywood silents to talkies to epics. On the way they met and befriended everyone from Hearst & Welles to Dick & Liz. The only clinkers in the audio are the mangling of some names: Wanger should rhyme with ranger, etc. Menjou should sound like “mon jeu”. I cringed with Davis’ stabs at French & German words.
4 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Amazon Customer
- 03-04-21
A story told like fine tooled leather.
Only some books in this life will leave words on your soul this is one of them. Laughed cried got up in the night to read some more. Life is an adventure but for most of us it's not. For these two it was please drink in these words they will put style into your life as well.
3 people found this helpful
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- R. Williams
- 05-26-20
Great book
Really well-written, tons of interesting pieces, covers a crazy amount of material. Both are ultimately enigmas when it's all over.
1 person found this helpful
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Disjointed and flawed
- By A. N. Onymous on 01-18-22
By: Otto Friedrich, and others
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Shooting Midnight Cowboy
- Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic
- By: Glenn Frankel
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Shooting Midnight Cowboy is not only the definitive account of the film that unleashed a new wave of innovation in American cinema but also the story of a country (and an industry) beginning to break free from decades of cultural and sexual repression.
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Well done. Good insight into all aspects
- By S. Adam Bernstein on 07-29-21
By: Glenn Frankel
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Dark Star
- A Biography of Vivien Leigh
- By: Alan Strachan
- Narrated by: Alasdair Buchan
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Vivien Leigh was perhaps the most iconic actress of the 20th century. As Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche Du Bois she took on some of the most pivotal roles in cinema history. Yet she was also a talented theatre actress with West End and Broadway plaudits to her name. In this ground-breaking new biography, Alan Strachan provides a completely new full-life portrait of Leigh, covering both her professional and personal life.
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So much more to this actress and kind friend
- By Slimer on 10-19-20
By: Alan Strachan
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Best. Movie. Year. Ever.
- How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen
- By: Brian Raftery
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From a veteran culture writer and modern movie expert, a celebration and analysis of the movies of 1999 - arguably the most groundbreaking year in American cinematic history.
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Like talking about movies with a friend
- By Shawn Inmon on 05-30-19
By: Brian Raftery
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Competing with Idiots
- Herman and Joe Mankiewicz: A Dual Portrait
- By: Nick Davis
- Narrated by: Nick Davis
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A fascinating, complex dual biography of Hollywood's most dazzling - and famous - brothers, and a dark, riveting portrait of competition, love, and enmity that ultimately undid them both - one most famous for having written Citizen Kane (with Orson Welles, as most recently portrayed in David Fincher's newly released Netflix film Mank); the other, All About Eve....
By: Nick Davis
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High Noon
- The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic
- By: Glenn Frankel
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon was shot on a lean budget over just 32 days but achieved instant box-office and critical success. It won four Academy Awards in 1953, including a best actor win for Cooper. And it became a cultural touchstone, often cited by politicians as a favourite film, celebrating moral fortitude.
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The Blacklist
- By Jean on 03-16-17
By: Glenn Frankel
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Hollywood: The Oral History
- By: Jeanine Basinger, Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon, Marni Penning
- Length: 28 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly 3,000 interviews, involving 400 voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History lets a listener “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera—Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd—to the biggest behind it—Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen.
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Picky, Picky!
- By Patrick on 12-22-22
By: Jeanine Basinger, and others
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I Loved Her in the Movies
- Memories of Hollywood's Legendary Actresses
- By: Robert Wagner
- Narrated by: Robert Wagner
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In a career that has spanned more than 60 years, Robert Wagner has witnessed the twilight of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the rise of television, becoming a beloved star in both media. During that time he became acquainted, both professionally and socially, with the remarkable women who were the greatest screen personalities of their day. I Loved Her in the Movies is his intimate and revealing account of the charisma of these women on film, why they became stars, and more.
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Outstanding!
- By Ernie D. Casciato on 12-02-16
By: Robert Wagner
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The Genius of the System
- Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era
- By: Thomas Schatz, Steven Bach - preface
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 24 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when the studio is making a stunning comeback, film historian Thomas Schatz provides an indispensable account of Hollywood's traditional blend of business and art. Working from industry documents, Schatz traces the development of house styles, the rise and fall of careers, and the making - and unmaking - of movies, from Frankenstein to Spellbound to Grand Hotel. The Genius of the System gives the definitive view of the workings of the Old Hollywood and the foundations of the New.
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Couldn’t Stop Listening
- By P. Roth on 01-21-23
By: Thomas Schatz, and others
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The Devil’s Candy
- The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco
- By: Julie Salamon
- Narrated by: Julie Salamon
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When Brian De Palma agreed to allow Julie Salamon unlimited access to the film production of Tom Wolfe's best-selling book The Bonfire of the Vanities, both director and journalist must have felt like they were on to something big. How could it lose? But instead Salamon got a front-row seat at the Hollywood disaster of the decade.
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WHAT A GEM!!!
- By Momofour on 07-04-21
By: Julie Salamon
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Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard
- Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream
- By: Sam Staggs
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, a classic film noir and also a damning dissection of the Hollywood dream factory, evokes the glamour and ruin of the stars who subsist on that dream. It’s also one long in-joke about the movie industry and those who made it great - and who were, in turn, destroyed by it. One of the most critically admired films of the 20th century, Sunset Boulevard is also famous as silent-star Gloria Swanson’s comeback picture.
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ABRIDGED VERSION BADLY NEEDED!
- By The Louligan on 01-18-22
By: Sam Staggs
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Hollywood Horrors
- Murders, Scandals, and Cover-Ups from Tinseltown
- By: Andrea Van Landingham
- Narrated by: Cindy Piller
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The name “Hollywood” conjures up fantastical images of bright lights, glamorous dreams, and impossible riches. From its humble beginnings as a ranch sprawling northwest of Los Angeles in the late 1800s, Hollywood has spanned lifetimes as a factory of dreams, a dazzling place where all things are possible.
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Review
- By Rhinoguy3000 on 08-11-22
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Buster Keaton
- A Filmmaker's Life
- By: James Curtis
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 31 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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It was James Agee who christened Buster Keaton “The Great Stone Face.” Keaton’s face, Agee wrote, "ranked almost with Lincoln’s as an early American archetype; it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful, yet it was also irreducibly funny. Keaton was the only major comedian who kept sentiment almost entirely out of his work and . . . he brought pure physical comedy to its greatest heights.”
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A well-researched, entertaining expose
- By Ed Pegg Jr on 02-17-22
By: James Curtis
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Hollywood Ending
- Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jonathan Coleman
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty years ago, Ken Auletta wrote an iconic New Yorker profile of the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was then at the height of his powers. The profile made waves for exposing how volatile, even violent, Weinstein was to his employees and collaborators. But there was a much darker story that was just out of reach: rumors had long swirled that Weinstein was a sexual predator. Auletta confronted Weinstein, who denied the claims. Since no one was willing to go on the record, Auletta and the magazine concluded they couldn’t close the case.
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Compelling but too long, with some strange errors
- By bugsmeany on 11-16-22
By: Ken Auletta