Want to know the best Joseph L. Mankiewicz movies? How about the worst Joseph L. Mankiewicz movies? Curious about Joseph L. Mankiewicz box office grosses or which Joseph L. Mankiewicz movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Joseph L. Mankiewicz movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1990) was a 4-time Oscar® winning American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Mankiewicz had a long Hollywood career and won consecutive Academy Awards® for both Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay for 1949’s A Letter to Three Wives and 1950’s All About Eve. His IMDb page shows over 110 writing, producing & directing credits from 1929 to 1993. This page will rank Joseph L. Mankiewicz movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos, uncredited roles and movies that were not released in North American were not included in the rankings.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Joseph L. Mankiewicz movies by his co-stars
- Sort Joseph L. Mankiewicz movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Joseph L. Mankiewicz movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Joseph L. Mankiewicz movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Joseph L. Mankiewicz movie received.
- Sort Joseph L. Mankiewicz movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
*In some cases I listed Mankiewicz’s role in the movie as the second name in the UMR Link column. If there is not a role listed, then it was a movie that Mankiewicz directed.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1. Joseph Lee Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1909.He is the brother of Oscar® winning writer Herman Mankiewicz. He also the great uncle of Ben Mankiewicz, a longtime host of Turner Classic Movies – from Flora.
2. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s cinematic idol was Ernst Lubitsch.
3. Joseph L. Mankiewicz is one of only three film directors to win the Academy Award® for Best Director two years in a row, winning for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950). The other directors are John Ford, who won for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941), and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who won for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and The Revenant (2015).
4. Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote the screenplay for six Oscar® Best Picture nominees: Skippy (1931), Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) (uncredited), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), All About Eve (1950), Julius Caesar (1953) and Cleopatra (1963).
5. Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed two films that featured Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony as major characters: Julius Caesar (1953) and Cleopatra (1963).
Check out Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
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Just my opinion but Joseph Mankiewicz was a jack of all trades. Writer, Producer, and Director. He did it all and did it fairly well. I have seen 17 Mankiewicz movies. Favorites include ALL ABOUT EVE, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, WOMAN OF THE YEAR, SLUETH, A LETTER TO THREE WIVES, and NO WAY OUT. I have also seen MANHATTEN MELODRAMA, PEOPLE WILL TALK, THE FEMININE TOUCH, THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM, FURY, ESCAPE, and THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA. I will admit that Mr. Mankiewicz did make a few films that I didn’t like at all. Three movies that come to mind are SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, CLEOPATRA, and GUYS AND DOLLS. Why SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, and CLEOPATRA ever got the Oscar nominations that they did is beyond me. Both movies are a mess to due to their one note screenplays in my opinion. GUYS AND DOLLS is a terrible musical because, with the exception of Frank Sinatra, the majority of the cast can’t sing to save their lives and even Sinatra was far from his best in my opinion. However, the good outweighed the bad and Joseph Mankiewicz and the majority of his movies deserve their place in movie making history. Enough Said.
Hey Greg. Awesome feedback on Joseph L. Mankiewicz. I agree with you 100%, he was indeed a jack of all trades. I have seen 19 of his movies, so I have a slight lead on you. Both totals are close to 50% of his movies. I have seen all your favorites with the exception of No Way Out. The only No Way Out I have seen starred Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman. I am right there with you in regards to Suddenly, Last Summer….a great cast wasted. We do disagree on Guys and Dolls….I thought Brando actually did a decent job in that one. I think like Michael Curtiz, Joseph Mankiewicz is being forgotten as time passes on. Good comment. I glad that you have been commenting on our website.
Bruce, I have mixed feelings about Marlon Brando. Like Jennifer Jones, there is no denying that the man is truly talented but I don’t always like the kind of films he makes. I absolutely LOVED his performances in THE MEN and THE WILD ONE. I also felt he gave good performances in movies like VIVA ZAPATA, ON THE WATERFRONT, SAYANORA, THE YOUNG LIONS, and THE GODFATHER. However, I absolutely can’t stand his performances in movies like REFLECTIONS OF A GOLDEN EYE and A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG. To be fair, I sometimes feel his talents have been wasted on so called “prestige” movies that weren’t as good as the movie critics thought they were. The prime example is A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. In my opinion, STREETCAR suffers from bad writing and bad direction which hurt the performances of the film’s cast. Kim Hunter and Karl Malden’s performances are rather bland while Brando’s and Vivien Leigh’s performances are somewhat overwrought and basically “over the top”. The director, Elia Kazan, basically directed his actors rather poorly plus the screenplay was rather convoluted as well as being one note. Just my opinion again but I consider Tennessee Williams to be an overrated playwright. If anything, he’s a hack as far as I’m concerned. In closing, let me say while I acknowledge Brando’s talents, I can’t say he is one of my favorites. When it comes to so called “method” actors, my favorite would have to be THE LATE, GREAT MONTGOMERY CLIFT!!! .
Hey Greg. Good comment about Marlon Brando. I agree to a large part of your comment. I have never been a fan of Streetcar Named Desire…and I have tried three times to see why so many people love that movie. I would say he is awesome in On The Waterfront and The Godfather. Your favorite Clift and Brando would be on the Mount Rushmore of Method Actors. Good stuff.