Joseph Leo Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Feb. 11, 1909. After graduating from Columbia University in New York City in 1928, he worked as a news reporter. Mankiewicz launched his Hollywood career in 1929 when his brother, Herman, cowriter of Citizen Kane (1941), got him a job as a scriptwriter for Paramount Pictures. His early writing credits include The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929); If I Had a Million (1932), for which he coined actor W.C. Fields's famous phrase “my little chickadee”; and Million Dollar Legs (1932). In 1936 Mankiewicz branched out to movie production with Fury, followed by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and Woman of the Year (1942), the first of a number of highly entertaining features starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Mankiewicz made his directing debut with Dragonwyck (1946), stepping in to replace an ailing director. It was the first of many films he both wrote and directed, including 5 Fingers (1952), for which he received an Academy award nomination for best director; The Barefoot Contessa (1954), for which he won an Oscar nomination for best screenplay; The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947); Guys and Dolls (1955); and The Quiet American (1957), which he also produced. Mankiewicz also directed House of Strangers (1950), No Way Out (1950), the critically acclaimed Julius Caesar (1953), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). In the early 1960s, Mankiewicz made only one film, the lavish Cleopatra (1963), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, which he directed and cowrote. After the critical failure of that film, Mankiewicz directed just a few films: The Honey Pot (1967), which he also wrote and produced; There Was a Crooked Man (1970); and Sleuth (1972), for which he received an Oscar nomination for best director. In 1986 Mankiewicz won a lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of America. Mankiewicz died on Feb. 5, 1993, in Mount Kisco, N.Y.