BEDFORD, N.Y. — Portia, a pint-sized Norwich terrier, is racing around Joseph Mankiewicz's den in frantic circles, uncontrollably delighted.
"She's really very intelligent," Mankiewicz says. "And a whore."
Didn't he once have a dog named Cassius? The question brings a small and rather melancholy smile to Mankiewicz's face. "Ah, you shouldn't have mentioned that name," he says. "Cassius is dead. So is Brutus, who was his father. They were black Labradors; we had the two of them for almost 30 years."
His dogs have gotten smaller, movies have gotten bigger and Mankiewicz doesn't think either is an improvement. Many of his more memorable films--"All About Eve," "A Letter to Three Wives," "Woman of the Year," "Sleuth"--seem small alongside today's super-megabusters, it's true. But they delivered large doses of humanity, romance, comedy--what Mankiewicz calls the "non-visible aspects of existence." They're the kind of films that aren't often made anymore--although Mankiewicz mentions "Driving Miss Daisy" as a recent work he admires--but they remain the kind that people watch over and over again, the kind they tape, the kind they put on their personal Top 10 lists. The kind that validate one's belief in the emotional power of film.
Tonight, Mankiewicz and those pictures he made will be honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy Foundation at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The sold-out tribute, presented in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art, American Cinematheque and the Directors Guild of America, will be attended by a host of stars with whom Mankiewicz was associated during his more than 40 years in film--including Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Caine, Roddy McDowall, Vincent Price, Burgess Meredith and Richard Widmark. (In addition, the American Cinematheque will present a three-day festival of 10 Mankiewicz films this weekend at the Directors Guild Theater in Hollywood. For information, call (213) 466-FILM.)
"I call it the longevity award," Mankiewicz says; the face around his bright blue eyes crinkles as he laughs. "I like the idea of getting it from the academy now; it was 61 years ago I got my first nomination."
It was a writing nomination for the movie "Skippy," and he was 22.
"They didn't have that silly thing with Price Waterhouse (the company that counts the ballots) in those days," he says. "The dinner was held in the Biltmore Hotel, downtown Los Angeles, with 250 people. The votes were being counted in a bedroom upstairs. It was like a crap game going on, guys were down on their knees counting. And David Selznick walks in with his back pocket full of votes for 'Cimarron.' "
Mankiewicz lost that first time around--he would later win back-to-back writing and directing Oscars for "Letter to Three Wives" (1949) and "All About Eve" (1950)--but he hardly feels slighted. " 'Skippy' wasn't deserving of any kind of film award," he says. "In 'Cimarron,' at least, there were a lot of horses, and Richard Dix and Irene Dunne. 'Skippy' was just Jackie Cooper falling asleep in Marie Dressler's lap."
Anyone with complaints about recent Oscar shows should have been around in '31. "The president of the academy, whose name was Levy--Mike Levy--was also an officer at Paramount," Mankiewicz says. "He was the one who gave me a raise after my nomination, from $65 to $80 a week. He stood up to begin the meeting and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, will you all please rise.' We all got up and he raised his glass and said, 'I'd like to propose a toast to my wife, because this is our 25th wedding anniversary!' And everybody went 'Yaaay!' "
Anyone with a complaint about long Oscar speeches also should have been around in '31.
"One of the speakers," he says, "was the U.S. vice president, Charles Curtis, and he spoke for just about two hours. And you could hang me by my thumbs but I cannot tell you what he spoke about."
Mankiewicz chuckles at his reminiscences, which recall a simpler time, a time when a 1928 graduate of Columbia--"the university, not the studio"--forsook a promising academic career to begin another in the still-fledgling film industry. By the mid-'50s, when Mankiewicz moved back east from Los Angeles, his accomplishments were legion, and his instincts for what would make good pictures had become screen legend: He'd seen Elizabeth Taylor's potential for "Suddenly Last Summer," which many consider her best performance; he cast Marlon Brando as Marc Antony in "Julius Caesar," for which the actor earned an Oscar nomination; he had introduced Katharine Hepburn to Spencer Tracy.
"Spence used to stay with me, we were great pals," he said.
Mankiewicz had already produced Hepburn's hit, "The Philadelphia Story," and he could tell the Hepburn-Tracy matchup would be dynamite. But when he and director George Stevens began screening the couple's first feature, "Woman of the Year," Mankiewicz said, "I knew we were in trouble.
