One of the first and most important screenwriters of talking films, Joseph Mankiewicz was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the son of Johanna Blumenau and Frank Mankiewicz, German immigrants who had met in New York City. When Mankiewicz was a child, his family--including his brother Herman, with whom Joseph would share a lifelong rivalry--moved to New York where his father had a job teaching high school. Mankiewicz was an unusually bright student; he graduated from high school at fifteen and entered Columbia University that year, receiving a bachelor of arts degree when he was nineteen years old.

After graduating from Columbia, Mankiewicz got a job with the Chicago Tribune as a foreign correspondent in Berlin. In Germany he first found employment in the film industry, translating titles from German to English for Universum Film Aktien, the largest film distributor in the country. He was never able to live within...