DIRECTOR MANKIEWICZ DIES AT 83

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 6, 1993                   TAG: 9302060150
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BEDFORD, N.Y.                                LENGTH: Medium
DIRECTOR MANKIEWICZ DIES AT 83
Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the Academy Award-winning writer and director whose films included the classics "All About Eve," "A Letter to Three Wives" and "Suddenly Last Summer," died Friday. He was 83.
He died at his home from heart failure, said his nephew, public relations agent Frank Mankiewicz.
Joseph Mankiewicz' film career began at the end of the silent era, peaked during the heyday of the Hollywood studio system, encompassed the controversy of "Cleopatra" and ended with the hit "Sleuth" in 1972.
He won Academy Awards for writing and direction in 1949 for "A Letter to Three Wives" and repeated the double Oscar the following year for "All About Eve." The four Oscars sat on the mantle at his home.
Mankiewicz also got memorable performances from James Mason and Marlon Brando in a 1953 version of "Julius Caesar." He coined the phrase "my little chickadee" for W.C. Fields in "If I Had a Million." He produced the first movie in which Katharine Hepburn was teamed with Spencer Tracy.
As a director, he was hailed for his mastery of flashbacks and use of soundtrack narration. As a writer, he was known for his witty, biting dialogue.
"Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night!" Margo Channing, the aging star played by Bette Davis, says in one of Mankiewicz's most memorable lines in "Eve."
In 1961, Mankiewicz was hired to take over a foundering "Cleopatra." He would later call it "the toughest three pictures I ever made. It was shot in a state of emergency, shot in confusion, and wound up in blind panic."
His final film, "Sleuth," starred Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier. "All I wanted was two actors and not another living thing, not a bird, not a goldfish. Just words . . . [and] two virtuoso actors who could go all-out," he said.
Caine, Oliver and Mankiewicz were nominated for Oscars.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB