Wolf Mankowitz
Encyclopedia
Cyril Wolf Mankowitz was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 writer, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 of Russian Jewish descent.

Early life

Mankowitz was born in Fashion Street in Spitalfields
Spitalfields
Spitalfields is a former parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday...

 in the East End of London
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...

, the heart of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

's Jewish community. He was educated at Downing College, Cambridge
Downing College, Cambridge
Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1800 and currently has around 650 students.- History :...

.

Career

His background provided Mankowitz with the material for his most successful book A Kid for Two Farthings
A Kid for Two Farthings
A Kid for Two Farthings is a 1953 novel by the British writer Wolf Mankowitz, based on the author's experiences of growing up within a Jewish community in London's East End. It was translated into a film by Carol Reed in 1955...

(1953). This was adapted as a film by the director Carol Reed
Carol Reed
Sir Carol Reed was an English film director best known for Odd Man Out , The Fallen Idol , The Third Man and Oliver!...

 in 1955. Mankowitz himself wrote the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

. In 1958 he wrote the book for the West End musical Expresso Bongo
Expresso Bongo
Expresso Bongo, a 1958 West End musical and a 1959 film, was a satire of the music industry. It was first produced on the stage at the Saville Theatre, London on 23 April 1958. Its book was written by Wolf Mankowitz and Julian More, with music by David Heneker and Monty Norman, also the...

which was made into a film starring Cliff Richard
Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....

 and Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born actor who achieved fame in British and American films.- Early life :Harvey maintained throughout his life that his birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne. However, his legal name was Zvi Mosheh Skikne. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ber "Boris" and...

 the following year. Harvey arranged a couple of lunches with the unsuspecting Mankowitz to study the writer at close hand, so the character Johnny Jackson in the film version of Expresso Bongo sounds something like Mankowitz.

Mankowitz's 1960 film, The Millionairess
The Millionairess
The Millionairess is a 1960 British romantic comedy film set in London, directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Sophia Loren and Peter Sellers...

, starring Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...

 and Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...

, was nominated for a BAFTA Award. Another of his screenplays at this time was a collaboration with director Val Guest
Val Guest
Val Guest was a British film director, best known for his science-fiction films for Hammer Film Productions in the 1950s, but who also enjoyed a long, varied and active career in the film industry from the early 1930s up until the early 1980s.-Early life and career:He was born Valmond Maurice...

 on the science fiction film The Day the Earth Caught Fire
The Day the Earth Caught Fire
The Day the Earth Caught Fire is a British science fiction disaster film starring Edward Judd, Leo McKern and Janet Munro. It was directed by Val Guest and released in 1961....

(1961).

In 1962, Mankowitz offered to introduce his friend Cubby Broccoli
Albert R. Broccoli
Albert Romolo Broccoli, CBE , nicknamed "Cubby", was an American film producer, who made more than 40 motion pictures throughout his career, most of them in the United Kingdom, and often filmed at Pinewood Studios. Co-founder of Danjaq, LLC and EON Productions, Broccoli is most notable as the...

 to Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman was a Canadian theatre and film producer best known for his mega-gamble which resulted in his co-producing the James Bond film series with Albert R...

, holder of the film rights to James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

, when Broccoli mentioned he desired to make the Bond series his next film project. The two men formed a partnership and began co-producing the first Bond film, Doctor No
Dr. No (film)
Dr. No is a 1962 spy film, starring Sean Connery; it is the first James Bond film. Based on the 1958 Ian Fleming novel of the same name, it was adapted by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather and was directed by Terence Young. The film was produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R...

, for which Mankowitz was hired as one of the screenwriters. After viewing early rushes, Mankowitz feared that the film would be a disaster and damage his reputation and insisted on having his name removed from the film's credits. He later also collaborated on the screenplay for the 'unofficial' Bond movie, Casino Royale
Casino Royale (1967 film)
Casino Royale is a 1967 comedy spy film originally produced by Columbia Pictures starring an ensemble cast of directors and actors. It is set as a satire of the James Bond film series and the spy genre, and is loosely based on Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel.The film stars David Niven as the...

. He wrote the script for Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television, now officially known as ITV Yorkshire and sometimes unofficially abbreviated to YTV, is a British television broadcaster and the contractor for the Yorkshire franchise area on the ITV network...

's 1976 miniseries Dickens of London
Dickens of London
Dickens of London is a 1976 television miniseries from Yorkshire Television based on the life of English novelist Charles Dickens. Both Dickens and his father John were played by British actor Roy Dotrice. The series was written by Wolf Mankowitz and Marc Miller...

and the book of the same name based on his research when writing the series.

During the late 1960s, Mankowitz was part-owner of the Pickwick Club, in Gt Newport St, off Charing Cross Road, Soho, London W1, where the Peddlers group, led by Roy Phillips, were resident. Mankowitz's wife Ann was a psychoanalyst; the couple met at Cambridge University. They had four sons; the eldest of whom, Gered
Gered Mankowitz
Gered Mankowitz is a British photographer of the rock music scene over the last 40 years. Some of his portraits of rock musicians, such as The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Slade, are now part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.-Personal life:His father was the late...

, is a noted photographer. His sister was Barbara Mankowitz (12 April 1927 - 25 August 2002).

Death

Wolf Mankowitz died of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 in 1998 in County Cork
County Cork
County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...

, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, aged 73. His ashes are at the Golders Green Crematorium
Golders Green Crematorium
Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain. The land for the crematorium was purchased in 1900, costing £6,000, and was opened in 1902 by Sir Henry Thompson....

.

Other

Files placed in the public domain during August 2010 revealed that Mankowitz was suspected of being a communist agent by security service MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...

 for a decade after the Second World War. According to an article in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, the investigation was dropped after he cancelled a visit to Russia in 1957.

External links

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