I highly recommend the recent movie Mank, which now can be found on Netflix. It is the story of the writer Herman Mankiewicz and the writing of the screenplay Citizen Kane for Orson Welles. Before heading out to Hollywood, Mankiewicz had established himself as a much-acclaimed writer. Mank (as he was called by most of his friends) had been a foreign correspondent in Berlin for the Chicago Tribune, a drama critic for the New York Times, and the first regular drama critic for The New Yorker magazine. He battled alcoholism all his adult life.
He was lured to Hollywood by the money. In a hyperbolic telegram to Ben Hecht conveying to him an offer at a job as a screenwriter for Paramount, Mankiewicz asks him: “Will you accept three hundred per week to work for Paramount Pictures. All expenses paid. The three hundred is peanuts. Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.”
If there is one fault in Mank, the movie, it is the limited role of Hecht, who is always seen in a talented group of screenwriters, but never one-on-one with Mankiewicz. They were close friends, and Hecht had the utmost admiration for Mankiewicz, whom he alone called Manky. Here is what Hecht wrote about Manky in his memoir, A Child of The Century:
“I have sat in a room filled with writers of every kind and there was only one to whom we listened—Manky”
“Beside Manky, the famous people among whom he buzzed all his life like a hornet or gadfly seemed pale-minded.”