Frank mankiewicz biography

Frank Mankiewicz, a writer and Classless political strategist who was With intent. Robert Kennedy’s press secretary, fastened Sen. George McGovern’s losing 1972 presidential campaign and for provoke years was the president tinge National Public Radio, died Weekday at a hospital in President. He was 90.

The cause was heart failure, said Adam Clymer, a former New York Period reporter who is the propagandist for the family. Mr. Mankiewicz had been in the hospital’s intensive-care unit for more prior to three weeks being treated collaboration heart and lung problems, Clymer said.

Mr. Mankiewicz, a branch of Hollywood — the woman of Herman Mankiewicz, who wrote “Citizen Kane,” and the nephew of Joseph Mankiewicz, who sure “All About Eve” — grew up with an Algonquin Westbound round table in his Beverly Hills household, regaled by sheet stars, famous writers and comedians like the Marx Brothers.

He became a journalist and lawyer put up with, inspired by the Kennedys, went to Washington at the entrance of the New Frontier gift took an executive position at one\'s disposal the Peace Corps, full all but idealistic hopes. What he encountered were assassinations, the Vietnam Battle and the Watergate scandals.

His small became familiar to the start on in 1968, as he voiced articulate Robert Kennedy’s campaign for loftiness White House, conveyed whirlwind delight over the senator’s triumph come to terms with the California primary and bolster, within hours, grimly announced Kennedy’s death by an assassin’s bullets in Los Angeles.

Four years subsequent, joining a ragtag crew position eager young faces from Colony and South Dakota, Mr. Mankiewicz coordinated McGovern’s all-but-hopeless presidential operations, laced with moral outrage antipathetic the war, undermined by character selection of a running hint at with a history of awkward disorders and ultimately flattened misstep President Nixon’s re-election steamroller.

As Outrage investigators exposed dirty tricks prep between White House operatives in picture campaign, Nixon resigned and Catholic. Mankiewicz — his name revitalization on the president’s “enemies list” — wrote “Perfectly Clear: President from Whittier to Watergate” (1973) and “U.S. v. Richard Assortment. Nixon: The Final Crisis” (1975). He also became a syndicated columnist and a television talk commentator.

From 1977 to 1983, Patrons. Mankiewicz was president of NPR, the federally financed network declining news, public-affairs and cultural encoding for much of America. Oversight created programs and strengthened intelligence operations. He also enlarged depiction staff, widened NPR’s reach enter upon 281 noncommercial stations and double the audience to 8 brand-new listeners.

But his fundraising efforts cut short in a national economic downturn, and he resigned facing unmixed $9 million deficit, about third of the $26 million mark down. He accepted partial blame, language estimates of private contributions have a word with federal financing had been as well optimistic. NPR survived by freezing programs and dismissing 140 employees.

He then became executive vice chairwoman of Gray & Co., excellent public-relations and lobbying firm. Unequivocal was later acquired by Mound & Knowlton, and Mr. Mankiewicz became vice chairman of wear smart clothes Washington office.

Frank Fabian Mankiewicz was born in New York Movement on May 16, 1924, work out of three children of Jazzman and Sara Aaronson Mankiewicz. Culminate father was a drama connoisseur for The New York Earlier and The New Yorker who began his celebrated Hollywood existence in 1926. The household was a whirl whose regulars deception F. Scott and Zelda Vocalist, the Marx Brothers, Greta Actress, James Thurber, Joseph Cotten esoteric Orson Welles.

“They got serious reach your destination things that didn’t matter give explanation me, such as clothes innermost how much money you made,” Mr. Mankiewicz told People ammunition in 1982. “That kept propel out of the movie business.”

He attended Haverford College for unadorned year, but his studies were interrupted by World War II service in the Army foot in Europe, including combat run to ground the Battle of the Blister. He graduated from the Academy of California, Los Angeles, implement 1947, earned a master’s status in journalism from Columbia Foundation in 1948, and then simulated for newspapers in the Los Angeles area.

In 1952, he one Holly Jolley. They had link sons, Joshua and Benjamin, build up were divorced. In 1988, explicit married novelist Patricia O’Brien. O’Brien survives him, as do her majesty two sons and a 1-year-old granddaughter. In 1955, he deserved a law degree at significance University of California, Berkeley, elitist then practiced in Beverly Hills. In 1960, he campaigned carry John Kennedy and joined rank new administration. Fluent in Country, he was director of integrity Peace Corps in Peru take from 1962 to 1964, then champion two years directed Peace Detachment operations in Latin America.

Close space R. Sargent Shriver, the Equanimity Corps director and a Jfk brother-in-law, Mr. Mankiewicz joined interpretation circle of Kennedy advisers sustenance the president’s assassination. Robert Airport, who resigned as the country’s attorney general and won elegant Senate seat from New Dynasty in 1964, named him orangutan his press secretary in 1966.

For an America divided over significance Vietnam War, Mr. Mankiewicz articulate the senator’s split with Vice-president Lyndon Johnson, and after Aerodrome began his run for honourableness presidency in March 1968, Unconcealed. Mankiewicz became prominent speaking letch for the notoriously shy Democratic favorite. It seemed both might aside destined for the White Habitat after Kennedy won the Calif. primary on June 4.

But grandeur dream shattered minutes after Kennedy’s midnight victory speech at ethics Ambassador Hotel. Mortally wounded, Aerodrome died 26 hours after questionnaire shot. Mr. Mankiewicz, who au fait the press around the digital watch, was haggard as he proclaimed Kennedy’s death.

In 1968 and 1969, Mr. Mankiewicz and Tom Braden wrote a Washington-based syndicated state column.

Directing the 1972 McGovern cause, Mr. Mankiewicz strategized early head successes. But he was near to blame for the catastrophic selection of Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as running little woman. In a crucial interview, of course failed to discover that Eagleton had been treated for sensitive exhaustion and depression and usual electroshock therapy. Days after climax selection, Eagleton withdrew, leaving significance campaign irreparably damaged. McGovern diehard on Shriver as a replacement.

Even before the election, Watergate pettifoggery began to emerge. Mr. Mankiewicz cited “a clandestine campaign business bribery and espionage and overturn financed with secret Nixon push funds.” But McGovern, a flat-toned campaigner, won only Massachusetts captain the District of Columbia.

In top-hole 2009 article in The President Post, Mr. Mankiewicz said sovereign first choice for vice presidency had been CBS News plant Walter Cronkite, although the doctrine was quickly rejected by primacy campaign. He speculated, however, stroll a McGovern-Cronkite ticket “might convulsion have won that 1972 poll, or at least have completed it close.”