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Podcast: New Books in Popular Culture
Episode: Nick Davis, "Competing with Idiots: Herman and Joe Mankiewicz, a Dual Portrait" (Knopf, 2021)
Description: A fascinating, complex dual biography of Hollywood's most dazzling—and famous—brothers, and a dark, riveting portrait of competition, love, and enmity that ultimately undid them both.One most famous for having written Citizen Kane; the other, All About Eve; one who only wrote screenplays but believed himself to be a serious playwright, slowly dying of alcoholism and disappointment; the other a four-time Academy Award-winning director, auteur, sorcerer, and seducer of leading ladies, one of Hollywood's most literate and intelligent filmmakers.Herman Mankiewicz brought us the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup and W. C...