Richard Brooks

Richard Brooks was an Academy Award-winning film writer who also earned six Oscar nominations and achieved success as a film director and producer. He was born Ruben Sax on May 18, 1912, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants.

He graduated from West Philadelphia HS, attended Philadelphia's Temple University for two years, before dropping out and later working as a sports reporter and radio journalist in the 1930s. After a stint as a writer for the NBC network, he worked for one season as director of New York's Mill Pond Theatre, and then headed to Los Angeles. There he broke into films as a script writer of "B" movies, Maria Montez epics, serials, and did some radio writing. During the Second World War, he served with the US Marines for two years.

While never officially accused of being a communist by The House Un-American Activities Committee, Brooks was nervous of being possibly targeted. Many writers in Hollywood were in fear of HUAC in the late 1940s. During the making of Lord Jim (1965), Brooks stated to a close friend that if he had had to move, he would live permanently in the UK, and would never want to return to the US. But the blacklist era ended without Brooks facing investigation.

He and John Huston co-wrote the adapted screenplay for The Killers (1946), but neither received onscreen credit because of studio contract restraints.

Richard Brooks made his directorial debut with MGM's Crisis (1950) starring Cary Grant.

He scripted and directed The Brothers Karamazov (1958) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and two years later won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for Elmer Gantry (1960). He had six Oscar nominations and 25 other nominations during his film career. Brooks was a writer and director of Chekhovian depth, who mastered the use of understatement, anticlimax and implied emotion. His films enjoyed lasting appeal and tended to be more serious than the usual mainstream productions.

Brooks was regarded as "independent" even before he officially broke away from the studio system in 1965.

In the 1980s, he had his own production company.

As of 2013, Brooks remains one of six men who directed his wife in a performance nominated for a Best-Actress Oscar; in his case, wife Jean Simmons in The Happy Ending (1969). The other five are Joel Coen directing Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996), John Cassavetes directing Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and in Gloria (1980), Blake Edwards directing Julie Andrews in Victor Victoria (1982), Paul Czinner directing Elisabeth Bergner in Escape Me Never (1935) and Paul Newman directing Joanne Woodward in Rachel, Rachel (1968). Jules Dassin also directed his future wife Melina Mercouri in an Oscar-nominated performance (Never on Sunday (1960))--though they were not yet married at the time of the nomination.