Richard Brooks (born Reuben Sax; May 18, 1912 – March 11, 1992) was an American film director, screenwriter, journalist and novelist. He directed 24 feature films between 1950 and 1985, and was known for his portrayals of hard-hitting subject matter, psychologically complex characters, and his independently minded auteurist approach to filmmaking.
His notable works included Blackboard Jungle (1955), Something of Value (1957), The Brothers Karamazov (1958), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (also 1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), The Professionals (1966), In Cold Blood (1967) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). Mayer Sulzberger Junior High School and West Philadelphia High School, graduating from the latter in 1929.
Sax took classes at Temple University for two years, studying journalism and playing on the school's baseball team. He dropped out and left home when he discovered that his parents were going into debt to pay for his tuition. He rode freight trains around the East and Midwest for a period of time, eventually returning to Philadelphia to seek work as a newspaper reporter. At some point in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Sax began using the name Richard Brooks professionally. He changed his name legally in 1943.
Career
1938–1949: Early career
Brooks wrote sports for the Philadelphia Record and later joined the staff of the Atlantic City Press-Union. He moved to New York to work for the World-Telegram; shortly afterward he took a job with radio station WNEW for a larger paycheck. As a newsman for the station, he reported and read stories on the air and provided commentary. Brooks also began writing plays in 1938 and tried directing for Long Island's Mill Pond Theater in 1940. A falling out with his theater colleagues that summer led him to drive to Los Angeles on a whim, hoping to find work in the film industry. He also may have been trying to escape a marriage; a legal document indicates he was married at least part of the time he lived in New York.
He did not find film work but was hired by the NBC affiliate to write original stories and read them for a daily fifteen-minute broadcast called Sidestreet Vignettes. His marriage, in 1941, to Jeanne Kelly, an actress at Universal Studios, may have helped to open the door to writing for the studio. He contributed dialogue to a few films and wrote two screenplays for the popular actress Maria Montez, known as the "Queen of Technicolor." With no prospect of moving into more prestigious productions, he quit Universal and joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1943 during World War II.
Brooks never served overseas during the war, instead working in the Marine Corps film unit at Quantico, Virginia, and at times at Camp Pendleton, California. In his two years in uniform he learned more about the basics of filmmaking, including writing and editing documentaries. He also found time to write a novel, The Brick Foxhole, a searing portrait of some stateside soldiers who were tainted by religious and racial bigotry, and opposed to homosexuals.
Brooks came into his own when he directed an original screenplay, Deadline – U.S.A. (1952), for 20th Century-Fox, starring his friend Humphrey Bogart. Based on the closing of the New York World, the film was part gangster picture, part newspaper drama. At its core was an issue Brooks cared about: the consolidation of the newspaper industry and its effect on the diversity of voices in the press. The film remains one of the more highly regarded dramas about American newspapers. Brooks directed four more films before achieving an unqualified hit with Blackboard Jungle (1955) starring Glenn Ford. Based on a best-seller by Evan Hunter, the film was shocking for its time in its presentation of juvenile delinquency. It also offered a career-making supporting role for a young black actor, Sidney Poitier, and early roles for actors Vic Morrow, Jamie Farr and Paul Mazursky. Brooks chose to begin and end the film with the song "Rock Around the Clock", bringing rock 'n' roll to a major Hollywood production for the first time and sparking a No. 1 hit for Bill Haley and the Comets. Blackboard Jungle was nominated for an Oscar for its screenplay, and was MGM's top moneymaker that year.
thumb|Brooks and Elizabeth Taylor on the set of [[Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958 film)|Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)]]
In 1955, Brooks was one of four American auteur filmmakers named as "rebels" by the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. Box-office success was what gave the writer/director more freedom at MGM, but Brooks also recognized that he would never have complete control of his films while under contract. He determined to avoid writing original screenplays and focused on adaptations of best-sellers or classic novels. He later noted that adapting a novel gave him a head start on developing the story structure required for a screenplay. He spent the rest of the decade at MGM, where his most notable film was an adaptation of Tennessee Williams's sexually charged play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). A huge hit for MGM – it drew more money and a larger audience than any other film Brooks ever directed – the film was a high point in the career of Elizabeth Taylor and made a star of Paul Newman. It brought Brooks his first Oscar nomination for directing and the first Best Picture nomination in his directorial career.
1960–1985: Work post-MGM
thumb|left|Brooks and Peter O'Toole on [[Lord Jim (1965 film)|Lord Jim (1965) set in Cambodia]]
Brooks spent the last third of his film career working in relative independence. In 1958, he signed a non-exclusive, seven-year writer-director deal with Columbia Pictures that was to earn him over $1 million. He followed the success of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with an independent production for United Artists of Elmer Gantry (1960), based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis. The story of a phony preacher, played by Burt Lancaster, and a sincere revivalist, played by Jean Simmons, was edgy for the time. As it had for Blackboard Jungle and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, controversy accompanied the film's release and helped bring people to theaters. The movie received five Academy Award nominations, including one for best picture, and won Oscars for Brooks' screenplay, Lancaster as lead actor and for Shirley Jones as supporting actress.
Brooks adapted and directed another Tennessee Williams play, Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). Ed Begley won a Best Supporting Oscar for his role in the film. While popular and well-received critically, the MGM production did not duplicate the success of the previous Williams film. A dream project followed, an adaptation for Columbia Pictures of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (1965), but the lavish film proved to be a misfire at the box office and with most critics. Brooks had spent years writing the script and planning the most expensive project of his career. He had assembled a stellar cast led by Peter O'Toole, Eli Wallach, Jack Hawkins, Paul Lukas, and James Mason. While beautifully photographed in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia by Freddie Young and scored by Bronisław Kaper, Lord Jim did not find the audience that had made David Lean's epics Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago such notable hits of the 1960s.
To recover professionally from the failure of Lord Jim, Brooks surprised Hollywood by choosing to adapt a minor western novel about a wealthy husband who hires mercenaries to rescue his kidnapped wife from Mexican bandits. Brooks worked quickly and within a year released The Professionals (1966), which became Columbia's biggest hit that year. The film was made through Brooks and Al Horwits' new film production company, Pax Enterprises, Inc. The slick crowd-pleaser starred Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan and Woody Strode as "the professionals" with Jack Palance as the bandit leader and Claudia Cardinale as the kidnapped wife. The film received Oscar nominations for Brooks' screenplay and direction, and for Conrad Hall's cinematography. It has been lauded as one of the most entertaining westerns ever filmed.
thumb|right|Writer [[Truman Capote and Brooks in 1968]]
Brooks landed the property of the decade when author Truman Capote selected him to adapt his best-selling book In Cold Blood. Once again rejecting the methodical pace that had slowed him with other productions, Brooks worked quickly to adapt the "nonfiction novel," as Capote called it. As a reporter, Brooks also conducted his own research into the murders of four members of a Kansas farm family and the lives of the two drifters responsible for the crime. Brooks rejected Columbia's suggestion that he hire stars to play the killers and instead cast two relative unknowns, Scott Wilson and Robert Blake. He resisted the studio on another point, shooting the film in black and white rather than color because he thought it was a more frightening medium. He used locations where the events occurred, including the house where the family had been killed. Again produced through Pax Enterprises, In Cold Blood had a documentary style and was considered among the films of the mid-1960s that ushered in a more mature Hollywood style. Brooks received double Oscar nominations; cinematographer Conrad Hall and composer Quincy Jones also were nominated.
The Professionals and In Cold Blood marked the apex of Brooks' career. In the two decades that followed, he wrote and directed just six more films. Of note was The Happy Ending (1969), also made through Pax Enterprises.
Bite the Bullet (1975) was Brooks' return to the western and his final film made through Pax Enterprises. He based his original screenplay on the endurance horse races popular at the turn of the century. In 1977, he released another controversial film, an adaptation of Judith Rossner's 1975 novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Goodbar starred Diane Keaton as a Catholic school teacher who searches for sexual satisfaction in singles bars. Brooks made the film on a tight budget, and its frank treatment of sex and its horrific storyline brought praise and condemnation and sold tickets. He ended his career with Wrong Is Right (1982), a satire about the news media and world unrest starring Sean Connery, and a gambling addiction film with Ryan O'Neal and Catherine Hicks in Fever Pitch (1985). Fever Pitch featured a story about a renowned Los Angeles sportswriter who becomes a sports gambling addict. Brooks himself had been a sportswriter when a young man. Both movies were critical and commercial failures. Brooks tried developing other projects in the last years of his life. He suffered from heart ailments and a stroke before dying at his home in 1992 at the age of 79.
Personal life
Marriages and family
In 1960, he married Jean Simmons, after her divorce from Stewart Granger. Brooks helped to raise Tracy, Simmons' daughter by Granger. The couple had another daughter, Kate, together in 1961. They separated in 1977 and were legally divorced in 1980. Previously, Brooks had been married for 11 years to Harriette Levin, a relationship that also ended in divorce.
Brooks was much the same way in his personal life. He readily acknowledged that he was a trying husband and that his work was the most important activity in his life. He was not interested in Hollywood's social scene, preferring to entertain guests at his home with tennis and movies when he wasn't working on screenplays or other projects. Yet his wife Jean Simmons found him to be a humorous, stimulating husband and a loving father to their daughters. But from all accounts, he was a "tough as nails" father as well.
Death
Surrounded by family (Jean Simmons and daughters) and longtime friend, actor Gene Kelly, Brooks died from congestive heart failure in 1992 at his house in Coldwater Canyon in Studio City, California. He was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California, a few steps away from the graves of his parents. On his vault was placed a plaque inscribed, "First comes the word. . .". The quote was chosen by his step-daughter, film editor Tracy Granger, as Brooks always identified most strongly as a writer.
After his death, Brooks' papers were donated to the Margaret Herrick Library and his film collection was donated to the Academy Film Archive. The Academy Film Archive preserved Lord Jim in 2000 and various home movies made by Richard Brooks in 2009 and 2016.
Legacy
Brooks was one of the relatively few filmmakers whose careers bridged the transition from the classic studio system to the independent productions that marked the 1960s and beyond.
|-
| 1951 || The Light Touch || || ||
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| 1952 || Deadline – U.S.A.|| || || 20th Century Fox||
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| rowspan="2" |1953 || Battle Circus || || || rowspan="10" |Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ||
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| Take the High Ground!|| || ||
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| rowspan="2" |1954 || Flame and the Flesh || || ||
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| The Last Time I Saw Paris|| || ||
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| 1955 || Blackboard Jungle || || ||
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| rowspan="2" |1956 || The Last Hunt|| || ||
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| The Catered Affair|| || ||
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| 1957 || Something of Value|| || ||
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| rowspan="2" |1958 || The Brothers Karamazov || || ||
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| Cat on a Hot Tin Roof|| || ||
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| 1960 || Elmer Gantry|| || || Elmer Gantry Productions / United Artists ||
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| 1962 || Sweet Bird of Youth || || || Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ||
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| 1965 || Lord Jim|| || || rowspan="3" |Columbia||
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| 1966 || The Professionals|| || ||
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| 1967 || In Cold Blood|| || ||
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| 1969 || The Happy Ending || || || United Artists ||
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| 1971 || $|| || || rowspan="2" |Columbia ||
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| 1975 || Bite the Bullet || || ||
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| 1977 || Looking For Mr. Goodbar|| || || Paramount||
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| 1982 || Wrong Is Right|| || || Columbia ||
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| 1985 || Fever Pitch || || || Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ||
|}
Writing only
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Title
!Director
! Studio
!Other notes
! Ref.
|-
| rowspan="2" |1942 || Men of Texas
| rowspan="2" |Ray Enright|| rowspan="4" |Universal Pictures
| ||
|-
|Sin Town
| ||
|-
| rowspan="2" |1943 || Don Winslow of the Coast Guard
|Lewis D. Collins<br/>Ray Taylor
|Additional dialogue||
|-
|White Savage
|Arthur Lubin
| ||
|-
| rowspan="2" |1944 || My Best Gal
|Anthony Mann|| Republic Pictures
| ||
|-
|Cobra Woman
| rowspan="2" |Robert Siodmak|| rowspan="4" |Universal Pictures
| ||
|-
| rowspan="2" |1946 || The Killers
|Uncredited||
|-
|Swell Guy
|Frank Tuttle
| ||
|-
|1947 || Brute Force
|Jules Dassin
| ||
|-
| rowspan="2" |1948 || To the Victor
|Delmer Daves|| rowspan="2" |Warner Bros.
| ||
|-
|Key Largo
|John Huston
| ||
|-
|1949 || Any Number Can Play
|Mervyn LeRoy|| rowspan="2" |Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
| ||
|-
| 1950 || Mystery Street
|John Sturges
| ||
|}
Awards and nominations
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Institution
! Year
! Category
! Project
! Result
! Ref.
|-
| rowspan="8" |Academy Awards
|1955 || Best Screenplay || Blackboard Jungle || ||
|-
|rowspan=2|1958 || Best Director || rowspan=2|Cat on a Hot Tin Roof || || rowspan=2|
|-
|Best Adapted Screenplay ||
|-
|1960 || Best Adapted Screenplay || Elmer Gantry || ||
|-
|rowspan=2|1966 || Best Director || rowspan=2|The Professionals || || rowspan=2|
|-
|Best Adapted Screenplay ||
|-
|rowspan=2|1967 || Best Director || rowspan=2|In Cold Blood || || rowspan=2|
|-
|Best Adapted Screenplay ||
|-
| BAFTA Awards
|1961 || Best Film from Any Source || Elmer Gantry || ||
|-
|Cahiers du Cinéma
|1961
|Annual Top 10 Lists
|Elmer Gantry
|
|
|-
|Cannes Film Festival
|1958
|Palme d'Or
|The Brothers Karamazov
|
|
|-
|David di Donatello
|1968
|Best Foreign Director
|In Cold Blood
|
|
|-
| rowspan="7" |Directors Guild of America
|1956
| rowspan="6" |Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film
|Blackboard Jungle
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |1959
|The Brothers Karamazov
|
|
|-
|Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
|
|
|-
|1961
|Elmer Gantry
|
|
|-
|1967
|The Professionals
|
|
|-
|1968
|In Cold Blood
|
|
|-
|1990
|Preston Sturges Award
|
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |Edgar Awards
|1948
| rowspan="2" |Best Motion Picture Screenplay
|Crossfire
|
|
|-
|1968
|In Cold Blood
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |Golden Globe Awards
|1958 || rowspan="2" |Best Director || Cat on a Hot Tin Roof || || rowspan="2" |
|-
|1960 || Elmer Gantry ||
|-
| rowspan="2" |Golden Raspberry Awards
| rowspan="2" |1986
|Worst Director
| rowspan="2" |Fever Pitch
|
|
|-
|Worst Screenplay
|
|
|-
|Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
|1968
|Crystal Globe
|In Cold Blood
|
|
|-
|National Board of Review
|1967
|Best Director
|In Cold Blood
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |New York Film Critics Circle
| rowspan="2" |1958
| rowspan="2" |Best Director
|Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
|
|
|-
|The Brothers Karamazov
|
|
|-
|Valladolid International Film Festival
|1968
|Best Film
|Elmer Gantry
|
|
|-
| rowspan="2" |Venice Film Festival
| rowspan="2" |1957
|Golden Lion
| rowspan="2" |Something of Value
|
|
|-
|San Giorgio Prize
|
|
|-
| rowspan="8" |Writers Guild of America
|1949
| rowspan="4" |Best Written American Drama
|Key Largo
|
|
|-
|1956
|Blackboard Jungle
|
|