Frank Mankiewicz

[Joseph McBride]

No, unfortunately, that script has not been published.

Material can be found in the Orson Welles-Oja Kodar papers
in the Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan.
From the finding aid:


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[TABLE="width: 98%"]
[TR]
[TH="align: left"]Title[/TH]
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[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Assassin (1975-1976) [subseries]:
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 2, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Scripts
[/TD]
[/TR]
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[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Original Version (as "Sirhan Sirhan" by Donald Freed with Jack Kimbrough) (photocopy of typescript), undated (3 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft (photocopy of typescript), November 15, 1975 (3 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages (typescript and photocopies), November 15. 1975
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages (carbon copy), undated
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Story notes (annotated typescript), undated
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft "Old" (annotated typescript), undated (3 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft "Helen Original" (carbon copy), undated (4 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft "Non-Helen Carbon" (typescript, carbon copy, and photocopy), undated (4 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft (photocopy of "Non-Helen Carbon"), undated (3 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft (carbon copy) (copy 1), undated (2 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft (carbon copy) (copy 2), undated (2 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages "Assassin Work Copy 5-3-76" (annotated and edited typescript and carbon copy), May 3, 1976 (2 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages "Gomez, Draper" (annotated and edited typescript and carbon copy), May 3, 1976-May 5, 1976 and undated
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages (annotated and edited typescript and carbon copy), May 3, 1976-May 5, 1976 and undated
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages (annotated and edited typescript and carbon copy), May 5, 1976 and undated
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages (annotated and edited typescript and carbon copy), May 5, 1976-May 12, 1976 and undated
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 9[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages "Assassin Work Sheets" (typescript and carbon copy, annotated and edited), May 3, 1976-May 6, 1976 and undated
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 10[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages "Assassin Work Sheets" (typescript and carbon copy, annotated and edited), May 3, 1976-May 6, 1976 and undated (2 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 10[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages (typescript and carbon copy), May 3, 1976-May 6, 1976 and undated
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 10[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages (typescript and carbon copy), May 4, 1976-May 6, 1976
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 10[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Draft pages (typescript and carbon copy, annotated and edited), May 3, 1976-May 12, 1976 and undated (3 folders)
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"]Box 10[/TD]
[TD="width: 9%, align: center"] [/TD]
[TD="width: 81%"]Development and pre-production materials, 1975-1976 (2 folders)


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[R.K. Locke]

Thanks for letting me know.

I found part of the relevant section from your book here:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iQlIA...fk&f=false

I hope you don't mind me posting it on the forum. If you do I will of course remove the link.


I also found this section of Welles' Wikipedia page interesting:


Goodwill ambassador[edit]

In late November 1941, Welles was appointed as a goodwill ambassador to Latin America by Nelson Rockefeller, U.S. Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and a principal stockholder in RKO Radio Pictures.[49]:244 The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs was established in August 1940 by order of the U.S. Council of National Defense, and operated with funds from both the government and the private sector.[49]:1011 By executive order July 30, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the OCIAA within the Office for Emergency Management of the Executive Office of the President, "to provide for the development of commercial and cultural relations between the American Republics and thereby increasing the solidarity of this hemisphere and furthering the spirit of cooperation between the Americas in the interest of hemisphere defense."[50]

The mission of the OCIAA was cultural diplomacy, promoting hemispheric solidarity and countering the growing influence of the Axis powers in Latin America. The OCIAA's Motion Picture Division played an important role in documenting history and shaping opinion toward the Allied nations, particularly after the U.S. entered World War II in December 1941. To support the war effort and for their own audience development throughout Latin America Hollywood studios partnered with the U.S. government on a nonprofit basis, making films and incorporating Latin American stars and content into their commercial releases.[49]:1011

The OCIAA's Motion Picture Division was led by John Hay Whitney, who was asked by the Brazilian government to produce a documentary of the annual Rio Carnival celebration taking place in early February 1942.[49]:4041 In a telegram December 20, 1941, Whitney wrote Welles, "Personally believe you would make great contribution to hemisphere solidarity with this project."[51]:65

Artists working in a variety of disciplines were sent to Latin America as goodwill ambassadors by the OCIAA, most on tours of two to four months. A select listing includes Misha Reznikoff and photojournalist Genevieve Naylor (October 1940May 1943); Bing Crosby (AugustOctober 1941); Walt Disney (AugustOctober 1941); Aaron Copland (AugustDecember 1941); George Balanchine and the American Ballet (1941); Rita Hayworth (1942); Grace Moore (1943); John Ford (1943) and Gregg Toland (1943). Welles was thoroughly briefed in Washington, D.C., immediately before his departure for Brazil, and film scholar Catherine L. Benamou, a specialist in Latin American affairs, finds it "not unlikely" that he was among the goodwill ambassadors who were asked to gather intelligence for the U.S. government in addition to their cultural duties. She concludes that Welles's acceptance of Whitney's request was "a logical and patently patriotic choice".[49]:245247

In addition to working on his ill-fated film project, It's All True, Welles was responsible for radio programs, lectures, interviews and informal talks as part of his OCIAA-sponsored cultural mission, which was a success.[52]:192 He spoke on topics ranging from Shakespeare to visual art to American theatre at gatherings of Brazil's elite, and his two intercontinental radio broadcasts in April 1942 were particularly intended to tell U.S. audiences that President Vargas was a partner with the Allies. Welles's ambassadorial mission would be extended to permit his travel to other nations including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Uraguay.[49]:247249, 328

As an emissary of the U.S. government, Welles received no salary.[49]:41, 328

"What's really and ironically true about It's All True," wrote associate producer Richard Wilson, "is that Welles was approached to make a non-commercial picture, then was bitterly reproached for making a non-commercial picture. Right here I'd like to make it a matter of record," Wilson continued:


Both RKO and Welles got into the project by trying to do their bit for the war effort. However: RKO, as a company responsible to stockholders, negotiated a private and tough agreement for the U.S. Government to pay it 300,000 dollars to undertake its bit. This speaks eloquently enough for its evaluation of the project as a non-commercial venture. I personally think that Orson's waiving any payment whatever for his work, and his giving up a lucrative weekly radio program, is even more eloquent. For a well-paid creative artist to work for over half a year for no remuneration is a most uncommon occurrence.[52]:189

Welles's own expectations for the film were modest, as he told biographer Barbara Leaming: "It's All True was not going to make any cinematic history, nor was it intended to. It was intended to be a perfectly honorable execution of my job as a goodwill ambassador, bringing entertainment to the Northern Hemisphere that showed them something about the Southern one."[18]:253

[Joseph McBride]

Thanks for posting about my WHAT EVER HAPPENED
TO ORSON WELLES?: A PORTRAIT OF AN INDEPENDENT
CAREER. BTW, about a third of that book is my firsthand
account of acting in and trying to finish THE OTHER
SIDE OF THE WIND. The New York Times now reports
it may be coming out. Let's hope. I've been waiting
44 years.

[R.K. Locke]

An interesting revelation:


http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB494/


FRANK MANKIEWICZ: SECRET INTERMEDIARY TO CUBA

Famous Political Figure Carried Messages from Kissinger to Castro

Mankiewicz Played Key Back-Channel Role in Secret 1970s Effort to Normalize U.S.-Cuban Relations

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 494
Posted November 24, 2014

Edited by Peter Kornbluh and Justin Anstett

For more information, contact:
peter.kornbluh@gmail.com or 202 / 374-7281

Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana
By William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh
(University of North Carolina Press, October 2014)


From left to right - Kirby Jones, Frank Mankiewicz, Fidel Castro. Photo courtesy Frank Mankiewicz.

Washington, DC, November 24, 2014 Frank Mankiewicz, the renowned political and media strategist and former president of National Public Radio, served as a "special channel" of communication between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Cuban commandante Fidel Castro in the mid 1970s, according to formerly classified documents posted today by the National Security Archive. When Mankiewicz died at age 90 on October 28, 2014, his obituaries highlighted his historic roles as Robert F. Kennedy's press secretary and George McGovern's presidential campaign strategist. But his missions as Kissinger's designated emissary to arrange talks with Castro in a top secret effort to normalize U.S.-Cuban relations received scant attention.

A phone call from Mankiewicz to Kissinger in April 1974 to brief the secretary of state on a forthcoming trip to Havana to interview Fidel Castro set in motion Washington's first serious back-channel diplomacy to restore normal relations with Cuba. Kissinger used the opportunity of Mankiewicz's trip in June to send a handwritten letter to the Cuban leader suggesting secret talks; when Mankiewicz returned, he carried a positive note from Castro to Kissinger, along with a box of Cohiba cigars from the Cuban leader to the Secretary of State.


Department of State, Action Memorandum, Secret /Nodis/ Eyes Only, The Mankiewicz Trip, January 20, 1975.

In September 1974, and again in late January 1975, Mankiewicz carried additional messages from Kissinger to Castro; he also shuttled back and forth to Cuba's UN mission in New York to secretly arrange the first in a series of furtive meetings between Kissinger's deputies and Fidel Castro's representatives a meeting which took place at La Guardia Airport on January 11, 1975.

"Frank Mankiewicz and I met today at La Guardia airport with Mr. Nestor Garcia, First Secretary of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations and Mankiewicz's basic contact, and [Cuban diplomat] Mr. Ramon Sanchez Parodi, who had been sent from Havana to New York for this meeting," Kissinger's deputy Lawrence Eagleburger reported in a "secret sensitive" memorandum of conversation on these first, exploratory talks. "After Mankiewicz made the necessary introductions, the four of us had coffee together."


From left to right - Frank Mankiewicz, Saul Landau, Fidel Castro, Kirby Jones during 1975 trip. Photo courtesy Kirby Jones.

"Frank was the ideal messenger for Kissinger," according to his friend and colleague, Kirby Jones, who accompanied Mankiewicz to Cuba and also served as a secret intermediary between 1974 and 1976. He had a "political and activist history that engendered confidence on the part of the Cubans" credentials that also provided a degree of "plausible denial" for a Republican administration in case the mission leaked to the press. As the secret diplomacy advanced, according to Jones, Mankiewicz's "trustworthiness increased and he proved to both sides that he could indeed be relied upon to do what both sides needed and asked for."

In January 1975, as Mankiewicz prepared to carry another Kissinger message to Castro, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America William D. Rogers, recommended that the administration draw on "his credentials as a Democrat and a liberal" to introduce the issue of human rights into the talks with the Cubans. Rogers believed that the Castro government was more likely to be responsive to a personal suggestion by Mankiewicz than a negotiating demand by the Ford Administration linking the issue of family visits from Miami Cuban-Americans to easing the trade embargo.

The secret Kissinger-Castro talks, and Mankiewcz's efforts to facilitate them, are detailed in a new book Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana by Archive senior analyst, Peter Kornbluh, and American University Professor William M. LeoGrande. According to the book, Mankiewicz helped set in motion "the most serious effort to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba since Washington broke ties with Havana in January 1961."


THE DOCUMENTS

Document 1: Department of State, Telcon, [Kissinger conversation with Frank Mankiewicz about seeing Castro], April 24, 1974

In this telephone conversation, Mankiewicz tells Kissinger that the "trip that I told you about is now on." When Kissinger understands that Mankiewicz is going to Cuba for a rare interview with Fidel Castro, he tells him: "Then I want to see you … I must see you before you do that." Six weeks later, when Mankiewicz travels to Havana, he carries a handwritten note from Kissinger to Castro.


Document 2: Department of State, Meeting Memorandum, "Meeting in New York with Cuban Representatives," Secret/Sensitive, January 11, 1975

In this memo to Kissinger, his top aide, Lawrence Eagleburger, provides a summary of the meeting at La Guardia Airport with the Cuban representatives, Nestor Garcia and Ramon Sanchez-Parodi. After Mankiewicz made the introductions, the four got coffee and expressed personal comments about normalizing relations. At the end of the memo, Eagleburger suggests that since Mankiewicz will soon be traveling again to Havana, "you will want to consider with [Assistant Secretary of State] Bill Rogers what additional message Frank might carry with him."


Document 3: Department of State, Memorandum, "Message to Castro," January 16, 1975

Eagleburger advises that "Mankiewicz will be departing for Cuba (via Jamaica) on Thursday, January 21" and asks if Kissinger wants him to carry a message to Castro. Eagleburger reports that Mankiewicz has suggested a list of "oral or written" statements that could be included in a message, reflecting his active participation in framing secret communications with the Cuban leader. Eagleburger concludes by recommending that "we should move the Cuban business out of the Mankiewicz channel" and into a Rogers and Eagleburger channel.


Document 4: Department of State, Action Memorandum, "The Mankiewicz Trip," Secret/Nodis/Eyes Only, January 20, 1975

Assistant Secretary of State Rogers suggests to Kissinger that they use Mankiewicz to push the Cubans on allowing members of the Cuban-American community in Miami to begin family travel to Cuba, as if it was Mankiewicz's personal idea. Given Cuba's sensitivity to U.S. demands on human rights, Rogers suggests that Mankiewicz's credentials as a Democrat and a liberal will help to emphasize to "the Cubans the importance of the human rights issue to the normalization process." In his talks with Castro, Rogers notes, Mankiewicz "could point out that such a move would be favorably received in this country."