Biography for
Richard Brooks (I) More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

18 May 1912, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Date of Death

11 March 1992, Beverly Hills, California, USA (congestive heart failure)

Birth Name

Ruben Sax

Height

6' 3" (1.91 m)

Mini Biography

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 Philadephia HS, then from Philadelphia's Temple University, and worked 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.

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.

Richard Brooks died of a heart failure on March 11, 1992, in Beverly Hills, California, and was laid to rest in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6422 Hollywood Blvd., for his contribution to the art of motion picture.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Steve Shelokhonov

Spouse

Jean Simmons	(1 November 1960 - 1977) (divorced) 1 child
Jean Brooks	(1941 - 1944) (divorced)

Trivia

Graduate of West Philadelphia HS and Temple University.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 167-172. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Directed 10 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Lee J. Cobb, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Burt Lancaster, Shirley Jones, Ed Begley, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight, Jean Simmons and Tuesday Weld. Lancaster, Jones, and Begley won Oscars for their performances in one of Brooks' movies.

Daughter, with Jean Simmons, is Kate Brooks.

Ex-stepfather of Tracy Granger.

As of 2007, he is one of six directors who has directed his wife to a Best Actress Oscar nomination (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) & 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 (Pote tin Kyriaki (1960)), but they weren't married yet at the time of the nomination.

Was a close friend of writer/director Samuel Fuller, who knew him from the days when they were both reporters in New York.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 3, 1991-1993, pages 73-75. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001.

Personal Quotes

"First comes the word, then comes all the rest."

Salary

Any Number Can Play (1949)

$29,107

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