Background and career
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, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (both 1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), The Professionals (1966), In Cold Blood (1967) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977). He is also known for writing the films noir The Killers (1946), Brute Force (1947), and Key Largo (1948). Brooks was an eight-time Academy Award nominee, three for Best Director and five for Best Adapted Screenplay, winning once for the latter for Elmer Gantry. He was also a two-time Golden Globe, a six-time Directors Guild of America Award, and a BAFTA Award nominee. For his contributions to the film industry, Brooks has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Brooks was born Reuben Sax in Philadelphia to Russian Jewish immigrants Hyman and Esther Sax. His parents were married teenagers when they immigrated to the US in 1908. They found employment in Philadelphia's textile and clothing industry. Reuben, their only child, was born in 1912. He attended public schools Joseph Leidy Elementary, 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.
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. In 1944 he divorced his wife, then known in films as Jean Brooks. Later he said he had been a self-centered husband and unsuitable for what she needed. His book was published in 1945 to favorable reviews. It was adapted as the film Crossfire (1947) with the homosexual element removed. It was the first major Hollywood film to deal with anti-Semitism, receiving an Oscar nomination. The novel drew the attention of independent producer Mark Hellinger, who hired Brooks as a screenwriter after he left the Marines. Working for Hellinger brought Brooks back to the film industry and led to a long friendship with actor Humphrey Bogart, a close friend of the producer. Brooks provided an uncredited screen story for The Killers (1946), which introduced actor Burt Lancaster. He wrote the scripts for two other Hellinger films, notably Brute Force (1947), also starring Lancaster. After Hellinger died suddenly in 1947, Brooks wrote screenplays for three Warner Brothers films, including Key Largo (1948), starring Bogart and wife Lauren Bacall and directed and co-written by John Huston, another Brooks mentor. Huston and Brooks had both worked together previously in the uncredited rewrite for The Killers, and Huston would be the only co-writer Brooks ever had. While filming Key Largo, Huston allowed Brooks to be on the Key Largo set during shooting, so that he could learn more about directing a Hollywood film. Brooks wrote two more novels shortly after the war, The Boiling Point (1948) and The Producer (1951), a thinly disguised portrait of Mark Hellinger. It may also have contained autobiographical elements about Brooks. In 1946 he married again, to Harriette Levin, who had no apparent connection to the film industry. Their marriage lasted until 1957, when she sought a default divorce.
Success as a screenwriter with Hellinger and Warner Brothers led Brooks to a contract with MGM and the promise of a chance to direct. He wrote two screenplays for the studio before he was given the opportunity. His first film as writer and director, Crisis (1950), starred Cary Grant as a brain surgeon forced to save the life of a South American dictator, played by José Ferrer. His second film, The Light Touch (1951), an art-theft caper film starring Stewart Granger, was shot in Italy. Brooks recounted useful advice he received just before his directorial debut from cinematographer Karl Freund while speaking at the American Film Institute. Freund gave Brooks reels of 16mm film, calling them "Lesson Number One." When Brooks watched the reels at home, he saw that they were pornography. The next day, Freund explained: "I produced them. My pictures, 1922. Many times you will be wondering, do you put the camera here, or up here, or down here? Maybe you make the scene a little bigger, or a little smaller. Lesson Number One. Get to the fucking point." 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.
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.
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.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
