Michael Curtiz (born Manó Kaminer; December 24, 1888 – April 10, 1962) was one of the most prominent, prolific and successful directors of The Golden Age of Hollywood.
Born Kertész Kaminer Manó in Hungary, Curtiz grew up in Budapest, studying at the Royal Academy of Theater and Art and working as an actor and a theatre director before helming his first feature in 1912. He'd already made dozens of films in Hungary and Austria by the time Jack Warner signed him and brought him to Hollywood to work for Warner Bros. in 1926, and he became the studio's top director within a few years of his arrival.
Curtiz blossomed in the studio era, showing a knack for handling any genre with skill. Due to the fact that he wasn't a screenwriter and eschewed showy camera tricks, he's never been given the auteur status bestowed upon such contemporaries as Frank Capra, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, or Orson Welles, but for over two decades Warner Bros. entrusted him with their best scripts, and he never screwed them up. On sets, Curtiz was known as a workaholic and a demanding perfectionist; James Cagney once said about him, "Mike was a pompous bastard who didn't know how to treat actors, but he sure as hell knew how to treat a camera."
Curtiz's career foundered after his departure from Warner in 1954, but he continued to direct films as a freelancer until shortly before his death from cancer at age 75.
Selected Filmography:
- Bright Lights (1930)
- Doctor X (1932)
- 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)
- Female (1933)
- Goodbye Again (1933)
- The Kennel Murder Case (1933)
- Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
- Private Detective 62 (1933)
- Jimmy the Gent (1934)
- Mandalay (1934)
- Captain Blood (1935)
- The Case of the Curious Bride (1935)
- The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
- The Walking Dead (1936)
- Kid Galahad (1937)
- The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) (Credited as co-director with William Keighley, though the vast majority of the finished film was directed solely by Curtiz, after the studio fired Keighley)
- Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
- Four Daughters (1938)
- Four's a Crowd (1938)
- Gold Is Where You Find It (1938)
- Dodge City (1939)
- Sons of Liberty (1939)
- The Sea Hawk (1940)
- Virginia City (1940)
- Dive Bomber (1941)
- The Sea Wolf (1941)
- Captains of the Clouds (1942)
- Casablanca (1942) (Considered one of the Greatest Films of All Time. Appropriately, he earned the Academy Award for Best Director for this.)
- Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
- Mission to Moscow (1943)
- This Is The Army (1943)
- Passage to Marseille (1944)
- Mildred Pierce (1945)
- Night and Day (1946)
- Life with Father (1947)
- The Unsuspected (1947)
- White Christmas (1954)
- The Egyptian (1954)
- We're No Angels (1955)
- King Creole (1958)
- A Breath Of Scandal (1960)
- The Comancheros (1961) (His last film—co-directed by an uncredited John Wayne when Curtiz got severely ill. Curtiz died shortly after.)
