Michael Curtiz
actor, director, writer
- Birth name:
- Manó Kaminer
- Born:
- 1886-12-24, Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]
- Died:
- 1962-04-10, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, writer
Biography
Michael Curtiz stepped in front of a Hungarian camera as an actor in 1912, slipped behind it the same year, and never looked back. The Great War could not derail him; he simply relocated to Vienna and Berlin, cranking out silents across Europe until the mid-1920s. In 1926 he crossed the Atlantic, signed with Warner Bros., and turned the studio backlot into his personal playground for the next quarter-century. Swashbucklers, gangster flicks, wartime romances, women’s weepies—he stitched them all together at breakneck speed. Two of those bolts of celluloid—Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945)—hardened into legend. After leaving the Warner fold in the 1950s the alchemy faltered, yet Curtiz kept shooting until 1961; he died twelve months later, aged 74, with more than a hundred features to his credit and a passport worn thin by continents and dreams.
