Biography of Michael Curtiz

Michael Curtiz was born Mano Kertesz Kaminer in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary). He fought in the Hungarian army in World War I. He started making films in his native Austria and then, later, in Germany. His first directing credit is on the 1912 film Today and Tomorrow. He is credited as Kertesz Mihaly or Mihaly Kertesz on all the films he made through 1919. By the early 1920s, Curtiz was making films in other European countries as well. He moved to the United States in 1926 and was quickly swept up by the studio system, specifically Warner Brothers. He adopted the first name "Michael" and was commonly known as "Mike." Aljean Harmetz, the famous Hollywood journalist, wrote of him, "He...shed Mihaly as easily and quickly as he had shed Hungary for Austria and German Expressionism for Hollywood eclecticism."

Curtiz's Hollywood career was long and varied. He made Casablanca in 1942 at the height of his popularity. Between 1930 and 1940, Curtiz made 45 films, all with sound, across a variety of genres. He was one of Warner Brothers' favorite directors, likely because he finished his movies on time, within budget, and his films were almost always successful at the box office. Curtiz was earning "$3,600 a week in February 1942, [and] had more power than most studio directors, but he was still assigned his stars and many of his supporting players," according to Harmetz.

Curtiz's most celebrated films are Casablanca and Mildred Pierce (1945), the Academy Award-winning adaptation of James M. Cain's novel starring Joan Crawford. During his career, Michael Curtiz directed 10 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Paul Muni, John Garfield, James Cagney, Walter Hudson, Humphrey Bogart, Claude Raines, Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden, and William Powell. He made 12 films with Errol Flynn until they had a falling-out in 1947 during pre-production of The Adventures of Don Juan. Curtiz made 8 films with Humphrey Bogart, including Casablanca. Curtiz himself was nominated for 5 Academy Awards between 1935 and 1943, when he finally won a Best Director Oscar for his work on Casablanca.

Michael Curtiz and Hal Wallis, the producer of Casablanca, had a longstanding friendship. They met in 1926 when Mihaly Kertesz arrived in Los Angeles and Hal Wallis was the studio publicity representative that met him at the train station. They shared a great mutual respect and Curtiz always gave Hal Wallis a lot of credit for major creative decisions that shaped Casablanca. Meanwhile, Curtiz was not Wallis' first choice to direct Casablanca. He initially offered the film to William Wyler, who was unavailable, and so Wallis turned to his old friend, the dependable hit-maker Michael Curtiz.

Curtiz enjoyed making films, riding horses, and the company of women. He was married three times; first to Lucy Doraine, an Austrian actress he had worked with and abandoned. He was married to Lili Damita in 1925; they divorced in 1926. In 1929, Curtiz married a whip-smart screenwriter named Bess Meredyth, and formally adopted Meredyth's son, John Lucas. Meredyth often provided her husband with on-set advice. Curtiz's crewmembers described situations where the director would leave the set in the middle of the scene to call his wife with a question. However, despite their professional compatibility, their marriage was terribly unhappy. Bess Meredyth was depressed and eventually stopped working and was confined to her bed.

On set, Curtiz had a notoriously bad temper. Screenwriter Philip Dunne described him as a bully. He would fire people on a whim and treated his actresses so terribly that some stars, like Bette Davis, refused to work with him. However, there is not much evidence of Curtiz's explosive anger aimed at the stars of Casablanca (although he certainly terrorized the rest of the cast and crew). Ingrid Bergman claimed Casablanca was an enjoyable experience and that she learned a lot from Curtiz over the course of the production. Even his great friend Hal Wallis often described Michael Curtiz as difficult, but stressed that Curtiz had the power to create cinematic magic.

Michael Curtiz was known for being technically proficient and knew how to enhance a story by utilizing every facet of his medium. When "talking pictures" first came to Hollywood, cameras had to be stationary because they were encased in soundproof booths that restricted movement. Even then, Curtiz would invent ways of moving actors around to simulate the sensation of camera movement. John Lucas, who worked with his stepfather on a few films, says, "The one great thing I learned from him was that any camera movement must be motivated, that the camera couldn't just move for the sake of showing off."

Curtiz worked well within the studio system, where he could be assigned to new films one after the other and powerful producers like Hal Wallis could help him harness his creative vision. However, the studio system was effectively dismantled after the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Paramount Pictures (1948) forced the end of vertical integration. In the 1950s, Curtiz started directing films for studios other than Warner Brothers, and the quality of his work declined considerably.

He made his last film in 1961 and died of cancer a year later, with more than 150 films to his name.