Michael curtiz

Born in Budapest, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in December 1886, Manó Kertész Kaminer comes from a Jewish family. He used to tell that he came into the world on Christmas Eve (which is not clear enough), and other stories like that he left home early to join the circus, and that he was part of the Olympic fencing team. He actually had a very ordinary childhood and youth.

He studied at Markoszy University and the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, in his hometown, before beginning a career as an actor and director on the stage, first at the Hungarian National Theatre. He then spent a season working as an assistant director in Copenhagen, until he made his debut as a director in his country in 1912 with the silent drama Ma és holnap , which he signed under the pseudonym Kertész Mihály.

He continued shooting in Hungary for many years until the end of World War I in 1919, when after the defeat of the empire, his place of residence became the Hungarian Soviet Republic, under the influence of the USSR. Due to these radical and totalitarian political changes, the filmmaker was forced to flee, leaving Liliom unfinished, an adaptation of a play about a young man who works at a fair, which would later lead to versions by Frank Borzage and Fritz Lang .

He settled in Vienna, where he went to work for Sascha Film, a powerful production company with great success in Europe, for which he shot some blockbusters. The Biblical Sodom und Gomorrha and The Slave Queen stand out , about the romance of an Egyptian prince with a young Hebrew girl. The film was released with great success in the United States, where he captivated the legendary producer Jack Warner, who decided to offer the European filmmaker a substantial contract in 1928 so that he would cross the pond and go to work in Hollywood. He left behind several illegitimate children and even broke up with his partner, actress Lili Damita , with whom he had replaced his wife, fellow performer Lucy Doraine, in 1923.

Warner wanted Curtiz for another film based on the Old Testament, Noah’s Ark , which was to surpass Cecil B. DeMille ‘s The Ten Commandments (1923) , one of the great landmarks of silent cinema. The film had a generous budget that provided for 7,500 extras – including a very young John Wayne – who had to run in a gigantic set that was going to be flooded with 15,000 tons of water. The filming of the sequence ended in tragedy, as three people died and several were seriously injured.

To add insult to injury, while the editing phase was ending, the talking cinema began to triumph. Curtiz added a couple of dialogue sequences to hide it, but the film was a resounding –pun intended– failure. Despite everything, Warner kept the contract with the Hungarian, who shot numerous titles for him, the first with a discreet reception, such as The Murders in the Museum , Black Hell or Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing .

In 1935 the producer urged him to emulate the success of MGM with Mutiny on board by shooting a maritime adventure film along the same lines, entitled Captain Blood , an adaptation of a novel by the specialist in the genre Rafael Sabatini. Jack Warner imposed Michael Curtiz as the lead on Robert Donat , who had triumphed with The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) , but he resigned at the last moment. The director decided to bet heavily on a complete stranger who was neither more nor less than the new husband of his ex, Lili Damita, who had also moved to the United States. He was about a young Australian with potential who went by the name of Errol Flynn. Warner reluctantly agreed, because after all he had Flynn on the payroll and on the strength of the tests that had characterized him as the character.

Apparently the actor did not stop arguing with Curtiz. But Flynn was born into the adventure genre, and he had tremendous chemistry with the lead actress, the then-unknown Olivia de Havilland . The film was a huge success, earning six unsuccessful Oscar nominations, including one for Curtiz for Best Director (the first of five nominations he would garner throughout his career in that category, though he only won the last).

Thus, Warner forced Flyn and Curtiz to work together again, who dedicated the worst insults imaginable every time they saw each other ( Olivia de Havilland would also repeat with them often). Their next job together was The Charge of the Light Brigade , filming that was complicated because the hotel where the team members were staying caught fire, and they had to continue their work sleeping at night in tents. Despite its enormous spectacularity, the final sequence of the cavalry was controversial because of Flynn, who complained about the mistreatment of horses to an animal protection society that was in charge of organizing protests.

It seems that Flynn did not get along better with other filmmakers. He particularly infuriated him William Keighley , who started filming Robin of the Woods , also with De Havilland. When the director told him to shave off his goatee, the actor flew into a rage and demanded that Warner replace him. The bad part was when he found out that the studio had appointed Michael Curtiz in his place . “As soon as that Hungarian son of … enters the set, I’ll leave,” he even said, but it is clear that the star knew that deep down he was not doing badly under his orders and he stayed.

Despite Curtiz’s troubled relationship with Flynn, the duo made titles such as Dodge, Lawless City , The Private Life of Elizabeth and Essex -where Bette Davis was the star shiner- , Four’s a Crowd and Santa Fe Trail (also with De Havilland), or The Sea Hawk , Gold, Love and Blood , Dive Bomber and The Perfect Specimen (without the actress). For her part, Curtiz shot the odd title with de Havilland without Flynn, such as The Proud Rebel , The Adverse Knight and In Search of Gold .

They say that his Hungarian accent was terrible and that it was difficult to understand him in English. As an example, he once tried to flatter a woman by saying “darling, you stink very well.” Michael Curtiz had a reputation as a tyrannical director, to the point that he resented stopping to eat. “A glass of milk is enough”, he told his technicians and lengthened the shooting until exhaustion, demanding maximum performance from his collaborators. But he was a guy who knew what he wanted, and he had everything under control. Herbert Plews, his usual assistant director, came to see that during a shoot he perfectly remembered the position of the cameras, the spotlights and the actors in a scene that they were repeating, several weeks after the first take.

In addition, he was a man of enormous personality, who was not concerned with conventions and political correctness. When he was shooting This is the Army , he yelled during one take “bring in the black soldiers.” George Murphy, the lead actor, told him that the word ‘black’ had a racist connotation and that he should use ‘colored’. So the filmmaker restarted the take and said “bring in the black soldiers.”

The most important film of Michael Curtiz ‘s career was undoubtedly Casablanca , an adaptation of the play “Eveybody’s Comes to Rick” by Joan Alison and Murray Burnett, commissioned by his friend Hal B. Wallis by chance. Wallis had first thought of William Wyler , but he was not available. He thought it wasn’t going to be a big hit, but he still asked Curtiz to shoot it. The Studio initially announced Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan as the leads, but Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman were ultimately cast .

Filming was chaotic, especially since it started without the script being finished. Brothers Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein had their part done on time, but much of the script was written by Howard Koch , which was several weeks behind schedule. The three of them were never together in the same room, and they were also progressively making changes as the scenes were being filmed.

Howard Koch recounts that Ingrid Bergman asked him if his character had to love Humphrey Bogart ‘s character or her husband more. “I told him, ‘I don’t know…both equally.’ We didn’t have an ending, so I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Koch said. “The outcome of the movie was up in the air until the very end… I worked every day on the set… I think we never really figured it out… We thought of many possibilities and finally decided on the one in the movie.”

The film won three Oscars, in the categories of best film, adapted screenplay and direction, which finally meant recognition from the Academy for Curtiz. Previously, the director had competed for the statuette four times unsuccessfully, for Captain Blood , Four Daughters , Angels with Dirty Faces , and Yankee Dandy . In addition, his work From him Sons of Liberty , from 1939, where Claude Rains played a notable American revolutionary, had obtained the Oscar for best short film, in 1939.

Curtiz clearly stood out in adventure films, as he demonstrated with the aforementioned Errol Flynn films and titles such as The Sea Wolf , an adaptation of the novel by Jack London , with Edward G. Robinson . But the filmmaker knew how to move like a fish in water through the most diverse genres, such as the western ( Los comancheros ), the biopic ( The Trumpeter , The Story of Will Rogers , Francisco de Asís ), the romantic drama ( Flamingo Road , Alma en ordeal ), historical cinema (he was the author of the excellent Sinuhé, the Egyptian ), gangster cinema (Angels with Dirty Faces ), the musical ( The Jazz Singer , the Elvis Presley film The Neighborhood Against Me ) and even the occasional comedy ( We Are No Angels ).

The woman of his life was undoubtedly the actress Bess Meredyth , his third wife (after the aforementioned Lili Damita and Lucy Doraine), whom he married in 1929, and who, after giving birth to a son, would accompany him to the year of his death. Both maintained a great friendship with the producer Hall B. Wallis and his wife, the also actress Louise Fazenda . Although Michael Curtiz apparently was constantly unfaithful to Meredyth, and they briefly separated, she was an essential collaborator who helped him when he did not understand part of the script, because of his broken English, or to solve various problems during filming.

Compared to his contemporaries Howard Hawks or John Ford , idolized by the critics of Cahiers du Cinema with the author’s band, Michael Curtiz was less considered by them. But he was a master of planning, and in his filmography some themes such as suffering and death are repeated. In addition, he was capable of shooting realistic and coherent endings at a time when the law of the ‘happy ending’ prevailed in Hollywood, believable or not (remember the endings of Casablanca or They Died With Their Boots On ).

On April 10, 1962, Michael Curtiz died of cancer. After five decades active, the prolific filmmaker died ‘with his boots on’, as he left the excellent western The Comancheros , starring John Wayne, pending release.