When we think of the great directors of the classic cinema, certain names come to mind. Frank Capra, certainly. Probably Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, John Ford, and Ingmar Bergman. If we expand into musicals, Stanley Donen and Busby Berkeley are common names. But there's one director who has given American cinema some of its best films, and given American culture some of its best, most defining moments, but still never seems to get his name on those ?best known, best loved? lists. That director is Michael Curtiz, one of the most important and most overlooked directors of the 20th century.



Michael Curtiz was born Man? Kert'sz Kaminer in Austria-Hungary in 1886. He participated in Hungarian theater and studied at the Royal Academy of Theater and Art in Budapest. He served in the Hungarian army in World War I, then directed films inVienna until summer of 1926, when he came to the United States.

Curtiz had a long career in film, but his golden era was the mid 1930's to the mid 1950's, specifically 1938, when he made Four Daughters and Angels With Dirty Faces, to 1954-55, when he made White Christmas and We're No Angels. Of all the years he spent in film, his best year was 1942, when he released Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy, both of which were nominated for Oscars.

Curtiz was not a well-liked director; he worked extremely long hours and expected his actors to do the same. He resented it when they insisted on stopping work to take lunch breaks. His Hungarian accent was so thick he could often not be understood, and he would frequently yell at his cast and crew, but they couldn't understand what he was saying. He is said to have shouted at an assistant, ?The next time I want an idiot to do this, I'll do it myself!? The most famous of these legends may be the time when he demanded a poodle on the set, and sent the crew scrambling to find such a dog. Once they found one and brought it to Curtiz, they discovered that what he had been requesting was not a poodle, but a puddle of water, on the stage.

Nevertheless, he was nominated for five Academy Awards for Best Director for the films Captain Blood, Four Daughters, Angels With Dirty Faces, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and Casablanca. He won the award for Casablanca in 1942 He also directed ten different actors in nomination-winning performances. These actors were Paul Muni, John Garfield, James Cagney, Walter Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden and William Powell.

Curtiz endured personal tragedy during World War II, when his sister's family was captured and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where her husband and three children perished. He was an active supporter of and donor to the European Film Fund, which helped refugee families in Europe relocate to the United States. He died of cancer on April 10, 1962.