Academy Award–winning director Michael Curtiz (1886–1962)—whose best-known films include Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and White Christmas (1954)—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his unprecedented twenty-seven year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The director's staggering output of 180 films surpasses that of the legendary John Ford and exceeds the combined total of films directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and Howard Hawks.
In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures. He explores the director's little-known early life and career in his native Hungary, revealing how Curtiz shaped the earliest days of silent cinema in Europe before immigrating to the United States in 1926. In Hollywood, Curtiz earned a reputation for explosive tantrums, his difficulty with English, and disregard for the well-being of others. However, few directors elicited more memorable portrayals from their casts, and ten different actors delivered Oscar-nominated performances under his direction.
In addition to his study of the director's remarkable legacy, Rode investigates Curtiz's dramatic personal life, discussing his enduring creative partnership with his wife, screenwriter Bess Meredyth, as well as his numerous affairs and children born of his extramarital relationships. This meticulously researched biography provides a nuanced understanding of one of the most talented filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age.
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Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film
Academy Award–winning director Michael Curtiz (1886–1962)—whose best-known films include Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and White Christmas (1954)—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his unprecedented twenty-seven year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The director's staggering output of 180 films surpasses that of the legendary John Ford and exceeds the combined total of films directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and Howard Hawks.
In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures. He explores the director's little-known early life and career in his native Hungary, revealing how Curtiz shaped the earliest days of silent cinema in Europe before immigrating to the United States in 1926. In Hollywood, Curtiz earned a reputation for explosive tantrums, his difficulty with English, and disregard for the well-being of others. However, few directors elicited more memorable portrayals from their casts, and ten different actors delivered Oscar-nominated performances under his direction.
In addition to his study of the director's remarkable legacy, Rode investigates Curtiz's dramatic personal life, discussing his enduring creative partnership with his wife, screenwriter Bess Meredyth, as well as his numerous affairs and children born of his extramarital relationships. This meticulously researched biography provides a nuanced understanding of one of the most talented filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age.
Academy Award–winning director Michael Curtiz (1886–1962)—whose best-known films include Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and White Christmas (1954)—was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his unprecedented twenty-seven year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The director's staggering output of 180 films surpasses that of the legendary John Ford and exceeds the combined total of films directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and Howard Hawks.
In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures. He explores the director's little-known early life and career in his native Hungary, revealing how Curtiz shaped the earliest days of silent cinema in Europe before immigrating to the United States in 1926. In Hollywood, Curtiz earned a reputation for explosive tantrums, his difficulty with English, and disregard for the well-being of others. However, few directors elicited more memorable portrayals from their casts, and ten different actors delivered Oscar-nominated performances under his direction.
In addition to his study of the director's remarkable legacy, Rode investigates Curtiz's dramatic personal life, discussing his enduring creative partnership with his wife, screenwriter Bess Meredyth, as well as his numerous affairs and children born of his extramarital relationships. This meticulously researched biography provides a nuanced understanding of one of the most talented filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age.
Alan K. Rode is the author of Charles McGraw: Film Noir Tough Guy. A writer and film scholar, he is also the host and producer of the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival and director-treasurer of the Film Noir Foundation. He lives in Woodland Hills, California.
Table of Contents
1. Prologue 2. A River Runs through It 3. Actor to Director 4. Transylvanian Idyll 5. Phönix Rising 6. A Stirred-up Anthill 7. City of Film 8. Monumental-Filme 9. Exodus in Red Heels 10. A Family Business 11. Hungarian in the Promised Land 12. A Loving Collaboration 13. Hollywood's Great Deluge 14. General Foreman 15. Pre-Code in Synthetic Flesh 16. Regime Change 17. Home on the Range 18. The Dream Team 19. The Reason Why 20. Falling Fruit 21. Cash Cow 22. Reaching Their Majority 23. The Swash and the Buckler 24. The "Pinochle" of His Career 25. Fundamental Things 26. "Those fine patriotic citizens, the Warner Brothers" 27. Victory Garden 28. A Michael Curtiz Production 29. Vanished Dreams 30. Doomed Masterpiece 31. Nerve Ending 32. Only in Hollywood 33. Dégringolade 34. Out on His Shield 35. Afterword to the New Edition 36. Acknowledgements 37. Filmography 38. Notes 39. Bibliography 40. Index
"Alan K. Rode's intensely personal biography provides the reader with a complete, well-researched, comprehensive, and critical career study of a brilliant yet complicated artist. A wonderful read and an accurate source for future reference, Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film is thoroughly satisfying, highly intelligent, and a delicious, rich dessert for any serious lover of film and film history. Indulge." — Stephen Michael Shearer, author of Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life
"A superbly researched, highly compelling account of one of cinema's most gifted and underrated directors, Rode provides a vivid description of Curtiz's personality and working methods. It is difficult if not impossible to imagine a more complete account of his life." — Steven C. Smith, author of A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann
"Finally! In Alan K. Rode's deeply researched and compelling biography, Michael Curtiz gets long overdue recognition as one of the cinema's greatest storytellers. Casablanca is merely the most renowned of the man's many masterpieces, and Rode does the director justice by leaving no stone unturned in his examination of Curtiz's life and career. This book is a significant addition, and at times a valuable corrective, to existing scholarship on Hollywood, the studio system, and the auteur theory. Bravo!" — Eddie Muller, author and Turner Classic Movies host
Stephen Michael Shearer
"Alan K. Rode's intensely personal biography provides the reader with a complete, well-researched, comprehensive, and critical career study of a brilliant yet complicated artist. A wonderful read and an accurate source for future reference, Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film is thoroughly satisfying, highly intelligent, and a delicious, rich dessert for any serious lover of film and film history. Indulge."
Eddie Muller
"Finally! In Alan K. Rode's deeply researched and compelling biography, Michael Curtiz gets long overdue recognition as one of the cinema's greatest storytellers. Casablanca is merely the most renowned of the man's many masterpieces, and Rode does the director justice by leaving no stone unturned in his examination of Curtiz's life and career. This book is a significant addition, and at times a valuable corrective, to existing scholarship on Hollywood, the studio system, and the auteur theory. Bravo!"
Steven C. Smith
"A superbly researched, highly compelling account of one of cinema's most gifted and underrated directors, Rode provides a vivid description of Curtiz's personality and working methods. It is difficult if not impossible to imagine a more complete account of his life."
