Michael Curtiz

Born Mihály Kertész in 1886 in Budapest into a family of Hungarian Jews, died in 1962 in Hollywood. Michael studied at Budapest’s academy of theater and debuted as a film actor and director in Today and Tomorrow (1912). He made about 30 films in Hungary, and later worked in Austria and Germany on huge spectacles such as Sodom and Gomorrah. Curtiz came to the USA in 1926 and made over 100 films of various genres. The best of those, including Casablanca, is a series of films with Errol Flynn, such as the ganster drama Angels with Dirty Faces, the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, the noir Mildred Pierce, which garnered Joan Crawford an Oscar. Curtiz made his last film, The Comancheros, a western starring John Wayne, in 1961.

Selected filmography

1912 Dziś i jutro / Ma és hol nap / Today and Tomorrow

1922 Sodoma i Gomora / Sodom und Gomorrah

1926 Trzeci stopień / The Third Degree

1935 Kapitan Blood / Captain Blood

1936 Szarża lekkiej brygady / The Charge of the Light Brigade

1938 Aniołowie o brudnych twarzach / Angels with Dirty Faces

1942 Yankee Doodle Dandy

1942 Casablanca

1945 Mildred Pierce

1961 W kraju Komanczów / The Comancheros