Man? Kert?sz Kaminer
Sign | Capricorn |
Born | Dec 24, 1886 Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) |
Died | Apr 10, 1962 Hollywood, CA |
Age | Died at 75 |
Final Resting PlaceForest Lawn (Glendale) |
Michael Curtiz | |
Job | Director * Producer * Actor * Writer |
Years active | 1912-61 |
Top Roles | Himself, Cameo Appearance, Hans Fuellenberg, Friedrich's college pal, , Himself, Arisztid |
Top Genres | Drama, Romance, Silent Films, Comedy, Crime, Musical |
Top Topics | Book-Based, Romance (Drama), Musicians |
Top Collaborators | Errol Flynn, Alan Hale Sr., Olivia de Havilland, Harry Cording |
Shares birthday with | Ava Gardner, Ruth Chatterton, Jill Bennett see more.. |
Michael Curtiz Overview:
Legendary director, Michael Curtiz, was born Man? Kert?sz Kaminer on Dec 24, 1886 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary). Curtiz died at the age of 75 on Apr 10, 1962 in Hollywood, CA and was laid to rest in Forest Lawn (Glendale) Cemetery in Glendale, CA.
MINI BIO:
Despite never mastering the English language, Michael Curtiz became one of the finest and most reliable directors of Hollywood's golden years. Although something of an autocrat on set, not greatly liked by most actors and technicians, Curtiz extracted performances from his stars that have left some of the most indelible impressions on our minds from the 1930s and 1940s: Flynn and Rathbone duelling it out against vast shadows on the castle walls in The Adventures of Robin Hood; a doomed Spencer Tracy saying goodbye to Bette Davis at the end of 20,000 Years in Sing Sing; Cagney going to the chair a coward in Angels with Dirty Faces; Joan Crawford's great liquid eyes suffering their way to an Oscar in Mildred Pierce; Bogart and Bergman giving each other up in Casablanca (the film for which Curtiz won his only Oscar).
Curtiz was already a veteran of dozens of films in Hungary, Denmark, Germany and Austria before studio boss Jack Warner saw one of his Austrian films and brought him to Hollywood and the Warner Brothers studio. At first, inevitably the darker side of Curtiz's Magyar-Germanic flair was expressed in horror films. But he soon proved adept at all genres popular at the studio and his gift for orchestrating crowd scenes was never put to better use than in his films with Errol Flynn, which began properly with Captain Blood. The action scenes here and in subsequent Flynn-Curtiz films involve hundreds of men fighting on screen at once; no other big-scale action sequences have ever matched them. The contrasting nature of these two men regrettably split the partnership in 1941. Curtiz remained at his peak as a director until the end of the 1940s.
(Source: available at Amazon Quinlan's Film Directors).HONORS and AWARDS:
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Michael Curtiz was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning one for Best Director for Casablanca in 1943.
Academy Awards
Year | Award | Film name | Role | Result |
1935 | Best Director | Captain Blood (1935) | N/A | Nominated |
1938 | Best Director | Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) | N/A | Nominated |
1942 | Best Director | Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) | N/A | Nominated |
1943 | Best Director | Casablanca (1942) | N/A | Won |
He was honored with one star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the category of Motion Pictures.
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