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Michael Curtiz
Life Time
24 December 1886 - 10 April 1962
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Michael Curtitz (his real name is Mihai Kertez) was born on December 24, 1888 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, to a wealthy Jewish family. His father was an architect and his mother sang at the opera. On the opera stage at the age of eleven, he made his acting debut in a production with his mother. At the age of 17, he ran away from home with a stray circus, a year later he entered the theater stage, later became a director. Kertesh received his professional education at the Royal Academy of Theatre
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Michael Curtitz (his real name is Mihai Kertez) was born on December 24, 1888 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, to a wealthy Jewish family. His father was an architect and his mother sang at the opera. On the opera stage at the age of eleven, he made his acting debut in a production with his mother. At the age of 17, he ran away from home with a stray circus, a year later he entered the theater stage, later became a director. Kertesh received his professional education at the Royal Academy of Theatre and Art. From 1912 he played in films, making his debut in the first Hungarian feature film. He became a film director in 1914, having learned the achievements of cinema in Holland and served on his return in the army. Until 1919, he produced about 30 films, and after the Hungarian Revolution, he emigrated and worked in Germany, Sweden, France and Austria and made 21 films in seven years. In 1926, the director received an invitation from Jack Warner - American film moguls were particularly impressed by the epic productions of Sodom and Gomorrah (1922) and The Slave Queen (1924) - and until 1953 he shot at the Warner Brothers studio. Michael Curtitz successfully staged films of various genres, on his account - classic thrillers "Doctor X" (1932) and "The Secret of the Wax Museum" (1933), dramas "20,000 years in Sing Sing" (1933) and "Woman" (1933), detective "Murder on the Psarna" (1933), film adaptation of "Sea Wolf" (1941). Since 1935, the director has directed numerous adventure films with Errol Flynn, including Captain Blood (1935), Attack of the Light Cavalry Brigade (1936), and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). In the history of cinema, Michael Curtitz also entered the famous melodrama "Casablanca", staged in 1942 and brought him an Oscar for directing. The heyday of the director's work fell precisely on the 1930s-1940s - among his subsequent notable films - the "black film" Mildred Pierce (1945), the musical "Night and Day" (1946), the comedy "Life with Father" (1947). With the collapse of the Hollywood studio system in the 1950s, Michael Curtitz’s career went into decline. The director died on April 10, 1962, and his last film was the Western Comancheros (1961) with John Wayne.