page_title: Michael Curtiz
section_title: 1930s
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Curtiz / Career in the US / 1930s
caption_attribution_description: English: Candid photo of Edward G. Robinson and director Michael Curtiz discussing film Kid Galahad.
context_page_description: Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian-born American film director, recognized as one of the most prolific directors in history. He directed classic films from the silent era and numerous others during
  Hollywood's Golden Age, when the studio system was prevalent.
  Curtiz was already a well-known director in Europe when Warner Bros. invited him to Hollywood in 1926, when he was 39 years of age. He had already directed 64 films in Europe, and soon helped Warner Bros. become the fastest-growing movie studio. He directed 102 films during his Hollywood career, mostly at Warners, where he directed ten actors to Oscar nominations. James Cagney and Joan Crawford won their only Academy Awards under Curtiz's direction. He put Doris Day and John Garfield on screen for the first time, and he made stars of Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Bette Davis. He himself was nominated five times and won twice, once for Best Short Subject for Sons of Liberty and once as Best Director for Casablanca.
  Curtiz was among those who introduced to Hollywood a visual style using artistic lighting, extensive and fluid camera movement, high crane shots, and unusual camera angles.
context_section_description: In 1930, Curtiz directed Mammy (1930), Al Jolson's fourth film after being in Hollywood's first true talking picture, The Jazz Singer (1927). During the 1930s, Curtiz directed at least four films each year.
  Although a genre unusual for Warner Bros., the studio produced two horror films directed by Curtiz, Doctor X (1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), both in early Technicolor, with numerous atmospheric scenes filmed on the studio's back lot.
  Another breakthrough film was 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), starring little-known actors Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis in one of their earliest films. MGM head Louis B. Mayer saw the film and was impressed enough by Tracy's acting that he hired him on to MGM's roster of stars.
  Curtiz's American career did not really take off until 1935. In the early 1930s,  Warner Bros. was struggling to compete with the larger MGM, which was releasing costume dramas such as  Queen Christina (1933) with Greta Garbo, Treasure Island (1934) with Wallace Beery, and The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), they decided to take a chance and produce their own costume drama.
  Until then, it was a genre in which Warners' had assumed they could never succeed, owing to its higher production budgets, during the years of the Great Depression. However, in March 1935, Warners announced it would produce Captain Blood (1935), a swashbuckler action drama based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, and directed by Curtiz. It would star a then unknown extra, Errol Flynn, alongside the little-known Olivia de Havilland.
  The film was a major success with positive critical reviews. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and though not nominated, Curtiz received the second-highest number of votes for Best Director, solely from write-in votes. It also made stars of both Flynn and de Havilland, and it elevated Curtiz to being the studio's leading director.
  Curtiz continued the successful genre of adventure films starring Flynn  that included The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), a depiction of the British Light Brigade during the Crimean War. The film, another Oscar winner, was a greater success at the box-office than Captain Blood. It was followed by The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, co-directed with William Keighley whom Curtiz replaced), the most profitable that year, winning three Academy Awards and being nominated for Best Picture. It is in Rotten Tomatoes' list of Top 100 Movies.
  That being their third Curtiz film together, Flynn and de Havilland continued to star in other hugely successful films under his direction, including the true-life story The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), co-starring Bette Davis. Davis starred in a Curtiz film in most years during the 1930s. Because of Curtiz's high film productivity, Warner Bros. created a special unit for his pictures, which then allowed him to manage two film crews. One worked with him during actual filming, while the other prepared everything for the next picture.
  John Garfield was among Curtiz's discoveries, with his debut in Four Daughters (1938), followed by a co-starring role in its sequel, Four Wives (1939). Curtiz discovered Garfield, a stage actor, by accident, when he came across a discarded screen test he gave, and thought he was very good. Garfield had assumed he failed the screen test and was already heading back to New York in disgust. Curtiz then went to Kansas City to intercept the train, where he pulled Garfield off and brought him back to Hollywood. Garfield also later co-starred in Curtiz's The Sea Wolf (1941).
  In Four Daughters, Garfield co-starred with Claude Rains, who would star in 10 Curtiz movies over his career, with six of those during the 1930s. Garfield and Rains "were brilliant together in this unjustly neglected Curtiz classic," says biographer Patrick J. McGrath about Four Daughters. Garfield considered it his "obscure masterpiece."  Reviews praised his role: "Perhaps the greatest single occurrence having to do with Four Daughters on reading the critics appears to be the debut of John Garfield, a brilliant you
caption: Edward G. Robinson (l) with Curtiz, during filming of Kid Galahad (1937)
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