The Casablanca Man

The Cinema of Michael Curtiz

Dr James C Robertson, James Robertson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415115773
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136158513
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Michael Curtiz (1888-1962) was without doubt one of the most important directors in film history, yet he has never been granted his deserved recognition and no full-scale work on him has previously been published. The Casablanca Man surveys Curtiz' unequalled mastery over a variety of genres which included biography, comedy, horror, melodrama, musicals, swashbucklers and westerns, and looks at his relationship with the Hollywood studio moguls on the basis of unprecedented archive research at Warner Brothers. Concentrating on Curtiz' best-known films - Casablanca, Angels With Dirty Faces, Mildred Pearce and Captain Blood among them - Robertson explores Curtiz' practical creative struggles and his friendships and rivalries with other film celebrities including Errol Flynn, Bette Davis and James Cagney, and his discovery of future stars.
Casablanca Man is the first comprehensive critical exploration of Curtiz' entire career and, linking his European work and his subsequent American work into a coherent whole, Robertson firmly re-establishes Curtiz' true standing in the history of cinema.

1

EUROPE, 1888 to 1926

Nothing definite is known about Michael Curtiz’s early life except that he was born as Mihaly Kertesz in Hungary during the late nineteenth century. All other supposed data ultimately derive, in one form or another, from Curtiz himself who is unreliable since he gave out different versions at different times. For example, in 1929 his father was an architect,¹ whereas in 1947 he had become an impoverished carpenter.² In other respects Curtiz’s 1929 biography, as issued by Warner Brothers publicity department, contains several now demonstrable glaring inaccuracies, while two 1947 press interviews he gave are inconsistent in that one claimed his family was in Vienna when he was 10 years old,³ and the other that he attended high school and university in Hungary before going to Vienna.⁴ The totality of the evidence is complex and the whole truth will probably never emerge beyond all doubt, but the greatest likelihood is that he was born in Budapest on or about 24 December 1888 to upper middle-class Jewish parents, and that he attended high school, university and drama academy before making his Budapest acting début in 1910. He might also have left home for a short time in 1906 or thereabouts to become a travelling circus member.⁵

From 1910 to 1912 Curtiz, whose mother was perhaps a concert singer, acted in and possibly directed plays before he turned his attention to filmmaking. At that time Hungary possessed no established film industry, but Budapest’s newly emerged thriving cultural life was centred upon cafés where many Jews, comprising one-quarter of the city population, were deeply involved in creative activity. Actors and theatre critics frequented such cafés which showed films, and Curtiz probably first came into contact with film in this way and naturally gravitated towards films, as many actors did, either to earn extra money or to compensate for an inability to obtain good stage parts.⁶ In 1910 the only Hungarian film company was Projectograph, founded in 1898, but it had merely distributed foreign fiction films and produced short education films and newsreels for showing in Hungary until 1912 when the threat of competition appeared from new Hungarian film companies preparing to make feature films. This prompted Projectograph to film Today and Tomorrow,⁷ the first Hungarian feature, in which Curtiz starred. He possibly directed it as well, for thirty-five years later he plausibly maintained that when he arrived for the film, he found that Projectograph had not been able to afford a director and he himself took over as director from the cameraman on the basis of his stage experience.⁸ After directing two or three more feature films he went to Copenhagen in 1913 to learn as much as possible about film-making at the Nordisk company, then the most important in Europe, with which Projectograph had close links.⁹

During his six-month stay at Nordisk, Curtiz changed his name to Michael Courtice, was taught the latest directing and editing techniques, starred in August Blom’s Atlantis, and possibly directed another film, now unknown. Early in 1914 he returned to Budapest and directed several more films in a freelance capacity – alternating between the Projectograph, Uher and Kinoriport companies – before the First World War broke out. One of his pre-war Kinoriport films, Bank ban (a proper name), was Curtiz’s first major commercial success and the first Hungarian film to be shot on location. When war erupted, Curtiz evidently joined the Austro-Hungarian army as an officer, but his military service ended in 1915 when he was apparently wounded seriously enough to be unable to fight again and was released to make documentary films to bolster Red Cross funds (another 1929 unsubstantiated Curtiz claim). However, before 1915 was out he was directing in Budapest once more and by the end of 1916 he had directed many more features and become a major figure in the Hungarian film world. Most of his films had been financially successful, with the result that when a new company, Phoenix, was formed from Projectograph at the beginning of 1917, he became its head and in this producer–director position considerably increased his output over the next two years. In this period he registered several large box-office draws.

During 1919 political events halted his thus far spectacular career progress. In November 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its German ally had lost the war, and in the process Hungarian internal stability had given way to turmoil. In March 1919 there came to power a Communist government which lasted barely five months, but this was long enough for the Hungarian film industry to be nationalized in April. Undoubtedly Curtiz fled from the country during 1919 when he was filming what would have been the first version of Ferenc Molnar’s play, Liliom, but it is uncertain whether he left to escape Communist domination of his studio or collaborated with the Communists, perhaps unwillingly, and then feared anti-Communist retribution after the Communist government fell.

Whatever the reason for his flight from Hungary, Vienna was his natural destination because it was the pre-war Austro-Hungarian Empire’s acknowledged cultural centre and was still exerting a powerful hold upon the central European creative mind. Moreover, Austria was more politically stable than Hungary and had no major film industry. Although the first Austrian feature film had been made in 1912, fewer than a hundred features had appeared by the end of the war and almost half of these had been made during 1918 itself. In 1919 a dramatic rise in Austrian feature-film output was taking place, and in Vienna Curtiz contacted Count Alexander Kolowrat, a most remarkable wealthy nobleman nicknamed Sascha, to whose pioneering endeavours the burgeoning Austrian film industry had owed much. Between 1914 and 1916 Kolowrat had had built a large film studio in Vienna which had produced more than twenty films by the end of the war. Under his leadership the Sascha company had become dominant within the Austrian film industry which he intended to make the most important in Europe. Accordingly he hired Curtiz, a decision which led to a fruitful collaboration between them until mid–1926 when Kolowrat was dying of the cancer which eventually killed him in December 1927. Reverting in Vienna to the name of Michael Courtice, Curtiz by the end of 1920 had established himself as the Sascha studio’s leading director despite his then rudimentary knowledge of German.¹⁰

From 1921 until his move to Hollywood Curtiz directed close to a score of films for Sascha, and in 1922–3 he broke new ground for the Austrian film industry with Sodom and Gomorrah. This two-part Biblical epic was the first Austrian film to be shot on location, with spectacular sets influenced by the Babylonian sequences in D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance. In 1924 Curtiz directed his best Austrian feature, The Slave Queen, known as Moon of Israel in Britain and the United States, the first film that the Sascha studio co-produced with a foreign company, Stoll-Phoebus Picture Productions of London. A virtual remake of Cecil B. de Mille’s 1923 The Ten Commandments, its epic nature rendered it ideal for a repeat performance of the location shooting which had characterized Sodom and Gomorrah. Based upon the novel by Sir H. Rider Haggard who wrote the sub-titles for the British version, The Slave Queen traces the romance between heir to the ancient Egyptian throne Adelqui Millar and Jewish slave girl Maria Corda. However, the screenplay of Ladislaus (Laszlo) Vadja, with whom Curtiz had worked in Hungary, and Curtiz’s own direction subordinated the plot to magnificent spectacle. The highlight is the Jews’ flight across the Red Sea, a sequence involving 5,000 extras and splendid special effects created by Kolowrat personally. The film opened in Vienna on 24 October 1924 and a shortened version in London less than a month later.¹¹ One British review concluded that the film’s high quality was due mainly to Curtiz.¹²

Initially The Slave Queen did not win its director recognition, still less acclaim, in the English-speaking world because it was not released in the United States where Paramount bought the American rights and then kept it out of circulation in case it outshone The Ten Commandments. But The Slave Queen’s success in London gave rise to further Sascha international productions which for Curtiz meant trips to Paris, Copenhagen and Berlin for scenes in his last three Austrian films. However, the president of Warner Brothers, Harry M. Warner, had travelled to Europe in November 1925 in search of new talent, and he met Curtiz in Paris when the latter was directing The Plaything of Paris (Red Heels in the United States). Agreement in principle for Curtiz to join Warners was apparently reached on the spot, but as a follow-up Warner instructed brother Jack L. Warner to find a print of The Slave Queen for viewing. Jack unearthed the Paramount print, and when the two brothers saw it after Harry’s return to the United States, they were sufficiently impressed in March 1926 to offer Curtiz a contract by cable, which he accepted immediately.¹³

The contract was finalized on 10 May in Berlin where Curtiz was filming The Golden Butterfly. He was to be ready to begin work in Hollywood by 1 June, and Warners would pay his travelling expenses from Berlin. His yearly salary was 15,600 dollars, Warners receiving annual options on his services until June 1930. If these were exercised, the salary would rise to 21,600 dollars in June 1927, 28,800 dollars in June 1928, and 36,000 dollars in June 1929. In return Curtiz was obliged to accept whatever films he was assigned to, with no annual maximum limit, and to enter the United States in a legal form enabling him to remain there permanently.

Curtiz seems to have taken this contract none too seriously at the time, for he had also just entered into other contractual commitments which in February 1927 cost Warners 3,100 dollars to eliminate.¹⁴ He also entered the United States on a temporary, six-month visa which caused Warners headaches with the American immigration authorities of progressively increasing difficulty until 1930. He arrived in New York on 6 June 1926 (not 4 July, as has often been stated on the basis of Jack Warner’s 1964 autobiography), having possibly first paid a visit to Budapest before sailing from Cherbourg, perhaps an indication that he had not worked for the Communists in 1919. Much to Jack Warner’s annoyance, Curtiz then remained in New York to meet Harry Warner again (according to Curtiz, at the behest of Albert ‘Abe’ Warner) to go over story material before Curtiz proceeded to Hollywood, reaching there on 21 June.¹⁵ He had committed himself to the studio for the time being. He apparently possessed only a sketchy command of spoken English, but it speaks volumes for a self-confidence bordering on arrogance that he signed a contract for work in a distant nation which he had never even visited, although his poor spoken German in 1919 had not prevented his swift success in Vienna. As matters were to develop, he had arrived in the country which was to be his home for the remainder of his life.

2

HOLLYWOOD BAPTISM, 1926 to 1929

Warner Brothers, the only family concern in Hollywood, was founded in and made its first feature film as recently as 1918, but the four brothers, the sons of Polish Jews who had emigrated to the United States in the 1890s, possessed unlimited ambition. The eldest was Harry (1881–1957), an extreme financial conservative who had become company president in 1924 and directed all aspects of the studio’s operations from the New York office. Abe (1884–1967) was the second son who acted as treasurer and controlled film distribution, while Sam (1888–1927), who was to die before the studio took a place among the motion picture giants, and Jack (1892–1981) were responsible for actual film production in California. By 1924 annual production had reached only seventeen films, but, with Harry as the driving force, Warners had become hell-bent on expansion at a time of general American prosperity by the end of that year. The financial basis for this was to be the credit supplied by Wall Street bankers Goldman Sachs. During 1925 this was extended to three million dollars, with the likelihood of more to come if required, the company having raised production to thirty-one features and in April announced its intention to go over to sound films. Increased production went hand in hand with investment in distribution centres at home and abroad, in cinemas, in a radio station, and in experiments with sound for films. As a result the financial statement of March 1926 had shown a loss of more than 1,300,000 dollars, but there was no danger of imminent bankruptcy owing to Goldman Sachs’ continued willingness to lend Warners money and the 1925 acquisitions of assets which could be sold if necessary. Moreover, the recent film-making expansion had already begun to pay off in that of the twenty-nine features released in the fiscal year ending in March 1926 only one had registered a loss, and that a small one. The year’s film profit turned out to be almost four million dollars, but this was not fully reflected in the March 1926 statement because the box-office receipts had yet to be finalized and the available figures were submerged in the large property investments.

By mid–1926, just as Curtiz joined Warners, the studio had produced its first sound film, Alan Crosland’s Don Juan (no spoken dialogue, but a musical score and sound effects), with a highly publicized prestige release and the charismatic presence of star John Barrymore in the title role. The film made a handsome profit of over one million dollars,¹ but it nevertheless failed to do as well as Warners had hoped.

If bankruptcy was not an immediate danger, the studio was all the same too committed to sound films to consider a retreat if the 1925 investments were to fulfil their maximum profit potential and the studio debts to be paid off. The 1926 film output had been only marginally increased to thirty-three films, but the rapid 1925–6 expansion had been undertaken without full regard to its company structure side-effects. In particular Jack Warner had become much more involved in administration and had often been drawn away from actual filming supervision. This vacuum was mostly and at first unofficially filled by chief scriptwriter Darryl F. Zanuck, signed by the studio in 1924, who had abundant creativity and wrote under three pseudonyms to conceal Warners’ reliance upon his talent. By 1926 his supervisory duties covered most of the routine action adventures, comedies, and melodramas, while Jack Warner took charge of the few prestige pictures like Don Juan.

The remaining studio scriptwriters were nondescript except for Bess Meredyth, the future second Mrs Michael Curtiz. Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1890, she had joined the Biograph film company as a teenager and moved to Hollywood in 1911. Her subsequent career with Universal had included acting, directing, and writing, but in the mid–1920s she seemingly turned exclusively to freelance screenplay work. While her writing for Warners was spasmodic, she was entrusted with studio prestige enterprises such as Millard Webb’s The Sea Beast, a 1925 loose adaptation of Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick. As a Barrymore star vehicle it was Warners’ largest 1926 money spinner, and she was also commissioned to write the Don Juan script. Since signing for Warners in 1924 Barrymore had towered head and shoulders above all the other studio contract players but, because he was costly, his permanent contract was terminated at the end of 1926. Only the Alsatian dog Rin Tin Tin had rivalled Barrymore as a studio star box-office attraction, the other chief contract players being competent but either relatively unknown or lacking in star quality.

Warners’ foremost director in 1926 was Ernst Lubitsch, whose first four films for the studio since 1924 had all been stylish critical successes, although none had produced a large profit. His last Warners film in 1926, So This is Paris, had done much better financially, but even so his contract was not renewed. This decision, like that ending Barrymore’s contract, arose from Harry Warner’s policy of cutting the number of prestige productions within a limited overall film-making budget and instead concentrating almost exclusively upon routine fare, with intended small but consistent profits in every case, until Warners had recovered much more of its investment outlay. By comparison with Lubitsch the other main studio directors were merely efficient journeymen – the ever-reliable Lloyd Bacon, veteran Hollywood Briton J. Stuart Blackton, James Flood, Erle C. Kenton, Herman Raymaker and, second only to Lubitsch, Roy Del Ruth. In this context the acquisition of Curtiz was only one element of a wider 1925–6 search to improve Warners’ directorial quality, for other new directors of the time included Alan Crosland, Ray Enright, Henry Lehrman, and Archie Mayo, while studio ace cameraman Byron ‘Bun’ Haskin was allowed to direct as well in 1927. Haskin, who had beautifully photographed both ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 EUROPE, 1888 to 1926
• 2 HOLLYWOOD BAPTISM, 1926 to 1929
• 3 AN EXPANDING REPERTOIRE, 1930 to 1935
• 4 NEAR AND AT THE SUMMIT, 1935 to 1941
• 5 WORLD WAR, December 1941 to August 1945
• 6 THE TWILIGHT WARNERS YEARS, September 1945 to April 1953
• 7 HOLLYWOOD NOMAD, April 1953 to April 1962
• 8 ASSESSMENT
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Filmography
• Index of personalities
• Index of film titles