Overview

The first biography of the greatest filmmaker that nobody knows. Academy Award-winning director Michael Curtiz (1886-1962)--whose best-known films include Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mildred Pierce, and White Christmas--was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his unprecedented twenty-seven year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The director's staggering output of 180 films surpasses that of the legendary John Ford and exceeds the combined total of films directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and Howard Hawks. In the first biography of this colorful, instinctual artist, Alan K. Rode illuminates the life and work of one of the film industry's most complex figures. He explores the director's little-known early life and career in his native Hungary, revealing how Curtiz shaped the earliest days of silent cinema in Europe before immigrating to the United States in 1926. In Hollywood, Curtiz earned a reputation for explosive tantrums, his difficulty with English, and disregard for the well-being of others. However, few directors elicited more memorable portrayals from their casts, and ten different actors delivered Oscar-nominated performances under his direction. In addition to his study of the director's remarkable legacy, Rode investigates Curtiz's dramatic personal life, discussing his enduring creative partnership with his wife, screenwriter Bess Meredyth, as well as his numerous affairs and children born of his extramarital relationships. This meticulously researched biography provides a nuanced understanding of one of the most talented filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age.

Full Product Details

9798200899913

Table of Contents

Reviews

A magnificent biography. -- New York Review of Books After years of neglect and even scorn, Michael Curtiz is finally getting some respect. -- Los Angeles Times Michael Curtiz is the best director most people have never heard of. Yet until now nobody has taken up the case for Curtiz in a soup-to-nuts biography. The good news is that Alan Rode's massive book is exhaustively researched, well written, and frequently witty. [Curtiz] amassed a body of work without parallel at a great movie studio [Warner Bros.]. His films are his best advocate of that, but Alan Rode's book is a close second. -- Wall Street Journal With thorough knowledge of film history, telling anecdotes, and interviews, the author illuminates Curtiz's colorful career while also providing insightful portraits of actors, writers, and studio heads. Highly recommended. -- Library Journal

Author Information

Alan K. Rode is the author of Charles McGraw: Film Noir Tough Guy. A writer and film scholar, he is also the host and producer of the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival and director-treasurer of the Film Noir Foundation. He lives in Woodland Hills, California. Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the Best Voices of the Century and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available