At the Warner factory, Budapest born Michael Curtiz (1888-1962) who made his journey to America at the age of forty would become the premier action and horror director of the studios and would average turning out four features a year in the 1930's. Curtiz famously catapulted the career of Errol Flynn the 1935 vehicles Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The Sea Hawk (1949) and a spate of Western films.
During the Great War, Curtiz served in the Austro-Hungarian army before re-establishing himself as director in his native country in 1913, he was the assistant director of the first substantial Danish silent feature, Atlantis (dir. August Blom)
 |
| The keys of Atlantis (silent,1913) |
Once stateside, Curtiz guided Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), Boris Karloff in The Walking Dead (1936), James Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), with Humphrey Bogart, and in the spirited musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Bogart had some more time in the sun, or dark runways if you will with Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (1942). Edward G. Robinson in Kid Galahad (1937) and Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945). From the late Forties his career declined; he would leave Warners come 1954, but continued to work up until his last day on earth in 1962.