The Casablanca Man: The Cinema of Michael CurtizRoutledge, 2013 M09 13 - 208 pages 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. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
1 EUROPE 1888 to 1926 | 5 |
2 HOLLYWOOD BAPTISM 1926 to 1929 | 10 |
3 AN EXPANDING REPERTOIRE 1930 to 1935 | 20 |
4 NEAR AND AT THE SUMMIT 1935 to 1941 | 36 |
5 WORLD WAR December 1941 to August 1945 | 74 |
6 THE TWILIGHT WARNERS YEARS September 1945 to April 1953 | 92 |
7 HOLLYWOOD NOMAD April 1953 to April 1962 | 117 |
8 ASSESSMENT | 127 |
Notes | 156 |
Select bibliography | 169 |
Filmography | 174 |
192 | |
198 | |
Other editions - View all
The Casablanca Man: The Cinema of Michael Curtiz Dr James C Robertson,James Robertson Limited preview - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
actor Adventures of Robin American Angels With Dirty Anton Grot April Based Behlmer Bette Davis Bogart box-office British Buckner budget Byron Haskin Cagney camera Captain Blood career Casablanca cast cinema Claude Rains Comancheros comedy Curtiz legal file Dolores Costello Doris Day early Errol Flynn film-making film's Flamingo Road Four Daughters genre George Amy Harry Hollywood Hungarian Ibid Jack Warner James January John Garfield late later LeRoy Light Brigade make-up Perc Westmore March Max Steiner Michael Curtiz Mildred Pierce million dollars Milo Anderson Mission to Moscow murder musical novel Olivia de Havilland Orry-Kelly Oscar Passage to Marseille Perc Westmore photography play players producer Robert profit release Robin Hood scene screenplay script Sea Hawk sequences shooting shot Sing Sing Sol Polito special effects star story studio technicolor uncredited United Velvet Light Trap Wald Wallis Warner Brothers archive Warners directors Warners films William Yankee Doodle Dandy York Zanuck