Michael CurtizFilmography

The Comancheros

Crew: Director

Actors: John Wayne, Stuart Whitman, Ina Balin, Nehemiah Persoff, Lee Marvin

Synopsis: Michael Curtiz's The Comancheros was a deceptively complex movie -- so enjoyable, that it masked some of the best character development seen in a John Wayne vehicle that was not directed by John Ford or Howard Hawks, and so well made that it got by with some of the most violent action seen in a Read More

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Crew: Director

Actors: Tony Randall, Eddie Hodges, Archie Moore, Patty McCormack, Neville Brand

Synopsis: MGM's all-star 1960 filmization of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn surgically removes the sociological subtext of Mark Twain's novel in the interests of "entertainment for the whole family." The emphasis is on the adventuresome escapades of Huck (Eddie Hodges) and fugitive slave Jim (played by Read More

A Breath of Scandal

Crew: Director

Actors: Sophia Loren, Maurice Chevalier, John Gavin, Angela Lansbury, Milly Vitale

Synopsis: Based on the Ferenc Molnar play Olympia, A Breath of Scandal serves as an elegant vehicle for a ravishing Sophia Loren. The star plays Princess Olympia, who despite her station in life cannot resist the urge to satisfy her sexual appetites. Exiled to the countryside, Olympia falls in love with Read More

The Hangman

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Taylor, Fess Parker, Jack Lord, Gene Evans

Synopsis: The Hangman is a stock western with a thin plot and cardboard characters, about a rigid, U.S. Marshal. Mackenzie Bovard (Robert Taylor) takes his job working for the federal government very seriously, and when he goes out to get the riff-raff that defy the laws of the land, he finds them and hangs Read More

The Man in the Net

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Ladd, Carolyn Jones, Diane Brewster, John Lupton, Charles McGraw

Synopsis: This undistinguished murder muddle by director Michael Curtis involves an artist and his alcoholic psychologically disturbed wife -- who disappears one day. John Hamilton (Alan Ladd) has retreated to the New England countryside to pursue a potential career as an artist, but his wife Linda (Carolyn Jones Read More

King Creole

Crew: Director

Actors: Elvis Presley, Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Dolores Hart, Dean Jagger

Synopsis: Elvis Presley delivers one of his finest early performances in King Creole. Elvis plays a teenager named Danny Fisher, who is forced to drop out of school to help support his ineffective father (Dean Jagger). Drawn to trouble like a magnet, Danny is saved from a jail term by New Orleans Read More

The Proud Rebel

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Ladd, Olivia de Havilland, Dean Jagger, David Ladd, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: A gentler but no less resourceful Alan Ladd stars in The Proud Rebel. Ladd is cast as civil war veteran John Chandler, while the star's son David (who grew up to become a powerful Hollywood producer) plays Chandler's emotionally disturbed son David. Since suffering a traumatic shock during the Read More

The Helen Morgan Story

Crew: Director

Actors: Ann Blyth, Paul Newman, Richard Carlson, Gene Evans, Alan King

Synopsis: Ann Blyth plays famed "torch singer" Helen Morgan, from her humble beginnings as a carnival dancer to the height of her nightclub fame in the 1920s. Helen spends most of her spare time anguishing over the on-and-off affections of her boorish boyfriend (Paul Newman), who had discovered Helen during Read More

The Best Things in Life Are Free

Crew: Director

Actors: Gordon MacRae, Don Dailey, Sheree North, Ernest Borgnine, Tommy Noonan

Synopsis: The Best Things in Life are Free is the tuneful if uninspired life story of popular composers DeSylva (Gordon MacRae), Brown (Ernest Borgnine) and Henderson (Dan Dailey). Pooling their talents, the trio rises from Tin Pan Alley to fame and fortune. The team's future is threatened when Buddy Read More

The Scarlet Hour

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Carol Ohmart, Tom Tryon, James Gregory, Elaine Stritch

Synopsis: The Scarlet Hour was a relatively bold experiment for a mid-1950s Paramount release. The studio expended a great deal of money on the project and enlisted the services of top-flight director Michael Curtiz -- then populated the cast with young unknowns. Carol Ohmart and Tom Tryon (yes, the future Read More

The Vagabond King

Crew: Director

Actors: Vincent Price, Kathryn Grayson, Oreste, Rita Moreno, Cedric Hardwicke, Walter Hampden

Synopsis: The Rudolf Friml operetta The Vagabond King was first filmed in 1930, with Dennis King in the lead. On both sides of this adaptation, audiences were treated to non-singing versions of the story, bearing titles like The Beloved Rogue and If I Were King. In all instances, the plot remained the same Read More

We're No Angels

Crew: Director

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov, Joan Bennett, Basil Rathbone

Synopsis: Samuel and Bella Spewack's English adaptation of French playwright Albert Husson's morbidly humorous stage piece My Three Angels was brought to the screen as the heavily laundered but still wickedly funny We're No Angels. The scene is French Guiana, a few days before Christmas. Humphrey Bogart Read More

The Boy from Oklahoma

Crew: Director

Actors: Will Rogers, Jr., Nancy Olson, Lon Chaney, Jr., Anthony Caruso, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: Reminiscent of Destry Rides Again, this feature is about peaceable young lawyer Tom Brewster (Will Rogers Jr.), who sets up shop in a rowdy western town. Though perfectly able to wield a six-gun, Brewster refuses to use brawn when brain will do. He is galvanized into action when his old pal Wallace Ford Read More

White Christmas

Crew: Director

Actors: Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger

Synopsis: White Christmas, Paramount's belated follow-up to the 1942 hit Holiday Inn, was the studio's first VistaVision production. A veritable warehouse full of oldie-but-goodie Irving Berlin tunes are woven into the film's simplistic plotline, along with a handful of new songs, of which "What Can You Do Read More

The Egyptian

Crew: Director

Actors: Edmund Purdom, Jean Simmons, Victor Mature, Gene Tierney, Michael Wilding, Sr.

Synopsis:
Based on the novel by Mika Waltari and helmed by Casablanca director Michael Curtiz, The Egyptian, a lavish period soaper, is set several centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. Young Egyptian healer Sinuhe Edmund Purdom (ere accompanied by his servant, Kaptah, played by Peter Ustinov) Read More

Trouble Along the Way

Crew: Director

Actors: John Wayne, Donna Reed, Charles Coburn, Tom Tully, Sherry Jackson

Synopsis: "Winning isn't everything -- it's the only thing." These words were spoken not by Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi but by Steve Williams, the fictional college athletics instructor played by John Wayne in Trouble Along the Way. Recently divorced, Williams has trouble finding a job due to his Read More

The Jazz Singer

Crew: Director

Actors: Danny Thomas, Peggy Lee, Mildred Dunnock, Eduard Franz, Tom Tully

Synopsis: This second screen adaptation of the Samson Rafaelson play The Jazz Singer is better than the first, though not as historically important (the early Jazz Singer, it will be recalled, sparked the "talkie revolution" way back in 1927). Danny Thomas assumes the old Al Jolson role as the cantor's Read More

The Story of Will Rogers

Crew: Director

Actors: Will Rogers, Jr., Jane Wyman, Carl Benton Reid, Eve Miller, James Gleason

Synopsis: Will Rogers Jr. stars as his own father in this slow, sentimental biopic. The film begins with Rogers' days on his father's ranch in Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). We see Will court his future wife, Betty (Jane Wyman), just before he strikes out on his own as a rodeo performer. Attempting to Read More

Force of Arms

Crew: Director

Actors: William Holden, Nancy Olson, Frank Lovejoy, Gene Evans, Dick Wesson

Synopsis: A Girl for Joe was the reissue title for the 1951 WWII romantic drama Force of Arms. William Holden and Nancy Olson, previously teamed in Sunset Boulevard and Union Station, co-star once more as, respectively, an Army sergeant and a WAC officer. While on leave, Holden and Olson fall in love, but Read More

Jim Thorpe - All American

Crew: Director

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, Steve Cochran, Phyllis Thaxter, Dick Wesson

Synopsis: Burt Lancaster stars as Jim Thorpe, the Native American sports whiz whom many consider the greatest athlete of the 20th century. We first see Thorpe as a child on the reservation, highly resistant to the notion of going to school. He proves to be an excellent student, eventually attending the Read More

I'll See You in My Dreams

Crew: Director

Actors: Doris Day, Danny Thomas, Frank Lovejoy, Patrice Wymore, James Gleason

Synopsis: The ultra-sentimental I'll See You in My Dreams is based on the life and work of composer Gus Kahn. The story is told from the point of view of Kahn' wife Grace, who was still alive when the film was made (Kahn died some ten years earlier). Danny Thomas stars as the prolific tunesmith, whose Read More

The Breaking Point

Crew: Director

Actors: John Garfield, Phyllis Thaxter, Patricia Neal, Juano Hernandez, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: This second screen version of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not is closer in spirit to the original than the first version, though it still is far from faithful to its source. John Garfield stars as Harry Morgan, who has metamorphosed from Hemingway's gun-runner to an ex-PT boat captain, now Read More

Young Man With a Horn

Crew: Director

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, Hoagy Carmichael, Juano Hernandez

Synopsis: The life of tragic jazz great Bix Beiderbecke is given the "a clef" treatment in Warner Bros. Young Man With a Horn. Kirk Douglas plays the Beiderbecke character, here named Rick Martin. An ace trumpter player, Martin is one of the few white musicians to flourish in the black-dominated jazz scene Read More

Bright Leaf

Crew: Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Lauren Bacall, Jack Carson, Patricia Neal, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: Bright Leaf, a sprawling saga of the tobacco industry in North Carolina, began as a novel by Foster Fitzsimmons, a native Carolinian who for many years taught at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's theatre department. The film version of Bright Leaf has been simplified and reshaped to Read More

Flamingo Road

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Sydney Greenstreet, David Brian, Gertrude Michael, Gladys George

Synopsis: The fourth of Joan Crawford's Warner Bros. vehicles, Flamingo Road doesn't hold up as well as her earlier Mildred Pierce or Humoresque, but there's plenty to please the eye and ear. Sideshow kootch-dancer Lane Bellamy (Crawford), stranded in a backwater town, gets a job as a waitress. Lane begins Read More

It's a Great Feeling

Actors: Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Bill Goodwin, Irving Bacon

Synopsis: Billy Wilder's future partner I.A.L. Diamond concocted the storyline for this Dennis Morgan/Jack Carson/Doris Day tunefest. Morgan and Carson, Warner Bros.' answer to Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, appear as themselves. Attempting to line up a director for their next picture, the boys find themselves Read More

The Lady Takes a Sailor

Crew: Director

Actors: Jane Wyman, Dennis Morgan, Eve Arden, Robert Douglas, Allyn Joslyn

Synopsis: Though she may have won an Oscar in 1948, Jane Wyman still had a Warner Bros. contract to fulfill, even if it meant appearing in frivolities like The Lady Takes a Sailor. It all begins when Jennifer (Wyman), the head of an oceanographic research institute, claims to have made a fascinating Read More

My Dream Is Yours

Crew: Director

Actors: Doris Day, Jack Carson, Lee Bowman, Adolphe Menjou, Eve Arden

Synopsis: My Dream Is Yours is a Technicolor remake of the jaunty 1934 Warner Bros. musical Twenty Million Sweethearts. But there's a significant difference here: whereas in the earlier film singing-waiter Dick Powell was turned into a crooning idol, in the remake it is Doris Day who is catapulted to Read More

Romance on the High Seas

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Doris Day, Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don DeFore, Oscar Levant

Synopsis: This cute film is Doris Day's film debut and in it she plays Georgia Garrett, a substitute traveller on an ocean cruise. Her friend Elvira Kent (Janis Paige) had scheduled the cruise but at the last minute cancels when she suspects that her husband is cheating on her and she decides to stay at Read More

Life With Father

Crew: Director

Actors: William Powell, Irene Dunne, Monte Blue, ZaSu Pitts, Clara Blandick, Johnny Calkins, Emma Dunn, Edmund Gwenn, Elizabeth Taylor

Synopsis: The longest-running non-musical play in Broadway history, Life With Father was faithfully filmed by Warner Bros. in 1947. William Powell is a tower of comic strength as Clarence Day, the benevolent despot of his 1880s New York City household. Irene Dunne co-stars as Day's wife Vinnie, who Read More

The Unsuspected

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Joan Caulfield, Claude Rains, Audrey Totter, Constance Bennett, Fred Clark, Hurd Hatfield

Synopsis: Director Michael Curtiz masterfully tells the fictional story of radio host Alexander Grandison (Claude Rains) as derived from a novel by Charlotte Armstrong. Grandison spookily recites murder mysteries on his radio show, with intimate and excruciating details. The reason he's so good and popular Read More

Night and Day

Crew: Director

Actors: Cary Grant, John Alvin, Eve Arden, Alexis Smith, Monty Woolley, Herman Bing, Paul Cavanagh, Jane Wyman, Tom D'Andrea, Dorothy Malone

Synopsis: Faced with the challenge of writing a screenplay based on the life of fabulously wealthy, fabulously successful composer Cole Porter, one Hollywood wag came up with a potential story angle: "How does the S.O.B. make his second million dollars?" By the time the Porter biopic Night and Day was Read More

Roughly Speaking

Crew: Director

Actors: Ray Collins, Kathleen Lockhart, Ann E. Todd, Andy Clyde, Rosalind Russell, Robert Hutton

Synopsis: This odd combination of roughneck comedy and serious domestic drama was adapted by Louise Randall Pierson from her own autobiographical novel. Rosalind Russell is cast as young Louise Randall, the headstrong daughter of a New England merchant. Inheriting her father's business, Louise intends to Read More

Mildred Pierce

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth

Synopsis: Joan Crawford won an Academy Award for her bravura portrayal of the titular heroine in Mildred Pierce. The original James M. Cain novel concerned a tawdry waitress who slept her way to financial security so as to provide a rosy future for her beloved daughter, only to be rewarded by having her Read More

Janie

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Hutton, Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, Robert Benchley, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Janie, adapted from the Broadway play by Josephine Bentham and Herschel Williams, was one of a 1940s cycle of stage-to-film comedies about teenagers. Joyce Reynolds stars as Janie, a typical teen whose life is turned topsy turvy by the installation of a military base near her home town. Edward Arnold Read More

Passage to Marseille

Crew: Director

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Michèle Morgan, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Philip Dorn

Synopsis: Designed as a followup to the enormously successful Casablanca, Passage to Marseille utilizes the talents of many of the on- and off-screen personnel of the earlier Warner Bros. classic. Unfolded in a complex flashback-within-flashback structure, this is the story of Matrac (Humphrey Bogart), a Read More

Show Business at War

This Is the Army

Crew: Director

Actors: George Murphy, Joan Leslie, Ronald Reagan, George Tobias, Alan Hale, Charles Butterworth, Julie Oshins

Synopsis: The splashy, star-studded This is the Army is based on the Irving Berlin Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was a reworking of Berlin's WW1 "barracks musical" Yip Yip Yaphank. In both instances, the cast was largely comprised of genuine servicemen, many of them either recently Read More

Mission to Moscow

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Huston, Ann Harding, Oscar Homolka, Gene Lockhart, George Tobias, Eleanor Parker

Synopsis: More so than most wartime films, Mission to Moscow must be viewed within the context of its times. Requested by President Roosevelt to make a film supportive of America's Russian allies, Warner Bros. turned to the memoirs of Ambassador Joseph H. Davies, who spent several years prior to WWII in the Read More

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Crew: Director

Actors: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Whorf, Irene Manning

Synopsis: Yankee Doodle Dandy is no more the true-life story of George M. Cohan than The Jolson Story was the unvarnished truth about Al Jolson -- but who the heck cares? Dandy has song, dance, pathos, pageantry, uproarious comedy, and, best of all, James Cagney at his Oscar-winning best. After several Read More

Casablanca

Crew: Director

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre

Synopsis: One of the most beloved American films, this captivating wartime adventure of romance and intrigue from director Michael Curtiz defies standard categorization. Simply put, it is the story of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a world-weary ex-freedom fighter who runs a nightclub in Casablanca during Read More

Captains of the Clouds

Crew: Director

Actors: James Cagney, Dennis Morgan, Brenda Marshall, Alan Hale, George Tobias

Synopsis: James Cagney made his first Technicolor appearance in the morale-boosting aviation flick Captains of the Clouds. Cagney plays Brian MacLean, a hotshot Canadian bush pilot who delights in stealing jobs-and women-away from his competitors. Brian is forced to shape up in a hurry when he's assigned to Read More

Dive Bomber

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Fred MacMurray, Ralph Bellamy, Herbert Anderson

Synopsis: Lieutenant Commander Joe Blake (Fred MacMurray), Lt. Tim Griffin (Regis Toomey), and Lt. Swede Larson (Louis Jean Heydt) are longtime US Navy flying buddies, about to be transferred to different posts when Larson suffers a blackout during high-altitude maneuvers and cracks up. Navy doctor Douglas Read More

The Sea Wolf

Crew: Director

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino, John Garfield, Alexander Knox, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: The fifth film version of Jack London's The Sea Wolf stars Edward G. Robinson as "premature fascist" Wolf Larsen. The captain of the scavenger ship Ghost, Larsen is a heartless tyrant who can tolerate no sign of weakness in anyone. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" is Larsen's Read More

Virginia City

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Miriam Hopkins, Randolph Scott, Humphrey Bogart, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Promoted as a follow-up to the popular 1939 western Dodge City (which, indeed, was left wide open for a sequel in its closing scenes), Virginia City bears only surface resemblance to the earlier film. Indeed, the only discerning links between the two pictures are the western setting and the Read More

Santa Fe Trail

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Raymond Massey, Ronald Reagan, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Santa Fe Trail, Errol Flynn's third western, has precisely nothing to do with the titular trail. Instead, the film is a simplistic retelling of the John Brown legend, with Raymond Massey playing the famed abolitionist. The events leading up to the bloody confrontation between Brown and the US Read More

The Sea Hawk

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Claude Rains, Flora Robson, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: In the 1580s, the Sea Hawks -- the name given to the bold privateers who prowl the oceans taking ships and treasure on behalf the British crown -- are the most dedicated defenders of British interests in the face of the expanding power of Philip of Spain. And Captain Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn) Read More

Daughters Courageous

Crew: Director

Actors: John Garfield, Claude Rains, Fay Bainter, Donald Crisp, May Robson

Synopsis: This family drama features the same cast and crew from the highly successful Four Daughters, but it isn't actually a sequel. Whereas the first film was a chronicle of the Lemp family, this one centers on the Masters family. This film is also characterized by a much happier ending than its Read More

Four Wives

Crew: Director

Actors: Claude Rains, Jeffrey Lynn, John Garfield, Frank McHugh, May Robson, Eddie Albert, Priscilla Lane

Synopsis: In this drama, the sequel to Four Daughters, the daughters are now adults. Three of the sisters rally together to find a new love for the fourth sister whose husband recently committed suicide. The widowed woman then discovers that she is pregnant with her deceased husband's child and this causes Read More

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

Crew: Director

Actors: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Vincent Price, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale

Synopsis: It is no secret that Bette Davis and Errol Flynn were at each other's throats throughout the filming of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Boiled down to essentials: Davis felt that Flynn was unprofessional, while Flynn thought that Davis took herself too damned seriously. Besides, Davis Read More

Dodge City

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Ann Sheridan, Bruce Cabot, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: This landmark western -- which, along with Stagecoach, has often been credited with revitalizing what had become a stagnant genre -- stars Errol Flynn as Wade Hatton, a cattle man who arrives in the frontier community of Dodge City, which is overrun by footloose cowboys and outlaws. When Hatton Read More

The Adventures of Robin Hood

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Patric Knowles

Synopsis: In order to avoid the material copyrighted by Douglas Fairbanks Sr. for his 1922 Robin Hood, the scripters of this Flynn version relied on several legendary episodes that had never before been filmed, notably the battle between Robin and Little John (Alan Hale Sr., who played this part three times Read More

Angels With Dirty Faces

Crew: Director

Actors: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, George Bancroft

Synopsis: Childhood chums Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) and Jerry Connelly (Pat O'Brien) grow up on opposite sides of the fence: Rocky matures into a prominent gangster, while Jerry becomes a priest, tending to the needs of his old tenement neighborhood. Rocky becomes a hero to a gang of teenaged boys Read More

Gold Is Where You Find It

Crew: Director

Actors: George Brent, Olivia de Havilland, Claude Rains, John Litel

Synopsis: Michael Curtiz directs this Technicolor Western based on the familiar story by Clements Ripley about the rivalry between farmers and miners in the Sacramento valley during the years following the California Gold Rush. Handsome engineer Jared Whitney (George Brent) from the Golden Moon mining Read More

Four's a Crowd

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Rosalind Russell, Patric Knowles, Walter Connolly

Synopsis: A standard-issue "screwball comedy" of the 1930s, Four's a Crowd starred a quartet of Warner Bros' biggest stars: Errol Flynn, Olivia DeHavilland, Rosalind Russell and Patric Knowles. Flynn plays a publicity agent hired to stir up "good press" for a nasty millionaire (Walter Connolly). Errol Read More

Four Daughters

Crew: Director

Actors: Claude Rains, May Robson, Priscilla Lane, Lola Lane, Rosemary Lane

Synopsis: Fannie Hurst's Sister Act was the source for this money-making Warners weeper. The four daughters of the title are played by the Lane Sisters--Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola--and by Gale Page. All are musical prodigies, and all are daughters of master-musician Claude Rains. To help make ends meet, Rains Read More

The Perfect Specimen

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Joan Blondell, Hugh Herbert, Edward Everett Horton, Dick Foran

Synopsis: Based on a popular novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams, this screwball comedy stars Errol Flynn in the title-role, the heir to an industrial fortune kept hidden from the world by his imperious grandmother (May Robson). Intrigued by the secrecy, peppy Joan Blondell literally crashes the estate to Read More

Kid Galahad

Crew: Director

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Wayne Morris, Jane Bryan

Synopsis: Fight manager Nick Donati (Edward G. Robinson) has just lost his best fighter to crooked promoter Turkey Morgan (Humphrey Bogart). During a party at Donati's apartment, a bellhop (Wayne Morris) kayos Morgan's boxer, who has insulted the honor of Donati's girlfriend, Louise "Fluff" Phillips (Bette Davis Read More

Mountain Justice

Crew: Director

Actors: Josephine Hutchinson, George Brent, Guy Kibbee, Mona Barrie, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: In this depressing drama, even though she is an adult, the eldest daughter of a hillbilly clan headed by a brutal patriarch still must endure his vicious beatings. Finally her mother and other friends counsel her to leave the hills. She does and ends up in New York where she enrolls in nursing Read More

Stolen Holiday

Crew: Director

Actors: Kay Francis, Claude Rains, Ian Hunter, Alison Skipworth, Alex D'Arcy

Synopsis: The "Stavisky Affair," a high-level swindling scandal which all but destroyed the French government in the early 1930s, was the unofficial inspiration for Stolen Holiday. Claude Rains plays a suave confidence artist who has wormed his way into top European social and financial circles. When faced Read More

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Patric Knowles, Henry Stephenson, Donald Crisp, Nigel Bruce

Synopsis: Of the many film versions of Alfred Lord Tennyson's narrative poem, 1936's Charge of the Light Brigade has the least relationship to the facts concerning the famous 19th century British military blunder in the Crimea. Reflecting the popularity of 1935's Lives of A Bengal Lancer, the film uses the Read More

The Walking Dead

Crew: Director

Actors: Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Edmund Gwenn, Marguerite Churchill, Warren Hull, Barton MacLane

Synopsis: In one of his most successful portrayals of a "living dead" man, Boris Karloff plays John Ellman, an ex-convict who is framed by the mob for the murder of the judge who first put him away. Evidence proving Ellman's innocence arrives seconds after he is electrocuted. Officials allow Dr. Evan Read More

Little Big Shot

Crew: Director

Actors: Sybil Jason, Glenda Farrell, Robert Armstrong, Edward Everett Horton, Jack LaRue

Synopsis: In the wake of Shirley Temple, every Hollywood studio scrambled to find a child star who might possibility match Temple's selling power. Warner Bros.' candidate was South Africa-born Sybil Jason, who starred in several of the studio's short subjects and was headlined in a handful of features like Little Big Shot Read More

Black Fury

Crew: Director

Actors: Paul Muni, Karen Morley, William Gargan, Barton MacLane, John Qualen

Synopsis: Like many 1930s Warner Bros. films, Black Fury drew its inspiration from the headlines. The story is adapted from a true-life incident from 1929, wherein a striking Pennsylvania coal miner was beaten to death by three company detectives; this served as the focus for Henry R. Irving's stage play Read More

The Case of the Curious Bride

Crew: Director

Actors: Warren William, Margaret Lindsay, Donald Woods, Claire Dodd, Allen Jenkins, Errol Flynn

Synopsis: Errol Flynn makes his Hollywood screen debut as a corpse in this funny, fast-paced whodunit, the third of six Perry Mason vehicles produced by Warner Bros. from 1934 to 1937. Flynn's murder victim is one Gregory Moxley, the estranged and long-thought dead husband of Perry's client, Rhoda Montaine Read More

Front Page Woman

Crew: Director

Actors: Bette Davis, George Brent, Roscoe Karns, June Martel, Dorothy Dare, Walter Walker, Joseph Crehan, Winifred Shaw

Synopsis: Front Page Woman was one of those bread-and-butter vehicles that forced Bette Davis to go on strike against Warner Bros., demanding more worthwhile scripts. On its own terms, the film is a briskly entertaining newspaper yarn about two warring reporters (Davis and George Brent). In their efforts to Read More

Captain Blood

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Lionel Atwill, Ross Alexander

Synopsis: When British actor Robert Donat dropped out of Warner Bros. Captain Blood, the studio took a chance on its new contractee, Tasmania-born Errol Flynn. Adapted from the novel by Rafael Sabatini, the film is set during the oppressive reign of King James II. Irish physician Peter Blood (Errol Flynn) Read More

Mandalay

Crew: Director

Actors: Kay Francis, Lyle Talbot, Ricardo Cortez, Warner Oland, Lucien Littlefield

Synopsis: The official cast list of Warner Bros. Mandalay states that Kay Francis plays a character named Tanya. For most of the film, however, the heroine -- if she can be called that -- goes by the name of Spot White (or "Spot Cash," as she's cynically designated by one of the lesser characters). Betrayed Read More

The Key

Crew: Director

Actors: William Powell, Edna Best, Colin Clive, Hobart Cavanaugh, Halliwell Hobbes

Synopsis: The Key is a story of the Irish "troubles" which avoids taking sides, but spends most of its screen time with the British occupation troops. William Powell stars as a soldier for hire who works on behalf of the British in the Dublin of the early 1920s. Powell is as celebrated for his boudoir Read More

British Agent

Crew: Director

Actors: Leslie Howard, Kay Francis, William Gargan, Phillip Reed, Irving Pichel

Synopsis: British Agent starred the Hungarian/British actor Leslie Howard in the title role, was directed by full-fledged Hungarian Michael Curtiz, and costarred American leading lady Kay Francis as a Russian spy. Based on the memoirs of R. H. Bruce Lockhart, who had been the unofficial British emissary to Read More

Jimmy the Gent

Crew: Director

Actors: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Alice White, Allen Jenkins, Alan Dinehart, Arthur Hohl

Synopsis: James Cagney runs a shady missing-heir tracing service, occasionally providing phony heirs in order to collect his fee. He suffers a tinge of jealousy when he takes a gander at the offices of a legitimate tracing firm, where his former girlfriend (Bette Davis) has taken a job. Jimmy soon learns Read More

The Kennel Murder Case

Crew: Director

Actors: William Powell, Mary Astor, Eugene Pallette, Ralph Morgan, Helen Vinson

Synopsis: Often (and accurately) described as a model of the whodunit genre, The Kennel Murder Case stars William Powell, making his fourth screen appearance as S. S. Van Dine's dilettante detective Philo Vance. This time the story involves intrigue at the Long Island kennel club. The murder victim is Robert H. Barrat Read More

Man Killer

Crew: Director

Actors: William Powell, Margaret Lindsay, Ruth Donnelly, Gordon Westcott, James Bell

Synopsis: Romance throws a spanner into the works of a con game in this light drama. Donald Free (William Powell) is a private detective whose career in on the skids. Dan Hogan (Arthur Holh) is another, less scrupulous shamus who persuades Free to help him frame Janet Reynolds (Margaret Lindsay), a wealthy Read More

Goodbye Again

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Blondell, Genevieve Tobin, Helen Chandler, Ruth Donnelly, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: Famous author Kenneth Bixby (Warren William) would like to jump-start his romance with ex-sweetheart Julie (Genevieve Tobin). There are, however, at least two people who'd prefer that Bixby stick to writing and stay away from Julie. One is Julie's husband Harvey Wilson (Hugh Herbert); the other is Read More

The Mystery of the Wax Museum

Crew: Director

Actors: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Allen Vincent, Gavin Gordon

Synopsis: The Mystery of the Wax Museum begins in London in the 1920s. Lionel Atwill plays Ivan Igor, a brilliant sculptor who manages a wax museum. Regarding his historical creations as his friends, Igor refuses the entreaties of his business partner, Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell), to turn his labor-of-love Read More

The Keyhole

Crew: Director

Actors: Kay Francis, George Brent, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: In this melodrama, the wife of a wealthy man abruptly leaves him and sets sail for Cuba leaving him to hire a gumshoe to find out why. The girl left because she was being blackmailed for $50,000 by her former ex-husband who claims that they were never legally divorced. Before heading to Cuba for a Read More

Female

Crew: Director

Actors: Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Philip Faversham, Ruth Donnelly, Johnny Mack Brown

Synopsis: Ruth Chatterton tears up the screen in this fast-paced, lusty comedy. Alison Drake is an automobile magnate, a hard-nosed, hardboiled business woman making dozens of important decisions a day. In her private life, however, she is passionate and bold in her pursuit of male companionship, which she Read More

20,000 Years in Sing-Sing

Crew: Director

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Arthur Byron, Lyle Talbot, Sheila Terry, Warren Hymer, Edward McNamara

Synopsis: Sent to Sing Sing prison, influential crook Spencer Tracy is unregenerate and refuses to adhere to the rules. While in solitary confinement, Tracy reconsiders his attitude. Thanks to the correctional facility's compassionate warden (Arthur Byron), Tracy becomes a model prisoner, even refusing to Read More

The Cabin in the Cotton

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Dorothy Jordan, Bette Davis, Henry B. Walthall, Walter Percival, Berton Churchill

Synopsis: Henry Harrison Kroll's novel Cabin in the Cotton was an attack on wealthy southern landowners who exploited their sharecroppers. While the landowners still don't come off too well in Warner Bros.' film version of Kroll's novel, the film tries to avoid stepping on powerful toes, even composing an Read More

Doctor X

Crew: Director

Actors: Lionel Atwill, Lee Tracy, Fay Wray, Preston S. Foster, Arthur Edmund Carewe

Synopsis: Fay Wray screams when she first lays eyes on Lionel Atwill in Doctor X, but don't let that fool you. Atwill plays Fay's father this time around, and he may very well not be the diabolical "Moon Murderer" whom the police are seeking. Dr. Xavier (Atwill) maintains a research lab in a remote Long Read More

The Strange Love of Molly Louvain

Crew: Director

Actors: Ann Dvorak, Lee Tracy, Richard Cromwell, Guy Kibbee, Leslie Fenton

Synopsis: In this strange, convoluted tale, a hotel clerk ends up pregnant and alone after she has a brief fling with a wealthy playboy. Shortly after her daughter's birth, she hooks up with a criminal. She does not realize that the good-hearted bellboy with whom she works secretly loves her. When the Read More

Alias the Doctor

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Marian Marsh, Lucille La Verne, Norman Foster, Adrienne Dore

Synopsis: A Bavarian orphan, raised by a wealthy family, grows up to become a promising physician (Richard Barthelmess). Meanwhile, the privileged young man (Norman Foster) with whom Barthelmess has grown up fails to make the grade at medical school. When Foster bungles an operation, Barthelmess nobly Read More

The Woman from Monte Carlo

Crew: Director

Actors: Lil Dagover, Walter Huston, Warren William, John Wray, George E. Stone

Synopsis: In this WW II drama, the commander of the French cruiser Lafayette is sunk by a German U-boat. Following the rescue of the survivors, the commander undergoes an investigative hearing to determine his culpability in the sinking. He didn't know it at the time, but his philandering young wife was Read More

River's End

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Bickford, Evelyn Knapp, David Torrence, ZaSu Pitts

Synopsis: The second of three versions of James Oliver Curwood's pulp fiction drama of a mountie and his separated-at-birth prey stars Charles Bickford as both Sgt. Conniston and accused murderer John Keith. The latter is persuaded to prove his innocence by impersonating his captor, who has conveniently Read More

A Soldier's Plaything

Crew: Director

Actors: Lotti Loder, Harry Langdon, Ben Lyon

Synopsis: In this WW I comedy, several young men decide to join the army. Each one has his own reason for joining up. Songs include: "Forever," "Qui, Qui," "Honey Boy," "Ja, Ja, Ja," "Side by Side." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Bright Lights

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this light-hearted musical, an early color film, a successful actress tires of the bustle and hustle of her tawdry life and settles down to what she thinks is the blissful mundaneness of married life. Unfortunately, the actual drudgery of wifedom takes her by surprise and domestic turmoil Read More

The Mad Genius

Crew: Director

Actors: John Barrymore, Marian Marsh, Donald Cook, Carmel Myers, Charles Butterworth

Synopsis: More of a follow-up than a sequel to 1931's popular Svengali, this drama centers on the attempts of a club-footed and insanely bitter dance instructor to cling to his protege. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

God's Gift to Women

Crew: Director

Actors: Frank Fay, Laura La Plante, Joan Blondell, Charles Winninger, Louise Brooks

Synopsis: God's Gift to Women demonstrated conclusively that Warner Bros. would never make a movie star out of Broadway comedian Frank Fay. Portraying a most unlikely Frenchman, Fay pitches woo at every beautiful woman in sight, but falls in love with none of them. When Cupid genuinely strikes him for the Read More

Under a Texas Moon

Crew: Director

Actors: Frank Fay, Raquel Torres, Myrna Loy, Armida, Noah Beery, Sr.

Synopsis: Comedian Frank Fay and director Michael Curtiz reportedly despised one another at sight, and their mutual animosity tends to seep through every frame of Under a Texas Moon. The vainglorious Fay is cast as Don Carlos, a gay caballero ("gay" meaning "carefree") whose serenades every senorita he Read More

The Matrimonial Bed

Crew: Director

Actors: Frank Fay, Lilyan Tashman, James Gleason, Florence Eldridge

Synopsis: Whatever rapport comedian Frank Fay enjoyed with Broadway audiences invariably evaporated when he appeared on film. In The Matrimonial Bed, Fay is his usual overbearing self as Adolphe, a small-town husband who is rendered an amnesiac in a train crash. Five years pass, during which time Adolphe Read More

Mammy

Crew: Director

Actors: Al Jolson, Lois Moran, Louise Dresser, Lowell Sherman, Hobart Bosworth

Synopsis: Mammy features Al Jolson as the star of a travelling minstrel show, appearing in a small Southern town. Jolson falls in love with an actress in the troupe (Lois Moran), but she loves another. One of Jolson's fellow minstrels (Lowell Sherman) is shot backstage, and it is assumed thanks to several Read More

The Gamblers

Crew: Director

Actors: H.B. Warner, Lois Wilson, Jason Robards, Sr., George Fawcett, Johnny Arthur

Synopsis: The 1929 Wall Street crash was still two months in the future when Warner Bros.' Gamblers was released in the late summer of 1929. Jason Robards Sr. and George Fawcett play Carvel Emerson Jr. and Emerson Sr., father-and-son stock manipulators who "gamble" their firm's assets on a risky Read More

The Glad Rag Doll

Crew: Director

Actors: Dolores Costello, Ralph Graves, Audrey Ferris, Tom Ricketts

Synopsis: This drama opens with a most disturbing scene as a jilted lover places a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. Fortunately, he is but an actor in a play and the gun is but a prop. His co-star is a beautiful young woman. A young man is utterly in love with the actress and after the show visits her Read More

The Madonna of Avenue A

Crew: Director

Actors: Dolores Costello, Louise Dresser, Grant Withers, William Russell

Synopsis: Although there was little love lost between star Dolores Costello and director Michael Curtiz, the two Warner Bros. contractees collaborated on several films, including the early-talkie Madonna of Avenue A. Costello plays Maria Marton, an expensively educated young miss who has been led to believe Read More

Hearts in Exile

Crew: Director

Actors: Dolores Costello, Grant Withers, James Kirkwood, George Fawcett, David Torrence

Synopsis: In this romance set in Russia, a fisherman's daughter is jilted by her true love and instead marries a baron. Time passes and the two men meet each other in Siberia where they have both been exiled. When the poorer man has the opportunity to come home, he changes places with the baron so that he Read More

Noah's Ark

Crew: Director

Actors: Dolores Costello, George O'Brien, Noah Beery, Sr., Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Louise Fazenda, Paul McAllister

Synopsis: Directed by a young Michael Curtiz, this Warner Bros. epic had aspirations of becoming another Intolerance (1916). In the end, Curtiz' treatise of man's inhumanity to man was ironically sabotaged by the enormous success of yet another studio release, the groundbreaking The Jazz Singer (1927). Read More

Tenderloin

Crew: Director

Actors: Dolores Costello, Conrad Nagel, Mitchell Lewis, Dan Wolheim

Million Bid

Crew: Director

Actors: Dolores Costello, Warner Oland, Malcolm McGregor, Betty Blythe, William Demarest

Synopsis: A Million Bid came about because Warner Bros. promised a film of that title to exhibitors in early 1927. Unable to deliver at that time, Warners offered theaters its annual Dolores Costello "special" Old San Francisco instead. Exhibitors were so pleased with this money-maker that they were willing Read More

Good Time Charley

Crew: Director

Actors: Helene Costello, Warner Oland, Clyde Cook, Montagu Love, Hugh Allen

Synopsis: Warner Oland took time out from his customary screen villainy to play the title character in the sentimental backstage drama Good Time Charley. A small-time provincial actor, Charley has an ego that far outdistances his talent. Meanwhile, his old nemesis John Hartwell (Montague Love), the man Read More

Desired Woman

Crew: Director

Actors: Irene Rich, William Russell, William Collier, Jr., John Miljan, Richard Tucker

Synopsis: Even in the early stages of his Warner Bros. career, director Michael Curtiz was eager and willing to tackle any sort of story tossed his way. Based on an original by Mark Canfield (a pseudonym for Darryl F. Zanuck), The Desired Woman is a standard stiff-upper-lip military drama set at a remote Read More

The Third Degree

Crew: Director

Actors: Dolores Costello, Louise Dresser, Rockliffe Fellowes, Jason Robards, Sr., Kate Price

Synopsis: Hungarian director Michael Curtiz made his American film bow with the highly stylized crime melodrama The Third Degree. Set against the backdrop of Coney Island, the story concerns a young couple, Annie Daly (Dolores Costello) and Howard Jeffries Jr. (Jason Robards Sr.). She's a working-class Read More

Die Sklavenkoenigin

Crew: Director

Actors: María Corda, Adelqui Millar, Arlette Marchal, Oscar Beregi, Sr.

Synopsis: Filmed in Germany in 1924, Michael Curtiz' Die Slavenkoenigen was intended for an American release that same year, under the title Moon of Israel. That release was suppressed by Cecil B. DeMille, who worried that his own The Ten Commandments would be compared unfavorably to the German film (By the Read More

Samson und Delila

Crew: Costume Designer

Sodom and Gomorrah

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Slezak

Synopsis: This epic Austrian production was credited to Michael Kertesz, who became better known as Michael Curtiz. It was also the screen debut of Walter Slezak. Mary Conway (Lucy Doraine) agrees to marry the wealthy Jackson Harber (George Reimers) to save her mother (Erika Wagner) from a forgery charge. Read More

Az Ezredes

Crew: Director