1886–1962 · Hungarian-American film director, Casablanca and Mildred Pierce
Born Manó Kaminer in Budapest and known from 1905 as Kertész Mihály, Michael Curtiz had already directed 64 films in Europe when Warner Bros. brought him to Hollywood in 1926. He made 102 more there, among them Casablanca, Mildred Pierce and The Adventures of Robin Hood. His English never caught up with his eye. Time reported in 1940 that Warner jokers hung signs on his sets reading “English Broken Here” and “Curtiz Spoken Here,” and that he was “the butt of more Hollywood stories than Sam Goldwyn” — which is exactly how a joke first printed in 1889 came to be filed under his name, and then under Goldwyn’s.