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Tyrannical and brilliant, director Michael Curtiz created film legends out of mere stars, and turned movies into myth. Here are some of his greatest films.

When movie enthusiasts think of legendary director Michael Curtiz, the first thing that pops into their mind is Casablanca (1942), consistently named to, and occasionally topping, lists of the greatest films of all time. Although if we’re being honest, most people think of it as a Humphrey Bogart movie. The same could be said of Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). These are known for their stars, James Cagney, and Errol Flynn, the latter of whom Curtiz put on the map with Captain Blood (1935). In the director’s hands, actors and characters merged into a mythology which exceeded mere signature roles, becoming universal symbols.

Curtiz worked in the motion picture business from its infancy, but began in the theater, graduating Budapest’s...

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By Fred Blosser

Although released in February 1942, Warner Brothers’ wartime drama “Captains of the Clouds” was filmed several months earlier, when America’s official stance toward the crisis in Europe, prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, remained one of isolationism. As the thinking went, the United States was better off conserving its own human and industrial resources as it continued to stagger back from the Great Depression. Let the combatants overseas fight it out between themselves.

Aware of the movies’ enormous power to sway public opinion, watchdogs in Congress — and in the industry itself — threatened severe action should any studio question the prevailing wisdom. Of a different mind and appalled by Nazi fascism, Harry and Jack Warner produced several movies that shrewdly challenged the restrictions by circumventing them. Thus the villains in Warners’ “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” (1939) were Nazi agents subverting freedom not in faraway Europe,...

Michael Curtiz’s flashy and splashy wartime morale booster began as a pre-Pearl Harbor show of support of our Canadian friends’ contribution to the war effort. A vehicle for James Cagney, its script is a trifle about bush pilots competing for a woman and then showing The Right Stuff when it comes time to join up to fight. Cagney’s ‘bad boy’ act is always good, but what slays us now are the stunning Technicolor images filmed in and over the vast Canadian forest country with its endless crystal clear lakes. The aerial work in 3-Strip Technicolor is breathtaking, especially in this full new digital restoration.

Captains of the Clouds

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1942 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 113 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date March 22, 2022 / 21.99

Starring: James Cagney, Dennis Morgan, Brenda Marshall, Alan Hale, George Tobias, Reginald Gardiner, Air Marshal W.A. Bishop, Reginald Denny, Russell Arms, Paul Cavanagh, Clem Bevans,...

“Don’t try to fly through the clouds – fly over ’em.”

James Cagney in Captains Of The Clouds (1942) will be available on Blu-ray March 22nd from Warner Archive. It can be purchased at the Warner Archive Amazon Store.

The incomparable James Cagney stars with Dennis Morgan, Brenda Marshall and Alan Hale in his first Technicolor feature, once again reunited with Warner Bros.’ legendary Michael Curtiz at the helm. Cagney portrays pilot Brian MacLean, a hot-shot Canadian pilot who is just as adept at stealing flying jobs from his competition as he is at stealing their girlfriend’s hearts. But when he hears a speech by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill about the looming Nazi threat, MacLean enlists in the Royal Canadian Air Force . . . only to find his superior is a man from whom he stole both a job and a girl–and to encounter action and adventure in aerial combat over the North Atlantic.

Grand action entertainment bursts forth on the high seas, showing us how much production value Golden Hollywood could lavish on an exciting, artful swashbuckler. Errol Flynn is at his glorious best, backed by greats like Flora Robson, Henry Daniell and Claude Rains in fine form. The special effects and full-sized ship sets impress in ways that computer generated images never will. And the rousing music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold seals the deal — the term ‘Timeless Classic’ was invented for marvels like this.

The Sea Hawk

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1940 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 127 min. / Street Date December 18, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Claude Rains, Donald Crisp, Flora Robson, Alan Hale, Henry Daniell, Una O’Connor, James Stephenson, Gilbert Roland, William Lundigan, Julien Mitchell, Montagu Love, J.M. Kerrigan, David Bruce, Fritz Leiber, Francis McDonald, Pedro de Cordoba, Ian Keith, Jack La Rue, Halliwell Hobbes, Victor Varconi,...

Is this the filmic birth of both the wartime Oss and the SuperSpy genre? State department diplomat trainee Joel McCrea weds refugee Brenda Marshall, not realizing that she has gained her freedom by volunteering to become a Nazi spy. Released just as WW2 broke out but filmed and produced earlier, Warners’ production faced stiff political pressure from an isolationist Washington. Ever heard the phrase ‘premature anti-Nazi?’ Here there be patriots.

Espionage Agent

DVD

The Warner Archive Collection

1939 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date May 1, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Joel McCrea, Brenda Marshall, Jeffrey Lynn, George Bancroft, Stanley Ridges, James Stephenson, Martin Kosleck, Rudolph Anders, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Egon Brecher, Nana Bryant, William Hopper, Glenn Langan, Chris-Pin Martin, George Reeves.

Cinematography: Charles Rosher

Film Editor: Ralph Dawson

Original Music: Adolph Deutsch

Written by Warren Duff, Michael Fessier, Frank Donoghue, James Hilton, story by Robert Henry Buckner

Produced by Louis B.

Canadian-born actress Alexis Smith (born 1921) would have turned 96 years old today, June 8. Turner Classic Movies is celebrating her birthday by presenting nine of her movies, mostly during her time as a Warner Bros. contract player. In addition to Michael Curtiz's box office hit Night and Day, a highly fictionalized Cole Porter biopic starring Cary Grant as a heterosexual version of the famed gay composer. Night and Day is being shown as part of TCM's Gay Pride Month celebration. Alexis Smith died on June 9, 1993, the day after she turned 72. After her film career petered out in the 1950s, she went on to receive acclaim on the Broadway stage, making sporadic film appearances all the way to the year of her death. Smith's last film appearance was in a minor supporting role in Martin Scorsese's overly genteel period drama The Age of Innocence (1993), starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder.

Virginia Bruce: MGM actress ca. 1935. Virginia Bruce movies on TCM: Actress was the cherry on 'The Great Ziegfeld' wedding cake Unfortunately, Turner Classic Movies has chosen not to feature any non-Hollywood stars – or any out-and-out silent film stars – in its 2015 “Summer Under the Stars” series.* On the other hand, TCM has come up with several unusual inclusions, e.g., Lee J. Cobb, Warren Oates, Mae Clarke, and today, Aug. 25, Virginia Bruce. A second-rank MGM leading lady in the 1930s, the Minneapolis-born Virginia Bruce is little remembered today despite her more than 70 feature films in a career that spanned two decades, from the dawn of the talkie era to the dawn of the TV era, in addition to a handful of comebacks going all the way to 1981 – the dawn of the personal computer era. Career highlights were few and not all that bright. Examples range from playing the...

'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl': Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow. 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' review: Mostly an enjoyable romp (Oscar Movie Series) Pirate movies were a Hollywood staple for about three decades, from the mid-'20s (The Sea Hawk, The Black Pirate) to the mid-to-late '50s (Moonfleet, The Buccaneer), when the genre, by then mostly relegated to B films, began to die down. Sporadic resurrections in the '80s and '90s turned out to be critical and commercial bombs (Pirates, Cutthroat Island), something that didn't bode well for the Walt Disney Company's $140 million-budgeted film "adaptation" of one of their theme-park rides. But Neptune's mood has apparently improved with the arrival of the new century. He smiled – grinned would be a more appropriate word – on the Gore Verbinski-directed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,...

Continuing the tradition of brisk pre-Code films, Joel McCrea’s occasional appearances in Gregory La Cava’s 1933 Bed of Roses serve as strange moral medium between the wanton hedonism of the lead Constance Bennett and the upcoming censorship of the era. Screenwriter Wanda Tuchock’s story of jail-hopping prostitutes-on-the-side seems like a victory lap for vice-ridden cinematic world of the early 30s, including flippant talk of suicide, heavily implied sex, liberal boozing, and poking fun at previous attempts of government sponsored moral judgment (“The Eighteenth Amendment is a law, and as a law should be enforced until it stops being a law”). The film begins in a prison as Bennett’s Lorry Evans and partner-in-crime Minnie (Pert Kelton) walk out of their cells, trash-talking life outside in radio-ready cadence and street-ready slang. They have short hair, hats tipped on the side of their head (I assume gravity worked differently in...

The Sea Hawk

Written by Howard Koch and Seton I. Miller

Directed by Michael Curtiz

U.S.A., 1940

Under the Warner Brothers banner, Errol Flynn leaps, bounds and rouses hearts to the tune of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s winning score and the direction of taskmaster Michael Curtiz. Following on the coattails of Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), it’s easy to dismiss The Sea Hawk (1940) as just a studio swashbuckler, another outing of a tried and true formula that Bosley Crowther called, “an overdressed ‘spectacle’ film which derives much more from the sword than the pen.” Admittedly, this loose adaptation owes more to the seafaring adventures of Sir Francis Drake than the original Rafael Sabatini novel of the same name, but it owes even more to the politics surrounding its production. On closer examination, the film stands as a testament not only to Flynn in his booming...

Joan Fontaine movies: ‘This Above All,’ ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (photo: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ publicity image) (See previous post: “Joan Fontaine Today.”) Also tonight on Turner Classic Movies, Joan Fontaine can be seen in today’s lone TCM premiere, the flag-waving 20th Century Fox release The Above All (1942), with Fontaine as an aristocratic (but socially conscious) English Rose named Prudence Cathaway (Fontaine was born to British parents in Japan) and Fox’s top male star, Tyrone Power, as her Awol romantic interest. This Above All was directed by Anatole Litvak, who would guide Olivia de Havilland in the major box-office hit The Snake Pit (1948), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod. In Max Ophüls’ darkly romantic Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Fontaine delivers not only what is probably the greatest performance of her career, but also one of the greatest movie performances ever. Letter from an Unknown Woman...

Son of a bitch! George Brent and other Warner Bros. stars forget their lines (photo: George Brent ca. 1940) The Warner Bros. outtakes from the studio’s 1939 and 1940 productions (see below) feature a whole array of movie stars and supporting players not getting things quite right while the cameras were rolling. Perhaps the biggest "star" — i.e., the one featured the most — in the montage is George Brent, who curses right and left after not getting his lines right in several scenes. But not to worry; "son of a bitch" is the strongest exclamation we get to hear. (I’m assuming stronger fare is to be found in the outtakes’ outtakes.) Besides George Brent, the Warner Bros. bloopers montage has Paul Muni joking around while forgetting his lines during the making of We Are Not Alone; Miriam Hopkins having her dramatic moment in The Old Maid ruined by a young maid...

Edmund Goulding's The Constant Nymph, a 1943 romantic drama starring Oscar nominee Joan Fontaine, Charles Boyer, and Alexis Smith, will be shown tonight on Turner Classic Movies at 5 p.m. Pt as part of TCM's tribute to the Library of Congress Film Archive. Tied up in legal complications for decades, The Constant Nymph will have its TCM premiere tonight. [In August 2010, The Constant Nymph had a rare screening at the Library of Congress' Packard Campus.] According to Matthew Kennedy's Edmund Goulding biography Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, Jack Warner initially considered Errol Flynn for the role of the British music teacher. Goulding wanted either Robert Donat or Leslie Howard for the part, but eventually gave up on the British-ness of the music teacher and settled on by then two-time Best Actor Oscar nominee Charles Boyer. Joan Fontaine's role was initially supposed to have gone to Joan Leslie, but Goulding wasn't happy with that choice. Through then-husband Brian Aherne, who had played the music teacher in the 1934 version,...

Jada Pinkett Smith returns as Christina Hawthorne for a second season of HawthoRNe (the Rn in the name and title standing for registered nurse). The show continues to follows the same formula established in the first season while shaking things up. The returning cast includes: Jada Pinkett Smith as Christina Hawthorne (Smith also has producer creds), Suleka Mathew as Bobbie Jackson, Hannah Hodson as Camille Hawthorne (Christina.s daughter), Michael Vartan as Dr. Tom Wakefield, David Julian Hirsh as Ray Stein, Vanessa Lengies as Kelly Epson, Christina Moore as Candy Sullivan, James Morrison as John Morrissey, Adam Rayner as Dr. Steve Shaw and Anne Ramsey as Dr. Brenda Marshall. The first episode sees the hospital Richmond Trinity has closed...