The Reading Chair: “Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film” by Alan K. Rode

In which we consider Alan K. Rode’s immensely entertaining life of one Golden Age Hollywood’s best directors and how the crown of “auteurism” somehow escaped him.

Michael Curtiz directed so many Golden Age Hollywood classics — The Adventures of Robin Hood, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and, most famously, Casablanca — that most so-called auteurs would turn…