Curtis Bernhardt | German-American Film Director & Producer | Britannica (2025)

Curtis Bernhardt (born April 15, 1899, Worms, Germany—died February 22, 1981, Pacific Palisades, California, U.S.) was a German-born film director who specialized in movies that were geared toward a female audience.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

Early years in Hollywood

Bernhardt, who was Jewish, had already directed a dozen films in his native Germany when an arrest by the Gestapo in 1934 persuaded him to move to France. He made one film there before heading to England, where he directed The Beloved Vagabond (1936) and produced The Dictator (1935; also released as Loves of the Dictator). He returned to Paris for a few years before a contract with Warner Brothers took him to Hollywood in 1940. His first films featured the studio’s strongest female leads. My Love Came Back (1940) was a vehicle for Olivia de Havilland, and Lady with Red Hair (1940) was a biopic with Miriam Hopkins as famed actress Mrs. Leslie Carter, though it was Claude Rains as David Belasco who stole the film.

In 1941 Bernhardt directed Million Dollar Baby, a romance starring Ronald Reagan and Priscilla Lane. Reagan also appeared in Juke Girl (1942), playing, with Ann Sheridan, exploited fruit pickers charged unjustly with murder. On loan to Paramount, Bernhardt made Happy Go Lucky (1943), a pleasant though not very memorable musical featuring Dick Powell, Mary Martin, and Betty Hutton. Of more interest was the suspenseful Conflict (1945), which starred Humphrey Bogart in an overly contrived plot that nonetheless allowed Bernhardt to create moody visuals. My Reputation (1946) was arguably the best film of his career to that time, an elegant soap opera with Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent.

Devotion (1946), a fanciful account of the lives of the Brontë sisters—with de Havilland and Ida Lupino as Charlotte and Emily, respectively—had been filmed earlier than Conflict but was held back for nearly three years before being released. A Stolen Life (1946) is more convincing, with Bette Davis portraying twin sisters who both love Glenn Ford. In 1947 Bernhardt directed Possessed, featuring Joan Crawford in an Academy Award-nominated turn as a mentally unstable woman.

Bernhardt subsequently left Warner Brothers and signed with MGM, where his first film was the offbeat noir High Wall (1947), in which Audrey Totter is cast against type as a psychiatrist who tries to help amnesia victim Robert Taylor clear himself of a murder charge. He then directed The Doctor and the Girl (1949), with Ford and Gloria DeHaven.

1950s and ’60s

Payment on Demand (1951) was a well-mounted drama about the marital problems of a couple (played by Davis and Barry Sullivan), with elaborate flashbacks building suspense. Sirocco (1951), a solid period action film, featured Bogart as a gunrunner, while The Blue Veil (1951) was a soap opera of a high order, centring on a nurse (Jane Wyman) who sets aside her own desires to serve a variety of patients over a lifetime; this nearly forgotten role earned Wyman an Academy Award nomination. The Merry Widow (1952), with Lana Turner, was notable for its lavish production values.

Bernhardt got his chance to work with another strong female star with Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), a musical that featured Rita Hayworth as the prostitute from W. Somerset Maugham’s short story Rain. Although Hayworth was at less than her best, she held her own in this oft-filmed role. Beau Brummell (1954) offered Stewart Granger in the title role, with Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Morley, and Peter Ustinov on hand to lend colour to this lavish MGM costume drama. Interrupted Melody (1955) was a solid biopic about Australian Marjorie Lawrence, with Eleanor Parker in an Oscar-nominated performance as the polio-stricken opera star.

Gaby (1956) was a middling remake of Waterloo Bridge, starring Leslie Caron and John Kerr. It proved to be Bernhardt’s last Hollywood picture for many years. He resurfaced in 1960 with the West German production Stephanie in Rio, which was followed two years later by the American-Italian movie Damon and Pythias. Kisses for My President (1964) was his last film, an overlong but occasionally funny yarn about a woman (Polly Bergen) who is the first to become a U.S. president and her struggles with the office and her family, especially her husband (Fred MacMurray). Although not the sort of movie Bernhardt built his reputation on, it was a customarily professional job by a onetime master of “women’s pictures.” Suffering from illness, Bernhardt retired after Kisses for My President, though he lived for another 17 years.