Curtis Bernhardt | |
---|---|
Born |
Kurt Bernhardt April 15, 1899 Worms, Germany |
Died | February 22, 1981 Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, United States |
(aged 81)
Nationality | German |
Occupation | film director |
Curtis Bernhardt (15 April 1899 – 22 February 1981) was a German film director born in Worms, Germany, under the name Kurt Bernhardt. He trained as an actor in Germany, and performed on the stage, before starting as a film director in 1926. Other films include A Stolen Life (1946) and Sirocco (1951).
Bernhardt made films in Germany from 1925 until 1933, when he was forced to flee the Nazi regime — who briefly had him arrested — because he was Jewish. Bernhardt directed films in France and England before moving on to Hollywood to work for Warner Brothers in 1940. He produced and directed his last Hollywood picture, Kisses for My President (1964), about the nation's first female Chief Executive starring Polly Bergen and Fred MacMurray.
He is interred at Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, near his wife, Pearl Wellman Bernhardt.