Curt Goetz, born Kurt Walter Götz, was a Swiss German writer, actor and film director. Curt Goetz was regarded as one of the most brilliant comedy writers of his time in the German-speaking world. Together with his wife Valérie von Martens he acted in his own plays and also filmed them. He was a distant relative of the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, with whom he was often compared.
Life and work
Kurt Walter Götz was born in Mainz, Germany as the son of the Swiss wine examiner Bernhard Götz, and his German wife of Italian and French descent, Selma. His father died in 1890. His mother then went with the two-year-old Curt to Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, where she managed a private clinic. In 1906 he completed the City High School in Halle, where he had played Franz Moor in The Robbers by Schiller. His mother remarried, and his stepfather encouraged and financed his first steps in the theatre. He studied acting under the Berlin actor Emanuel Reicher, and in 1907 he made his stage debut at the Stadttheater in Rostock. In Rostock, he also wrote his first sketches for the stage. He then played at theatres in Nuremberg and then went to Berlin. In 1912 he played the lead in the silent movie Black Blood, directed by Harry Piel. In 1914 he married Erna Nitter, whom he divorced in 1917. Goetz continued acting in silent movies, mainly thrillers, for example, Ich möchte kein Mann sein, directed by Ernst Lubitsch in 1918. One of his colleagues from that time was the actor Max Landa. In 1923 he married Valérie von Martens, whom he had got to know while acting in Vienna, in Berlin. He started going on tour with Valérie, acting with her in his own productions. In 1939 he went to Hollywood to study film-making, and decided to remain there, along with Valérie, when war broke out. He worked with the director Reinhold Schunzel, among others, and several of his comedies were turned into films. Goetz obtained a contract with MGM and worked on a number of film scripts. He and Valérie bought a chicken-farm in Van Nuys, California and proceeded to breed chickens. In California Goetz drafted his tale Tatjana and a new version of his Hokuspokus. He also re-worked an older play into The House in Montevideo, which he successfully produced in the Playhouse Theatre on Broadway in 1945. They returned to Europe in 1945, living in Switzerland by Lake Thun, where Goetz wrote some successful novels. The couple later moved to Liechtenstein. He died in Grabs, St. Gallen, on September 12, 1960.
Works
The following lists a selection of his works that were published in German.
Plays
Der Lampenschirm
Nachtbeleuchtung 5 Einakter: Nachtbeleuchtung, Lohengrin, Tobby, Minna Magdalena, Der fliegende Geheimrat
Menagerie 4 Einakter: Der Spatz vom Dache, Die Taube in der Hand, Der Hund im Hirn, Der Hahn im Korb
Ingeborg
Die tote Tante und andere Begebenheiten 3 Einakter: Der Mörder, Das Märchen, Die tote Tante
Hokuspokus
Der Lügner und die Nonne
Frauenarzt Dr. med. Hiob Prätorius
Das Haus in Montevideo
Hokuspokus
Dr. med. Hiob Prätorius
Nichts Neues in Hollywood
Miniaturen 3 Einakter: Die Rache, Herbst, Die Kommode
Seifenblasen 3 Einakter: Ausbruch des Weltfriedens, Die Bacarole, Die Bärengeschichte
