Julius J. Epstein

Writing

Julius J. Epstein

Born — Died

1909-08-22 — 2000-12-30

Place of birth

New York City, New York, USA

Known for

Writing

Credits

45 titles

Julius J. Epstein (August 22, 1909 – December 30, 2000) was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, best remembered for his screenplay, written with his twin brother, Philip, and Howard E. Koch, of the film Casablanca (1942), for which the writers won an Academy Award. It was adapted from an unpublished play, Everybody Comes to Rick's, written by Murray Bennett and Joan Alison. His identical twin died in 1952, a loss that he felt for the rest of his life. He continued writing, receiving two more Oscar nominations. In 1998, he received a Los Angeles Film Critics Association career achievement award. His credits included Four Daughters (1938) for which he received his first Oscar nom…

Known for

Casablanca poster
8.1

In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

Casablanca

1943

Cross of Iron poster
7.1

It is 1943, and the German army—ravaged and demoralised—is hastily retreating from the Russian front. In the midst of the madness, conflict brews between the aristocratic yet ultimately pusillanimous Captain Stransky and the courageous Corporal Steiner. Stransky is the only man who believes that the Third Reich is still vastly superior to the Russian army. However, within his pompous persona lies a quivering coward who longs for the Iron Cross so that he can return to Berlin a hero. Steiner, on the other hand is cynical, defiantly non-conformist and more concerned with the safety of his own men rather than the horde of military decorations offered to him by his superiors.

Cross of Iron

1977

Arsenic and Old Lace poster
7.6

Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!

Arsenic and Old Lace

1944

Tall Story poster
5.7

A young insecure college sportsman is in trouble. He wants to marry his very straightforward girlfriend, but has no money. When he is offered a bribe to fix a game, he is torn even more about the matter.

Tall Story

1960

Mr. Skeffington poster
6.8

A beautiful but vain woman who rejects the love of her older husband must face the loss of her youth and beauty.

Mr. Skeffington

1944

The Tender Trap poster
6.2

A young actress flirts demurely with a swinging Manhattan bachelor who thinks he has it made.

The Tender Trap

1955

Film credits

Behind the camera

Casablanca poster
8.1

In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.

Casablanca

1943

Cross of Iron poster
7.1

It is 1943, and the German army—ravaged and demoralised—is hastily retreating from the Russian front. In the midst of the madness, conflict brews between the aristocratic yet ultimately pusillanimous Captain Stransky and the courageous Corporal Steiner. Stransky is the only man who believes that the Third Reich is still vastly superior to the Russian army. However, within his pompous persona lies a quivering coward who longs for the Iron Cross so that he can return to Berlin a hero. Steiner, on the other hand is cynical, defiantly non-conformist and more concerned with the safety of his own men rather than the horde of military decorations offered to him by his superiors.

Cross of Iron

1977

Arsenic and Old Lace poster
7.6

Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!

Arsenic and Old Lace

1944

Tall Story poster
5.7

A young insecure college sportsman is in trouble. He wants to marry his very straightforward girlfriend, but has no money. When he is offered a bribe to fix a game, he is torn even more about the matter.

Tall Story

1960

Mr. Skeffington poster
6.8

A beautiful but vain woman who rejects the love of her older husband must face the loss of her youth and beauty.

Mr. Skeffington

1944

Mr. Skeffington poster
6.8

A beautiful but vain woman who rejects the love of her older husband must face the loss of her youth and beauty.

Mr. Skeffington

1944

The Tender Trap poster
6.2

A young actress flirts demurely with a swinging Manhattan bachelor who thinks he has it made.

The Tender Trap

1955

Light in the Piazza poster
6.4

A young American woman traveling in Italy with her mother is slender, blonde, beautiful and there is something charmingly naive about her. Fabrizio Naccarelli seems to always know where the mother and daughter will sightsee next. Signor Naccarelli is just as concerned about where this will lead as Mrs. Johnson is. Then she starts thinking that perhaps her daughter can be a wife of a wealthy young man in a society where all she has to do is look beautiful. What happens if Signor Naccarelli finds out who his prospective daughter-in-law really is?

Light in the Piazza

1962

The Last Time I Saw Paris poster
6.1

Reporter Charles Wills, in Paris to cover the end of World War II, falls for the beautiful Helen Ellswirth following a brief flirtation with her sister, Marion. After he and Helen marry, Charles pursues his novelistic ambition while supporting his new bride with a deadening job at a newspaper wire service. But when an old investment suddenly makes the family wealthy, their marriage begins to unravel — until a sudden tragedy changes everything.

The Last Time I Saw Paris

1954

The Bride Came C.O.D. poster
7.0

A financially-strapped charter pilot hires himself to an oil tycoon to kidnap his madcap daughter and prevent her from marrying a vapid band leader.

The Bride Came C.O.D.

1941

Send Me No Flowers poster
6.8

When a hypochondriac assumes that he is dying, he makes an elaborate plan to ensure his wife's happiness. However, trouble ensues when she misunderstands his intentions.

Send Me No Flowers

1964

The Male Animal poster
4.5

The trustees of Midwestern University have forced three teachers out of their jobs for being suspected communists. Trustee Ed Keller has also threatened mild mannered English Professor Tommy Turner, because he plans to read a controversial piece of prose in class. Tommy is upset that his wife Ellen also suggested he not read the passage. Meanwhile, Ellen's old boyfriend, the football player Joe Ferguson, comes to visit for the homecoming weekend. He takes Ellen out dancing after the football rally, causing Tommy to worry that he will lose her to Joe.

The Male Animal

1942

Young at Heart poster
6.1

The lives and romances of three sisters in a musical family; the youngest daughter's life is complicated by the subsequent arrival of a charming composer and a cynical music arranger.

Young at Heart

1954

Forever Female poster
6.9

An aging actress has a hard time admitting she is too old to play the ingenue role anymore.

Forever Female

1953

The Brothers Karamazov poster
6.5

Ryevsk, Russia, 1870. Tensions abound in the Karamazov family. Fyodor is a wealthy libertine who holds his purse strings tightly. His four grown sons include Dmitri, the eldest, an elegant officer, always broke and at odds with his father, betrothed to Katya, herself lovely and rich. The other brothers include a sterile aesthete, a factotum who is a bastard, and a monk. Family tensions erupt when Dmitri falls in love with one of his father's mistresses, the coquette Grushenka. Two brothers see Dmitri's jealousy of their father as an opportunity to inherit sooner. Acts of violence lead to the story's conclusion: trials of honor, conscience, forgiveness, and redemption.

The Brothers Karamazov

1958

Take a Giant Step poster
5.2

After African-American teenager Spence Scott gets expelled from his private school for arguing with a teacher, he turns to his grandmother for advice. Spence, who lives in a genteel white area and has mostly white friends, feels like an outsider. He visits a bar in a black neighborhood, where he meets a few prostitutes, which doesn't help. Eventually, Spence starts a friendship with the housekeeper, Christine, who tells him her own difficult story.

Take a Giant Step

1959

Take a Giant Step poster
5.2

After African-American teenager Spence Scott gets expelled from his private school for arguing with a teacher, he turns to his grandmother for advice. Spence, who lives in a genteel white area and has mostly white friends, feels like an outsider. He visits a bar in a black neighborhood, where he meets a few prostitutes, which doesn't help. Eventually, Spence starts a friendship with the housekeeper, Christine, who tells him her own difficult story.

Take a Giant Step

1959

Yankee Doodle Dandy poster
7.0

A film of the life of the renowned musical composer, playwright, actor, dancer and singer George M. Cohan.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

1942

The Reluctant Debutante poster
6.7

While visiting her father, an American teenage girl is thrown into London society during its final "Debutante Season."

The Reluctant Debutante

1958

Take Care of My Little Girl poster
5.3

A young woman enters college and learns some hard truths about sorority life, including snobbery and the cruelty of hazing.

Take Care of My Little Girl

1951

The Man Who Came to Dinner poster
7.0

An acerbic critic wreaks havoc when a hip injury forces him to move in indefinitely with a Midwestern family.

The Man Who Came to Dinner

1941

Romance on the High Seas poster
6.7

Georgia Garrett is sent by jealous wife Elvira Kent on an ocean cruise to masquerade as herself while she secretly stays home to catch her husband cheating. Meanwhile equally suspicious husband Michael Kent has sent a private eye on the same cruise to catch his wife cheating. Love and confusion ensues along with plenty of musical numbers.

Romance on the High Seas

1948

Kiss Them for Me poster
5.7

Three navy war heroes are booked on a morale-building "vacation" in San Francisco. Once they manage to elude their ulcerated public relations officer, the trio throw a wild party with plenty of pretty girls.

Kiss Them for Me

1957

Once Is Not Enough poster
5.2

An over-the-hill movie producer marries a wealthy, spiteful woman and closeted lesbian just to please his spoiled daughter who then, in an attempt to spite him, seduces both a wealthy playboy and a local screenwriter.

Once Is Not Enough

1975

House Calls poster
6.4

Charley is a surgeon who's recently lost his wife; he embarks on a tragicomic romantic quest with one woman after another until he meets up with Ann, a singular woman, closer to his own age, who immediately and unexpectedly captures his heart.

House Calls

1978

Daughters Courageous poster
6.3

Nan Masters, a single mother living with her four marriageable daughters, plans to marry Sam Sloane, businessman. Out of the blue her first husband Jim returns after deserting the family 20 years earlier. The worldly wanderer Jim gets a cool family reception at first but his warm personality gradually wins the affections of his four daughters. In fact, youngest daughter Buff, who has her eye on a maverick of her own in Gabriel Lopez, is pleased when Jim grants his stamp of approval on her relationship. Buff plans to elope with Gabriel on her mother's wedding day, but 'unpredictable' is Gabriel's middle name.

Daughters Courageous

1939

Fanny poster
6.7

Almost 19-year-old Marius feels himself in a rut in Marseille, his life planned for him by his cafe'-owning father, and he longs for the sea. The night before he is to leave on a 5-year voyage, Fanny, a girl he grew up with, reveals that she is in love with him, and he discovers that he is in love with her. He must choose between an exciting life at sea, and a boring life with the woman he loves. And Fanny must choose between keeping the man she loves, and letting him live the life he seems to want.

Fanny

1961

Return from the Ashes poster
6.2

A Jewish woman, Dr. Michele Wolf, interred in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII returns to her Paris home after the war's end. She's unaware that her husband, the handsome gigolo and chess master Stanislaw Pilgrin, has been having an affair with her stepdaughter Fabi in her absence.

Return from the Ashes

1965

Why We Fight: Divide and Conquer poster
7.0

The third film of Frank Capra's 'Why We Fight" propaganda film series, dealing with the Nazi conquest of Western Europe in 1940.

Why We Fight: Divide and Conquer

1943

Pete 'n' Tillie poster
5.8

A fun-loving bachelor woos and weds a secretary, but the bonds of this marriage aren't strong enough to stop his philandering from continuing.

Pete 'n' Tillie

1972

Pete 'n' Tillie poster
5.8

A fun-loving bachelor woos and weds a secretary, but the bonds of this marriage aren't strong enough to stop his philandering from continuing.

Pete 'n' Tillie

1972

Little Big Shot poster
7.3

A con man and his partner inherit a dead gangster's precocious daughter.

Little Big Shot

1935

No Time for Comedy poster
5.3

An aspiring playwright finds himself an overnight Broadway success.

No Time for Comedy

1940

Four Daughters poster
6.6

Musician Adam Lemp and his four equally musical daughters, Emma, Ann, Kay, and Thea, live happily together. Each daughter has an upstanding young man for whom she cares. However, the arrival of a cynical, slovenly young composer named Mickey Borden turns the household upside-down, and romantic and tragic complications ensue.

Four Daughters

1938

Any Wednesday poster
6.1

Ellen Gordon, a New York executive's mistress falls for the executive's young business associate when the young man is accidentally sent to use the apartment where the executive and his mistress get together every Wednesday. More complications arise when the executive's wife shows up with plans to redecorate the apartment.

Any Wednesday

1966

Any Wednesday poster
6.1

Ellen Gordon, a New York executive's mistress falls for the executive's young business associate when the young man is accidentally sent to use the apartment where the executive and his mistress get together every Wednesday. More complications arise when the executive's wife shows up with plans to redecorate the apartment.

Any Wednesday

1966

Four Wives poster
5.5

In this sequel to Four Daughters, Ann struggles to move on after the death of her husband as she falls in love with Felix, but on the day of her engagement discovers that she carries Mickey's child.

Four Wives

1939

The Strawberry Blonde poster
6.9

Biff Grimes is desperately in love with Virginia, but his best friend Hugo marries her and manipulates Biff into becoming involved in his somewhat nefarious businesses. Hugo appears to have stolen Biff's dreams, and Biff has to deal with the realisation that having what he wants and wanting what another has can be very different things.

The Strawberry Blonde

1941

Reuben, Reuben poster
6.4

A drunken Scottish poet who has not written a word in years feels compelled to regain control of his life and work after meeting a beautiful young woman.

Reuben, Reuben

1983

I Live for Love poster
5.7

A failed actor finds success as a radio singer.

I Live for Love

1935