
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 It was adapted from an unpublished play, Everybody Comes to Rick's, written by Murray Bennett and Joan Alison.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
8.1In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
Casablanca
1943
7.1It 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
7.6Mortimer 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
5.7A 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
6.8A beautiful but vain woman who rejects the love of her older husband must face the loss of her youth and beauty.
Mr. Skeffington
1944
6.2A young actress flirts demurely with a swinging Manhattan bachelor who thinks he has it made.
The Tender Trap
1955
Film credits
1990s · 3 titles
8.0Based on the first centenary of the largest exporter of films in the world, that is Hollywood, is the story told by its protagonists, actors and writers and other people who made life in this business, interspersing images of famous movies.
The First 100 Years: A Celebration of American Movies
1995
6.9A documentary about the making of the classic film "Casablanca."
You Must Remember This: A Tribute to 'Casablanca'
1992
Documentary by Eckhart Schmidt.
Epstein in Hollywood - Julius J. Epstein Talks
1994
Behind the camera
8.1In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
Casablanca
1943
7.1It 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
7.6Mortimer 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
5.7A 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
6.8A beautiful but vain woman who rejects the love of her older husband must face the loss of her youth and beauty.
Mr. Skeffington
1944
6.8A beautiful but vain woman who rejects the love of her older husband must face the loss of her youth and beauty.
Mr. Skeffington
1944
6.2A young actress flirts demurely with a swinging Manhattan bachelor who thinks he has it made.
The Tender Trap
1955
6.4A 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
6.1Reporter 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
7.0A 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
6.8When 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
4.5The 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
6.1The 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
6.9An aging actress has a hard time admitting she is too old to play the ingenue role anymore.
Forever Female
1953
6.5Ryevsk, 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
5.2After 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
5.2After 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
7.0A film of the life of the renowned musical composer, playwright, actor, dancer and singer George M. Cohan.
Yankee Doodle Dandy
1942
6.7While visiting her father, an American teenage girl is thrown into London society during its final "Debutante Season."
The Reluctant Debutante
1958
5.3A 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
7.0An 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
6.7Georgia 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
5.7Three 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
5.2An 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
6.4Charley 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
6.3Nan 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
6.7Almost 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
6.2A 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
7.0The 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
5.8A 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
5.8A 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
7.3A con man and his partner inherit a dead gangster's precocious daughter.
Little Big Shot
1935
5.3An aspiring playwright finds himself an overnight Broadway success.
No Time for Comedy
1940
6.6Musician 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
6.1Ellen 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
6.1Ellen 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
5.5In 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
6.9Biff 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
6.4A 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
5.7A failed actor finds success as a radio singer.
I Live for Love
1935


