(1917) Goetz was born in
Mainz,
Germany the son of Swiss wine examiner Bernhard Götz and his German wife of Italian-French descent, Selma (born Rocco). His father died in 1890. Two-year-old Curt and his mother then moved to
Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, where she managed a private clinic. In 1906 Goetz graduated from City High School in Halle, where he played Franz Moor in
The Robbers by
Schiller. His mother remarried, and his stepfather encouraged and financed Goetz's first steps in the theatre. He studied acting under Berlin's
Emanuel Reicher. In 1907 he made his stage debut at the Stadttheater in
Rostock, and wrote his first sketches for the stage. He played at theatres in
Nuremberg, 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; they divorced in 1917. He continued acting in silent movies, mainly comedies such as
Ich möchte kein Mann sein (''I Don't Want To Be A Man,'' 1918), directed by
Ernst Lubitsch. One of his colleagues from that time was actor
Max Landa. In 1923 he married
Valérie von Martens in Berlin, whom he met while acting in
Vienna, and they toured together, acting in his own productions. In 1939 he went to Hollywood to study filmmaking, and decided to remain there, with Valérie, when war broke out. He worked with director Reinhold Schunzel and others, and several of his comedies become films. He was signed by MGM and worked on a number of film scripts. He and Valérie bought a farm in
Van Nuys, California, where they successfully bred chickens. In California, Goetz drafted his tale
Tatjana and a new version of his
Hokuspokus. He also reworked an older play into
The House in Montevideo, which he successfully produced in Broadway's Playhouse Theatre in 1945. The Goetzes returned to Europe in 1945, living in Switzerland by
Lake Thun (Goetz had Swiss nationality from birth), where he wrote some successful novels. They later moved to
Liechtenstein. Goetz died in
Grabs,
St. Gallen, on 12 September 1960. == Works (originally published in German) ==