Edgar G. Ulmer
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Edgar G. Ulmer (September 17, 1904 – September 30, 1972) was a Austrian-American film director. He is mostly remembered for the movies The Black Cat (1934) and Detour (1945). These stylish and eccentric works have achieved cult status, but Ulmer's other films remain relatively unknown.
Ulmer was born in Olomouc, in today's Czech Republic. As a young man he lived in Vienna, where he worked as a stage actor and set designer while studying architecture and philosophy. He did set design for Max Reinhardt's theater, served his apprenticeship with F. W. Murnau, and worked with directors including Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and Eugen Schüfftan, inventor of the famous Schüfftan process. He also claimed to have worked on Metropolis (1927), M (1931) and Der Golem (1920) but there is no supporting evidence for this. Ulmer came to Hollywood with Murnau in 1926 to assist with the art direction on Sunrise (1927). In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, he also recalled making two-reel westerns in Hollywood around this time. The Black Cat (1934), starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, is an early example of Ulmer's striking visual style.
Ulmer's career was spent mostly at Poverty Row studios. After an early success at Universal with The Black Cat, Ulmer, for both personal reasons and a desire for creative independence, left the major studios behind. He specialized first in "ethnic films", notably four in Yiddish. The best-known of the Yiddish films is Green Fields (1937), co-directed with Jacob Ben-Ami. Ulmer then found a niche making melodramas on tiny budgets and with often unpromising scripts and actors for Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC).
Through the rest of his career, Ulmer worked mostly on low-budget films in America and Europe. In the 40s he did get a chance to direct two films with larger budgets, Ruthless (1948) and The Strange Woman (1946). The latter is an example of Ulmer at his best, featuring a strong performance by Hedy Lamarr. Detour (1945) has achieved considerable acclaim as a seminal example of film noir, and was selected by the Library of Congress as one of the first group of 100 films worthy of special preservation efforts. Wife Shirley Ulmer acted as script supervisor on nearly all of her husband's films from 1934 on.
He directed his last film, The Cavern (1964) in Italy. He died in 1972 in Woodland Hills, California after a crippling stroke.
In 2005, after months and months of digging in various archives, Bernd Herzogenrath finally uncovered the address where Ulmer was born in Olomouc. In 1904, the address was "Resselgasse 1, Ort Neugasse". Today, the name is Resslova 1, in the part of town now called ‘Nová ulice’. A memorial plaque, designed by artist Bohumil Teplý, commemorating Ulmer's birth home was unveiled on 17 September 2006, on the occasion of Ulmerfest 2006 - the first academic conference devoted to Ulmer's work (see link). His daughter Arianné Ulmer-Cipes and her family were present at the event.
[edit] References
- Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It (New York: Knopf, 1997)
[edit] Selected film works
as set designer:
- Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920)
- Sodom und Gomorrha (1922)
- Metropolis (1927)
- M (1931)
as producer:
- Menschen am Sonntag (1929)
as director:
- Ruthless (1948)
- The Strange Woman (1947)
- Strange Illusion (1945)
- The Black Cat (1934)
- Detour (1945)
- Moon Over Harlem (1939)
- Bluebeard (1944)
- The Man From Planet X (1951)
