Edgar G. Ulmer

Edgar G. Ulmer
Born (1904-09-17)September 17, 1904
Olomouc, Austria-Hungary
Died September 30, 1972(1972-09-30) (aged 68)
Woodland Hills, California
Occupation Film director, set designer

Edgar Georg Ulmer (September 17, 1904 – September 30, 1972) was a Jewish-Moravian,[1] Austrian-American film director. He is best remembered for the movies The Black Cat (1934). Detour (1945). and Club Havana (1945). These stylish and eccentric works have achieved cult status, whereas Ulmer's other films remain relatively unknown.

Career

Ulmer was born in Olomouc, in what is now the 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 cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, inventor of the Schüfftan process. He also claimed to have worked on Der Golem (1920), Metropolis (1927), and M (1931), but there is no evidence to support 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.[2]

The first feature he directed in North America, Damaged Lives (1933), is a low-budget exploitation film exposing the horrors of venereal disease. It was shot in Hollywood, with a medical reel provided by the American Social Hygiene Association, for the Canadian Social Health Council and premiered in Toronto.[3]

His next film, The Black Cat (1934), starring Béla Lugosi and Boris Karloff, was made for a major studio, Universal Pictures. Demonstrating the striking visual style that would be Ulmer's hallmark, the film was Universal's biggest hit of the season.[4] Ulmer, however, had begun an affair with Shirley Beatrice Kassler, who had been married since 1933 to independent producer Max Alexander, nephew of Universal studio head Carl Laemmle. Shirley's divorce in 1936 and her subsequent marriage to Ulmer the same year led to his being exiled from the major Hollywood studios. Ulmer would spend most of his directorial career making B movies at Poverty Row production houses.[5] His wife, now Shirley Ulmer, would act as script supervisor on nearly all of his films, and she wrote the screeenplays for several. Their daughter, Arianne, appeared as an extra in several of his films.

Memorial plaque devoted to Ulmer in Olomouc

Consigned to the fringes of the U.S. motion picture industry, Ulmer specialized first in "ethnic films," notably in Ukrainian—Natalka Poltavka (1937), Cossacks in Exile (1939)—and Yiddish—The Light Ahead (1939), Americaner Shadchen (1940).[6] The best-known of these ethnic films is the Yiddish Green Fields (1937), codirected with Jacob Ben-Ami. Ulmer eventually found a niche making melodramas on tiny budgets and with often unpromising scripts and actors for Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). His PRC thriller Detour (1945) has won considerable acclaim as a prime example of low-budget film noir, and it was selected by the Library of Congress among the first group of 100 American films worthy of special preservation efforts.

In 1947, Ulmer made Carnegie Hall with the help of conductor Fritz Reiner, godfather of the Ulmers' daughter, Arianné. The film features performances by many leading figures in classical music, including Reiner, Jascha Heifetz, Artur Rubinstein, Gregor Piatigorsky and Lily Pons.[7] Ulmer did get a chance to direct two films with substantial budgets, The Strange Woman (1946) and Ruthless (1948). The former, featuring a strong performance by Hedy Lamarr, is regarded by critics as one of Ulmer's best. In 1951 he directed a low-budget science-fiction film with a noirish tone, The Man from Planet X. He directed his last film, The Cavern (1964), in Italy.

Ulmer died in 1972 in Woodland Hills, California, after a crippling stroke. He is interred in the Hall of David Mausoleum in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, CA. His wife, Shirley Ulmer, is interred nearby. Commemorating the 30th anniversary of his death, a three-day symposium of lectures and screenings was held at New York City's New School in November 2002. In 2005, researcher Bernd Herzogenrath uncovered the address where Ulmer was born in Olomouc. A memorial plaque commemorating Ulmer's birth home was unveiled on September 17, 2006, on the occasion of Ulmerfest 2006—the first European academic conference devoted to Ulmer's work.

Partial filmography

as set designer (disputed):

as co-director

as director:

Personal quotes

References

  1. ↑ Year of Jewish Culture - 100 Years of the Jewish Museum in Prague
  2. ↑ Bogdanovich, Peter (1997) Who the Devil made it : conversations with Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh in libraries (WorldCat catalog) (New York: Knopf) ISBN 978-0-3454-0457-2
  3. ↑ Firsching, Robert, "Damaged Lives" (review), Allmovie; Rist, Peter (2001). Guide to the Cinema(s) of Canada (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press), p. 77. ISBN 0-313-29931-5. Kenneth Turan's claim that the film was "sponsored by the American Social Hygiene Society" (p. 364) both misnames the U.S. group and misstates its role in the film.
  4. ↑ Mank, Gregory William (1990). Karloff and Lugosi: The Story of a Haunting Collaboration (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland), p. 81.
  5. ↑ Cantor, Paul A. (2006). "Film Noir and the Frankfurt School: America as Wasteland in Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour," in The Philosophy of Film Noir, ed. Mark T. Conard (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky), p. 143. ISBN 0-8131-2377-1.
  6. ↑ Turan, Kenneth (2004). Never Coming To A Theater Near You: A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Movie (New York: PublicAffairs), p. 364. ISBN 1-58648-231-9.
  7. ↑ Cantor (2006), p. 150.
  8. ↑ Sodom und Gomorrha at the Internet Movie Database
  9. ↑ Thunder Over Texas at the Internet Movie Database
  10. ↑ Nine to Nine at the Internet Movie Database
  11. ↑ The Light Ahead at the Internet Movie Database
  12. ↑ My Son, the Hero at the Internet Movie Database
  13. ↑ Jive Junction at the Internet Movie Database
  14. ↑ The Wife of Monte Cristo at the Internet Movie Database
  15. ↑ The Masked Pirate at the Internet Movie Database
  16. ↑ Naked Venus at the Internet Movie Database
  17. ↑ Journey Beneath the Desert at the Internet Movie Database
  18. ↑ The Cavern at the Internet Movie Database
  19. ↑ Bogdanovich (1997), p. 603.

Bibliography

External links


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