Advanced search

Marlene Tanczik was born in 1993 in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. She is an actress, known for Không Bao Giờ Rời Mắt (2018), Paradise (2023) and Schneller als die Angst (2022).

Robert Siodmak (8 August 1900 - 10 March 1973) was a German-born, American film director. He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for a series of stylish, unpretentious Hollywood films noirs he made in the 1940s.

Siodmak (pronounced SEE-ODD-MACK) was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of Rosa Philippine (née Blum) and Ignatz Siodmak. His parents were both from Jewish families in Leipzig (the myth of his American birth in Memphis, Tennessee was necessary for him to obtain a visa in Paris during World War II). He worked as a stage director and a banker before becoming editor and scenarist for Curtis Bernhardt in 1925 (Bernhardt would direct a film of Siodmak's story "Conflict" in 1945). At twenty-six he was hired by his cousin, producer Seymour Nebenzal, to assemble original silent movies from stock footage of old films. Siodmak worked at this for two years before he persuaded Nebenzal to finance his first feature, the silent chef d'oeuvre, "Menschen am Sonntag" ("People on Sunday") in1929. The script was co-written by Billy Wilder and Siodmak's brother Curt Siodmak, later the screenwriter of "The Wolf Man" (1941). It was the last German silent and also included such future Hollywood artists as Fred Zinnemann, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Eugen Schufftan. His next film--the first at UFA to use sound--was the 1930 comedy "Abschied" for writers Emeric Pressburger and Irma von Cube, followed by "Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht," another comedy, yet quite different and unusual, a likely product of Billy Wilder's imagination (remade a noir, "DOA," in 1950). But in his next film, the crime thriller "Stürme der Leidenschaft," with Emil Jannings and Anna Sten, Siodmak found a style that would become his own.

With the rise of Nazism and following an attack in the press by Hitler's minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels in 1933 after viewing "Brennendes Geheimnis" ("The Burning Secret"), Siodmak left Germany for Paris. His creativity flourished, as he worked for the next six years in a variety of film genres, from comedy ("Le sexe fable" and "La Vie Parisienne" ) to musical ("La crise est finie," with Danielle Darrieux) to drama ("Mister Flow," "Cargaison blanche," "Mollenard"--compare Gabrielle Dorziat's shrewish wife with that of Rosalind Ivan's in "The Suspect"--and the superb "Pièges," with Maurice Chevalier and Erich Von Stroheim). While in France, he was well on his way to becoming successor to Rene Clair, until Hitler again forced him out. Siodmak arrived in Hollywood in 1939, where he made 23 movies, many of them widely popular thrillers and crime melodramas, which critics today regard as classics of film noir.

Beginning in 1941, he first turned out several B-films and programmers for various studios before he gained a seven-year contract with Universal Studios in 1943. The best of those early films are the thriller "Fly by Night" in 1942, with Richard Carlson and Nancy Kelly, and in 1943 the touching weepie "Someone to Remember," with Mable Paige in a signature role. As house director, his services were often used to salvage troublesome productions at the studio. On Mark Hellinger's production "Swell Guy" (1946), for instance, Siodmak was brought in to replace Frank Tuttle only six days after completing work on "The Killers." Siodmak worked steadily while under contract, overshadowed by high profile directors, like Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he had been often compared by the press.

At Universal, Siodmak made yet another B-film, "Son of Dracula"(1943), the third and best in a trilogy of Dracula movies (based on his brother Curt's original story). His second feature, and first A-film, was the Maria Montez/Jon Hall vehicle, "Cobra Woman" (1944), made in garish Technicolor (Montez's cobra dance alone is worth the price of admission).

His first all-out noir was "Phantom Lady" (1944), for staff producer Joan Harrison, Universal's first female executive and Alfred Hitchcock's former secretary and script assistant. A classic, however flawed, it showcased Siodmak's skill with camera and editing to dazzling effect, but no more so than in the iconic jam-session sequence with Elisha Cook Jr. in throes on the drums. Following the critical success of "Phantom Lady," Siodmak directed "Christmas Holiday" (1944) with Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly (Hans J. Salter received an Oscar nomination for best music). Beginning with this film, his work in Hollywood attained the stylistic and thematic characteristics that are evident in his later noirs. "Christmas Holiday," adapted from a W. Somerset Maugham novel by Herman J. Mankiewicz, was Durbin's most successful feature, which she considered her only good film (and that Mankiewicz said was among his work in the 40s of which he was most proud). Siodmak's use of black-and-white cinematography and urban landscapes, together with his light-and-shadow designs, formed the basic structure of classic noir films. In fact, he often collaborated with cinematographers, such as Nicholas Musuraca, Elwood Bredell, and Franz Planer, to achieve in his films the Expressionist look he had cultivated in his early years at UFA (for "Christmas Holiday," he instructed Bredell in the use of deep-focus photography, which Gregg Toland had perfected for "Citizen Kane"). During Siodmak's tenure, Universal made the most of the noir style in "The Suspect," "The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry" and "The Dark Mirror," but the capstone was "The Killers" in 1946, Burt Lancaster's film debut and Ava Gardner's first dramatic, featured role. A critical and financial success, it earned Siodmak his only Oscar nomination for direction in Hollywood (his German production "The Devil Strikes at Night" ("Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam"), based on the true story of serial killer Bruno Lüdke, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1957). While still under contract at Universal, Siodmak worked on loan out to RKO for the thriller "The Spiral Staircase," which he edited freely, without taking screen credit. For 20th Century Fox and producer Darryl F. Zanuck, he directed, partly on location in New York City, the crime noir "Cry of the City" in 1948, and in 1949 for MGM he tackled its lux production "The Great Sinner," but the prolix script proved unmanageable for Siodmak who relinquished direction to the dependable and bland Mervyn LeRoy. On loan out to Paramount in 1949, he made for producer Hal B. Wallis his penultimate American noir "The File on Thelma Jordan," with Barbara Stanwyck at her most fatal--and sympathetic. That she can be both is owed entirely to Siodmak who saw in this film a thematic link with "The Suspect" and "The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry," with the failed lovers of these films and significantly their tragic conclusions (ten years later he addressed the same theme in "The Rough and the Smooth"). Perhaps his finest American noir--although not his last--is "Criss Cross" that was to reunite him not only with Lancaster, but also "The Killers" producer Mark Hellinger, who died suddenly before production began in 1949. Working without the hands-on control of Hellinger again, Siodmak was able to make this film his own as he could not the earlier film. Yvonne De Carlo's working-class femme fatal (a high mark in her career) completes the deadly triangle, along with Lancaster and Dan Duryea: the archetype of doomed attraction central to all Siodmak's noirs, but the one he could fully express to its nihilistic conclusion.

Siodmak immersed himself in the creative process and genuinely loved working with actors; in fact, he was considered an actor's director, discovering Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine, Tony Curtis, Debra Paget, Maria Schell, Mario Adorf, and skillfully directing actresses, such as Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Dorothy McGuire, Yvonne de Carlo, Barbara Stanwyck, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Ella Raines.[1]

He directed Charles Laughton (a close friend) and George Sanders, actors with indelible personas, and got from both perhaps the unlikeliest, most natural and under-played performances of their careers. He managed with Lancaster to capture a youthful vulnerability--despite the actor's age (he was 33)--that, watching him in "The Killers," surprises us even today. He accomplished the impossible and got a believable, dramatic performance from Gene Kelly who never before or since looked so (intentionally) frightening on screen. But above all, it must be acknowledged, he made audiences sit up and notice Ava Gardner and her potential to ruin men.

Before leaving Hollywood for Europe in 1952, following the problematic production "The Crimson Pirate" for Warner Bros. and producer Harold Hecht, his third and last film with Burt Lancaster (Siodmak dubbed the chaotic experience "The Hecht Follies"), Siodmak had directed some of the era's best films noirs (twelve in all), more than any other director who worked in that style. However, his identification with film noir, generally unpopular with American audiences, may have been more of a curse than a blessing.

He often expressed his desire to make pictures "of a different type and background" than the ones he had been making for ten years. Nevertheless, he ended his Universal contract with one last noir, the disappointing "Deported" (1951) which he filmed partly abroad (Siodmak was among the first refugee directors to return to Europe after making American films). The story is loosely based on the deportation of gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Siodmak had hoped Loretta Young would star, but settled for the Swedish actress Marta Toren.

Those "different type" of films he had made--"The Great Sinner" (1949) for MGM, "Time Out of Mind" (1947) for Universal (which Siodmak also produced), "The Whistle at Eaton Falls" (1951) for Columbia Pictures (Ernest Borgnine's debut and Dorothy Gish's return to the screen)--all proved ill-suited to his noir sensibilities (although in 1952 "The Crimson Pirate," despite the difficult production, was a surprising and pleasing departure--in fact, Lancaster believed it was inspiration for the tongue-in-cheek style of the James Bond films).

The five months he collaborated with Budd Schulberg on a screenplay tentatively titled "A Stone in the River Hudson," an early version of "On the Waterfront," was also a major disappointment for Siodmak. In 1954 he sued producer Sam Spiegel for copyright infringement. Siodmak was awarded $100,000, but no screen credit. His contribution to the original screenplay has never been acknowledged.

Siodmak's return to Europe in 1954 with a Grand Prize nomination at the Cannes Film Festival for his remake of Jacques Feyder's "Le grand jeu" proved a misstep, despite its stars, Gina Lollobrigida (two of them) and Arletty in the role originated by Françoise Rosay, Feyder's wife. In 1955, Siodmak returned to the Federal Republic of Germany to make "Die Ratten," with Maria Schell and Curd Jurgens, winning the Golden Berlin Bear at the 1955 Berlin Film Festival. It was the first in a series of films critical of his homeland, during and after Hitler, which included the remarkable "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam," both thriller and social artifact of Germany under Nazi rule, shot in documentary style reminiscent of "Menschen am Sontag" and "Whistle at Eaton Falls," and in 1960, "Mein Schulfreund," an absurdist comedy, dark and strange, with Heinz Ruhmann as a postal worker attempting to reunite with childhood friend Hermann Goering. Between these films, and "Mein Vater, der Schauspieler" in 1956, with O. W. Fischer (the German Rock Hudson), he took a detour into Douglas Sirk territory with the sordid melodrama, "Dorothea Angermann" in 1959, featuring Germany's star Ruth Leuwerik. Later the same year he left Germany for Great Britain to film "The Rough and the Smooth," with Nadja Tiller and Tony Britton, yet another noir, but much meaner and gloomier than anything he had made in America (compare its downbeat ending with that of "The File on Thelma Jordan"). He followed with "Katia" also in 1959, a tale of Czarist Russia, with twenty-one-year-old Romy Schneider, mistakenly titled in America "The Magnificent Sinner," recalling--unfavorably--Siodmak's other costume melodrama. In 1961, "L'affaire Nina B," with Pierre Brasseur and Nadja Tiller (again), returned Siodmak to familiar ground in a slick, black-and-white thriller about a pay-for-hire Nazi hunter, which could be argued was the start of the many spy themed films so popular in the 1960s. In 1962, the entertaining "Escape from East Berlin," with Don Murray and Christine Kaufman, had all the characteristic style of a Siodmak thriller, but was one that he later dismissed as something he had made for "little kids in America." His work in Germany returned to programmers like those that had begun his career in Hollywood 23 years earlier. From 1964-1965, he made a series of films with former Tarzan Lex Barker: "Der Schut," "Der Schatz der Azteken," and "Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes," all taken from the western, adventure novels of Karl May and made for little kids in both Germany and America.

His return to Hollywood film-making in 1967 to make the wide-screen western "Custer of the West" was another disappointment (it had been a project originally intended for Akira Kurosawa). With Robert Shaw in the title role and his wife Mary Ure as Mrs. Custer, it is the oddest of the Custer film biographies, yet interesting in its contemporary portrayal of Custer's anti-social individualism.

He ended his career with a six-hour, two-part toga and chariot epic, "Kampf um Rom" (1968), a more campy work (perhaps intentionally) than "Cobra Woman" had been. There was a brief and profitable foray into television in Great Britain with the series "O.S.S." (1957-58). Siodmak was last seen publicly in an interview for Swiss television at his home in Ascona in 1971. He died alone in 1973 in Locarno, seven weeks after his wife's death.

The British Film Institute ran a retrospective of his career in April and May of 2015.

Jan Josef Liefers was born on 8 August 1964 in Dresden, East Germany [now Saxony, Federal Republic of Germany]. He is an actor and director, known for Tatort (1970), Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008) and Baron Münchhausen (2012). He has been married to Anna Loos since 5 August 2004. They have two children. He was previously married to Aleksandra Tabakova.

Claudia Michelsen was born on 4 February 1969 in Dresden, German Democratic Republic. She is an actress, known for Der Turm (2012), Dreigroschenfilm (2018) and 12 heißt: Ich liebe dich (2007).

Carina Wiese was born in Dresden, German Democratic Republic on February 26th, 1968. She is an actor, known for Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahnpolizei, SOKO Leipzig, The Book Thief (2013), Dark (2019) and Deutschland 83 (2015). She studied theater in Leipzig and is a member of the Deutsche Filmakademie.

He was a dashing romantic heartthrob of the 1960s, the scion of illustrious show business parents. Thomas was born in Dresden, the son of pre-war Ufa Film matinee idol Willy Fritsch and the actress and dancer Dinah Grace. He studied drama, ballet and singing in Hamburg and made his theatrical debut in 1963 at the Stadttheater Heidelberg. Success in films soon followed. Opposite screen icons like Lilli Palmer (Julia, du bist zauberhaft (1962), Das große Liebesspiel (1963)), Daliah Lavi (Das schwarz-weiß-rote Himmelbett (1962)) and Senta Berger (...e la donna creò l'uomo (1964)), Thomas became one of the most popular juvenile leads of the decade. As early as 1962, he won the prestigious Bambi Award as Best Young Actor. He gained further cinematic exposure through co-starring in European westerns (Der letzte Ritt nach Santa Cruz (1964), Heiss weht der Wind (1964) ) and international co-productions (Onkel Toms Hütte (1965) ). After he was conscripted to military service in 1966, his fortunes began to wane. By the time he was able to return to acting, public tastes had changed and his type of screen personae was no longer in demand. A projected career in Hollywood also ended in disappointment.

Following several years in the wilderness, Thomas made a comeback on stage as the star of light satirical comedies. By the mid-70s, he had also reinvented himself as a TV character player, often alternating sympathetically roguish with comical roles. His popularity with audiences was ultimately re-established with recurring roles in shows like Drei sind einer zuviel (1977), Rivalen der Rennbahn (1989), and Unser Charly (1995). Moreover, Thomas frequently popped up as assorted suspects in the ever popular crime series Derrick (1974) and Der Alte (1977). He also enjoyed a lengthy tenure as the narrator of children's radio plays and animated films. As a voice-over actor, he became familiar to millions, dubbing (among many others) for major stars like Tim Curry, Jeremy Irons, William Hurt, Russell Crowe (as Maximus in Võ Sĩ Giác Đấu (2000)), Alan Rickman, Alec Baldwin, Jeff Bridges and Ian McShane.

In private life, Thomas avidly supported animal welfare. He maintained residences on the island of Mykonos and in Munich where he died on April 21 2021 at the age of 77, having been diagnosed with dementia two years prior.

Gladys Hurlbut was born on 9 December 1898 in Dresden, New York, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for Higher and Higher (1943), The Rains of Ranchipur (1955) and By Your Leave (1934). She died on 25 January 1988 in Woodstock, New York, USA.

Franz Hartwig was born in 1986 in Dresden, German Democratic Republic. He is an actor, known for A Most Wanted Man (2014), Der Pass (2018) and Đêm Lặng (2017).

Cornelia Gröschel was born in 1987 in Dresden, Germany. She is an actress, known for Heidi (2001), Dị Năng: Trong Mỗi Chúng Ta (2020) and Lerchenberg (2013).

Peter Viertel, a WWII veteran whose first novel was published to glowing reviews when he was only 18, was born of parents of the European intelligentsia, refugees from Adolf Hitler's Europe. Brought up in Hollywood, in a household where Greta Garbo (his mother's closest friend), Bertolt Brecht Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann and Franz Werfel were constant guests, young Peter yearned to be an American. In need of money to be able to continue writing his novels and to support his first wife, Jigee, Viertel turned to writing scripts for Hollywood, where he soon found himself in the orbit of John Huston, the legendary director of Chim Ưng Malta (1941). Peter died in Marbella, Spain, nineteen days following the death of his second wife, actress Deborah Kerr.

Martin Brambach was born on 28 October 1967 in Dresden, German Democratic Republic. He is an actor, known for Khoảnh Khắc Cuộc Đời (2006), Người Đọc Sách (2008) and Tạm Biệt Lenin! (2003). He has been married to Christine Sommer since 2012. They have one child.

Uwe Preuss was born in Dresden in 1961. He is a theater and television actor known for his roles in Deutschland 83 (2015), Im Angesicht des Verbrechens (2010), 4 Blocks (2017) and Dogs of Berlin (2018). He first appeared on stage in 1992 at the Dresden State Theater and made his television debut in Boomtown Berlin (2003).

Claudia Schmutzler was born on 19 September 1966 in Dresden, German Democratic Republic [now Saxony, Germany]. She is an actress, known for Go Trabi Go (1991), SOKO Wismar (2004) and Das war der wilde Osten (1992).

Stephanie Stumph was born on 7 July 1984 in Dresden, German Democratic Republic. She is an actress, known for Stubbe - Von Fall zu Fall (1995), The Shell Seekers (2006) and Das Mädchen mit dem indischen Smaragd (2013).

Born in Dresden, Germany, in 1902, Curt Siodmak worked as an engineer and a newspaper reporter before entering the literary and movie fields. It was as a reporter that he got his first break (of sorts) in films: in 1926 he and his reporter-wife hired on as extras on Fritz Lang's Thành Phố Trung Tâm (1927) in order to get a story on the director and his film. One of Siodmak's first film-writing assignments was the screenplay for the German sci-fi picture F.P.1 antwortet nicht (1932) (US title: "Floating Platform 1 Does Not Answer"), based on his own novel. Compelled to leave Germany after Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took power, Siodmak went to work as a screenwriter in England and then moved to Hollywood in 1937. He got a job at Universal through his director-friend Joe May, helping write the script for May's The Invisible Man Returns (1940). Because the film went over well, Siodmak says, he fell into the horror/science-fiction "groove."

Volker Zack was born on 31 May 1971 in Dresden, Germany. He is an actor, known for Định Mệnh (2009), Khoảnh Khắc Cuộc Đời (2006) and Khách Sạn Đế Vương (2014).

Stephan Grossmann was born on 2 September 1971 in Dresden, East Germany [now Saxony, Germany]. He is an actor, known for Weissensee (2010), Er ist wieder da (2015) and Interview (2010). He has been married to Lidija since 2015.

Volkmar Kleinert was born on 20 September 1938 in Dresden, Germany. He is an actor, known for Khoảnh Khắc Cuộc Đời (2006), Der Clown (1998) and Krupp - Eine deutsche Familie (2009). He is married to Regina Beyer. He was previously married to Gisela Müller.

Erich Kästner was born on 23 February 1899 in Dresden, Germany. He was a writer and actor, known for Bẫy Phụ Huynh (1998), Das doppelte Lottchen (1950) and Emil und die Detektive (1931). He died on 29 July 1974 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany.

Elizabeth Ercy was born on 20 July 1944 in Dresden, Germany. She is an actress, known for The Sorcerers (1967), Fathom (1967) and Phaedra (1962).

Charley Ann Schmutzler was born on 22 June 1993 in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. She is an actress and director, known for Weg (2014), Fucking Berlin (2016) and Leroy (2007).

Kai Schumann was born on 28 July 1976 in Dresden, German Democratic Republic. He is an actor, known for Der Einstein des Sex (1999), Klimawechsel (2009) and Tatort (1970).

Helga Sommerfeld was born on 5 March 1941 in Dresden, Germany. She was an actress, known for Corrida pour un espion (1965), Anónima de asesinos (1966) and Da Berlino l'apocalisse (1967). She died on 28 September 1991 in Berlin, Germany.

Dora Altmann was born on 20 February 1881 in Dresden, Germany. She was an actress, known for Tatort (1970), Mathias Kneissl (1971) and Alpha Alpha (1972). She died on 24 December 1971 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.

Alma Leiberg was born in 1980 in Dresden, German Democratic Republic. She is an actress, known for In aller Freundschaft (1998), Frauen, die Geschichte machten (2013) and Lea (2008).