Someone to Remember

Robert Siodmak (1900-1973) was a member of a group of talented twenty-year-olds, all film fans in Berlin, who made the extremely popular German silent film PEOPLE ON SUNDAY (Menschen am Sonntag) in 1929. Siodmak co-directed the film with Edward Ulmer from a script by Billy Wilder and Siodmak's brother Curt. Fred Zimmerman was the assistant camera. When Hitler came to power a few years later, all five were forced to leave their country, in time ending up in Hollywood where all five became directors. Siodmak, perhaps best remembered today for a series of excellent film noirs, is one of the most neglected of the emigre directors, contantly working all over the world, doing every sort of script that came his way from THE KILLERS with Burt Lancaster and the young Ava Gardner to the pirate takeoff THE CRIMSON PIRATE to COBRA WOMAN with Maria Montez. This sentimental tale made at low-budget Republic Pictures in 1943 (but not looking it) is equally well-staged and photographed with a wonderful performance by character actress Mabel Paige as the old lady who befriends a gifted cast that includes young Peter Lawford, the beautiful ingenue Dorothy Morris, and John Craven who had been the original husband in OUR TOWN on Broadway. Siodmak, much like his contemporary, the Hungarian Michael Curtiz, was one of those always-working contract directors who seemed to be able to direct anything and anyone that any studio handed him; especially good with actors, many of his performers were nominated for Oscars. He is unjustly forgotten these days in most books that glorify the golden age of studio product. A master craftsman.