Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Monday, July 26, 2010


Robert Siodmak Gets Promoted --- Part One




John Ford used to throw off interviewers by telling them that directing was just a job of work. Comfortable enough with his undisputed status as an artist and giant among helmsmen, Ford could afford such humble gestures, but what of men like Robert Siodmak who really were jobbers, despite ambitions to get beyond it. He's a director for whom there is respect, if not quite a cult. I've read appraisals going every which way. One writer will build up Siodmak, another tears him down. He's appreciated better in France, it seems. Over there are special edition DVD's for Phantom Lady, The Dark Mirror, and even Cobra Woman. One had an hour interview with Siodmak in German with no subtitles, which left me out as I don't sprechen Deutsch. The features looked good though, and none are available in the US. Phantom Lady was kind of a sleeper that elevated Siodmak to better commissary tables at Universal. He'd been big before Hitler seized power back home, fled Germany at that point, then was uprooted again when France got taken. Siodmak was among unfortunates obliged to start over and again at bottoms after repeated displacements from the top. He was good and Hollywood knew it, but he had to prove himself all the same once he got here. Funny part of that is reason to believe Siodmak was born in Tennessee ... well, either there or Dresden. I'm not sure if anyone has settled that question. Publicity out of Universal preferred the US origin, it being wartime and all that. Bob was surely raised in Germany, and had the accent to prove it. Nothing I write will secure immortality for him, but Siodmak was an always interesting director, and most of his pictures play well, at least when we're able to see them.




















Russell Taylor was a young interviewer with foresight to track down and talk to Robert Siodmak in 1959 for Sight and Sound magazine. Taylor's may have been the first worthwhile sit anyone had with the director. Until then, what press Siodmak got was superficial and mostly useless now. It's interesting how Hollywood folk behind the camera were evaluated as much for physical characteristics as those appearing in front of it. Siodmak was typed early on by The New York Times as a short, stoutish man with a bald head and horn rimmed eyeglasses. Employer scribes at Universal called him roly-poly and owlish. Siodmak had been misused at Paramount and deemed (barely?) good enough to draw $150 per week by 1943 when Uni put him to directing Son Of Dracula for their monster unit. This was work but not the kind that made reputations. According to the Taylor interview, Siodmak was sufficiently appalled by the script to tell his wife he'd have to beg off the whole thing. She advised him to go forward with a reminder that Universal had been doing horrors successfully for twenty years, so if you're just that little bit better than their other directors ... then they'll see right away and it'll lead to better things. To watch Son Of Dracula today confirms Bob followed the wife's advise, for it does deliver that little jot more than Universal chillers generally did. Execs surely followed rushes closely, as Siodmak would remember a seven year contract offered after a mere three days of the Dracula shoot.


























Siodmak was noted for starting off with a dynamic middle scene to get cast and crew energized on projects. I'd like to think he began Son Of Dracula with its halfway in mood-setter where Chaney/Alucard rises out of the swamp and glides across to waiting Louise Allbritton. Moments that good were unaccustomed in Universal horrors once 40's mass production made kid shows of them. We did a lot of rewriting and the result wasn't bad: it wasn't good, but some scenes had a certain quality. Here was Siodmak's evaluation sixteen years after the fact, summing up perhaps what Universal bosses discovered in 1943 (imagine their surprise at what he'd wrought), and incidentally how general audiences (beyond Shock Theatre loyalists) might view Son Of Dracula today, provided anyone outside monster covens still watch it. So there was fast promotion off horror work and up to shows Universal figured more people would see. Among these was Cobra Woman, a sort of attraction fully filled first-run houses laughed at, but stood on line for and booked into prime playing time, distinctly unlike Dracula's progeny and a meaningful step up for any director with ambition. There's little in Cobra Woman of distinctive Siodmak touches to come (even of those exhibited in Son Of Dracula), but tweaking the hot plate of Montez/Hall occurred to no one with survival skill at Universal, so RS, like the rest, followed blueprints and saw his name attached to a black ink finisher. The one that would make Siodmak's name and establish him among Euro/UK thriller-meisters of a Hitchcock/Lang sensibility, the kind patrons associated with suspense tales told in offbeat continental ways, was Phantom Lady (subject of Part Two). It would punch Siodmak's membership ticket into that fraternity.
More On Robert Siodmak's films at Greenbriar Archives: The Spiral Staircase and The Killers.

8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great insights about Son of Drac, John, especially the part about shooting a meaty scene right out of the gate to get cast and crew juiced. I never heard of this practice but it makes perfect sense.

9:20 AM  
Anonymous Kevin K. said...

I recently Siodmak's "The Killers" for the first time. I'd have pegged it for the late '50s rather than 1947 if I hadn't known better. In fact, the following day I watched another '47 thriller,"The Unsuspected," with Claude Raines. The latter was a solid, professional, Michael Curtiz production. "The Killers," however, was extraordinarly absorbing, way ahead of its time in direction, editing, acting -- the whole shebang. That one-take robbery scene at the factory is a classic.

6:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

RICHARD FINEGAN said...

We all probably have our favorite obscure little-known movie people, and I was delighted to see one of mine in your banner photo (July 26). She's June Brewster (shown with director Mark Sandrich in a nice shot from the 1933 RKO picture MELODY CRUISE).

June was not only beautiful, but had a great voice for delivering those pre-code wise cracks. RKO even starred her in her own series of comedy shorts, "The Blondes and the Red-Heads" (she actually co-starred with blonde Carole Tevis). When June left RKO for Paramount in 1935 after the first six shorts in the series she was replaced by Dorothy Granger for the remaining five entries (with Carole Tevis continuing as The Blonde).

I have been trying to research and learn anything I can about June Brewster for many years and have compiled a listing of 32 films including several that the IMDb doesn't know about (and they have two listed that she's not in).
IMDb has her date of birth as August 13, 1913, and no death date given. She could possibly still be alive at age 97! Can anyone find out any further information on her?

6:24 AM  
Blogger Michael said...

One of my most-want-to-sees is Siodmak's biggest European hit, a French thriller called Pieges. It was remade as Lured (directed, ironically enough, by another immigrant, Douglas Sirk) and it's good, stolen fairly easily by Boris Karloff as a softspoken madman. (Erich von Stroheim had the part in the original.) But I can't help but suspect that Siodmak's original did better by the lead characters than a somewhat cold George Sanders and Lucille Ball (!) Unfortunately, like so much 30s European cinema, virtually impossible to see...

12:54 PM  
Blogger Dugan said...

Well I like "Cobra Woman" yea it's stupid but it's also a very entertaining popcorn picture and a lot better and shorter than what I've seen this summer. I hope you will be covering his later career a bit, I know he returned to Germany. It's always interesting to compare a talented director like Siodmak to Hitchcock, I guess that's the way it goes career wise some time.

8:29 AM  
Anonymous melekler korusun final said...

thank you

12:50 PM  
Blogger Oscar Grillo said...

For no reason whatsoever I remembre the great Karl Freund, who shot "Metropolis" and ended as a photographer of "I love Lucy"

11:48 PM  
Blogger Christopher said...

its just downright criminal that we don't have Cobra Woman on DVD in the US by now!:o/.
Son o Drac its southern gothic is crackerjack!

6:36 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024