Robert Siodmak - Hollywood Career

Hollywood Career

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. 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.

At Universal, Siodmak made yet another B-film, Son of Dracula (1943), the third 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.

But 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. Following the critical success of Phantom Lady, Siodmak directed Christmas Holiday (1944) with Deanna Durbin. And for the first time in Hollywood, his work attained the stylistic and thematic characteristics that are evident in his later noirs. His black and white stylisations and urban backdrop together with his light and shadow designs formed the basic structure of classic noir films. Christmas Holiday was Deanna Durbin's most successful feature, and she considered it her only good film. During Siodmak's tenure, Universal made the most of the noir style, but the capstone was The Killers in 1946. A critical and financial success, it earned Siodmak his only Oscar nomination for direction in Hollywood (his German production The Devil Came at Night (Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam) would be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1956). Robert Siodmak was considered an actor's director, discovering Burt Lancaster and skillfully directing actresses such as Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Dorothy McGuire, Yvonne de Carlo, Barbara Stanwyck and Ella Raines.