Edgar G. Ulmer
Edgar G. Ulmer | |
---|---|
set designer | |
Notable work |
|
Spouse | Shirley Ulmer (married 1935 -) |
Children | Arianne Ulmer |
Edgar Georg Ulmer (
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.[5] 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: A Song of Two Humans (1927). In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, he also recalled making two-reel westerns in Hollywood around this time.[6]
The first feature he directed in North America,
Consigned to the fringes of the U.S. motion picture industry, for a time Ulmer specialized first in "ethnic films," in Ukrainian—Natalka Poltavka (1937), Cossacks in Exile (1939)—and Yiddish—The Light Ahead (1939), Americaner Shadchen (1940).[9] The best-known of these ethnic films is the Yiddish Green Fields (1937), co-directed with Jacob Ben-Ami.
Ulmer eventually found a niche making melodramas on tiny budgets and with often unpromising scripts and actors for
Ulmer died in 1972 in
The moving image collection of Edgar G. Ulmer is held at the Academy Film Archive. The film material at the Academy Film Archive is complemented by material in the Edgar G. Ulmer papers at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library.[13]
Partial filmography
as set designer (disputed):
- Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam(1920)
- Sodom und Gomorrha (1922)
- Metropolis (1927)
- M (1931)
as co-director:
- People on Sunday (1930)
as director:
- Damaged Lives (1933)
- The Black Cat (1934)
- Thunder Over Texas (1934)
- From Nine to Nine (1936)
- Natalka Poltavka (1937)
- Green Fields [Grine Felder] (1937) (co-directed with Jacob Ben-Ami)
- The Singing Blacksmith [Yankl der Schmid / Yankl the Blacksmith] (1938)
- Fishka der Krimmer [Fishka the Cripple] (1939)
- The Light Ahead (1939)
- Cossacks in Exile (1939)
- Moon Over Harlem (1939)
- Let My People Live (1939) - 13-minute short for the National Tuberculosis Association
- Cloud in the Sky (1940) - 19-minute short for the National Tuberculosis Association
- Goodbye, Mr. Germ (1940) - 14-minute partially animated short for the National Tuberculosis Association
- They Do Come Back (1940) - 16-minute short for the National Tuberculosis Association
- Americaner Schadchen [American Matchmaker] (1940)
- Tomorrow We Live (1942)
- My Son, the Hero (1943)
- Girls in Chains (1943)
- Isle of Forgotten Sins (1943)
- Jive Junction (1943)
- Bluebeard (1944)
- Strange Illusion (1945)
- Detour (1945)
- Club Havana (1945)
- The Strange Woman (1946)
- The Wife of Monte Cristo (1946)
- Her Sister's Secret (1946)
- Carnegie Hall (1947)
- Ruthless (1948)
- The Pirates of Capri (1949)
- The Man from Planet X (1951)
- St. Benny the Dip (1951)
- Babes in Bagdad (1952)
- Murder Is My Beat (1955)
- The Naked Dawn (1955)
- The Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)
- Swiss Family Robinson: Lost in the Jungle (1958)
- The Naked Venus (1958)
- Hannibal (1959)
- The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)
- Beyond the Time Barrier (1960)
- Journey Beneath the Desert (1961)
- The Cavern (1964)
Personal quotes
- "I really am looking for absolution for all the things I had to do for money's sake."[14]
References
- ^ Year of Jewish Culture - 100 Years of the Jewish Museum in Prague Archived 2011-10-05 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Edgar G. Ulmer". IMDb. Archived from the original on 2016-09-21.[unreliable source?]
- ^ The Black Cat at AllMovie
- ^ Ebert, Roger (1998-06-07). "Great Movies: Detour". rogerebert.com. Archived from the original on 2007-12-12. Retrieved 2007-12-11.
- ^ "Edgar G. Ulmer | American director". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-06-15.
- ISBN 978-0-3454-0457-2
- ^ Mank, Gregory William (1990). Karloff and Lugosi: The Story of a Haunting Collaboration (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland), p. 81.
- ISBN 0-8131-2377-1.
- ISBN 1-58648-231-9.
- ^ p. 62 Robson, Eddie Edgar G. Ulmer Interview in Film Noir Virgin, 2005
- ^ p.241 Norman, Barry The Story of Hollywood New American Library, 1988
- ^ Cantor (2006), p. 150.
- ^ "Edgar G. Ulmer Collection". Academy Film Archive.
- ^ Bogdanovich (1997), p. 603.
Bibliography
- Bernd Herzogenrath: Edgar G. Ulmer. Essays on the King of the B's. Jefferson, NC 2009, ISBN 978-0-7864-3700-9
- Bernd Herzogenrath: The Films of Edgar G. Ulmer. The Scarecrow Press, Inc. (2009) ISBN 978-0-8108-6700-0
- Noah Isenberg: Detour. London: BFI Film Classics, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84457-239-7
- Noah Isenberg: Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-5202-3577-9
- Tony Tracy: "The Gateway to America": Assimilation and Art in Carnegie Hall (1947)" in Gary D. Rhodes, Edgar G. Ulmer: Detour on Poverty Row. Lexington Books, 2008. ISBN 0-7391-2568-0
External links
- Edgar G. Ulmer Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
- "Magic on a shoestring": Geoffrey Macnab on why movie directors could all learn a lesson from Edgar G Ulmer
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- Edgar G. Ulmer at IMDb
- Info on Ulmer and program of Ulmerfest 2006
- The American Cinematheque presents...Strange Illusions: The Films of Edgar G. Ulmer Archived 2012-02-05 at the Wayback Machine
- Literature on Edgar G. Ulmer