Curt Siodmak

Personal

Vocation

Lifestyle

Family

German-American author and screenwriter of such 40's and 50's sci-fi classics as "The Wolf Man" and "I Walked With a Zombie." Escaping from Hitler's Germany he became an American author and an icon among science-fiction writers. The second son of a Jewish fur merchant, he earned a doctorate in mathematics. His father was a banker, and his older brother Robert also became a banker before becoming a famous director himself. Curt initially worked as a journalist, but while doing a story on Fritz Lang and his film "Metropolis," he and his wife worked as "extras" on the set, making him the only journalist to get to see the closed set. In the late 1920's he had an idea for "Menschen am Sonntag" (People on Sunday) and with his friend Billy Wilder expanded the basic idea into a loose shooting script. Siodmak financed a large part of this semi-documentary, a masterwork of neo-realism before the term was coined. Directed by Edgar Ulmer and Curt’s brother, Robert Siodmak, the movie became an instant hit in Germany. But when the movie was released, his world was falling apart as night after night he and his family lay in the dark listening to the shouting and frightening songs of the Nazis marching by. It was during this time that Siodmak began to write his first score of novels. The family left for Paris but neither France nor Great Britain granted them permanent residency. Shuttling between countries, a migrant author, he often worked under assumed names. Finally realizing they could no longer live in Europe, the Siodmak's went to Hollywood, California in 1937, where he took a job at Universal. He wrote or co-wrote screenplays for films such as "The Invisible Man Returns," 1940, "Son of Dracula," 1942 (directed by his brother Robert), and "I Walked with a Zombie," 1944. He began directing during the 1950s, and in the 1960s, he returned to Europe for a time. His last assignment as a director was in 1967, when he worked on a film later released in America as "Ski Fever," 1969. The 1998 Berlin Film Festival celebrated the careers of the Siodmak Brothers, and as a surprise for the audience, the gnomish Curt traveled to Germany and introduced the 75-film retrospective. Married to Henrietta for more than 70 years, she considered her still his angel. They have a son, Geoffrey, born in Great Britain. Siodmak died on 2 September 2000 in Three Rivers, California. Link to Wikipedia biography