{"id":5592,"date":"2018-07-27T14:35:13","date_gmt":"2018-07-27T14:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=5592"},"modified":"2021-07-24T11:08:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-24T11:08:59","slug":"from-print-to-the-screen-a-conversation-with-curt-siodmak-by-eric-leif-davin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=5592","title":{"rendered":"From Print to the Screen: A Conversation with Curt Siodmak by Eric Leif Davin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally published in Pioneers of Wonder<\/em>, Promethus Books.
\nReprinted by kind permission of the author.\u00a0\u00a9 1999 Eric Leif Davin.
\nPhotograph courtesy of Curt Siomak.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even a man who is pure in heart
\nAnd says his prayers at night,
\nMay become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
\nAnd the autumn moon shines bright.
\n<\/em>
\nCurt Siodmak, The Wolf Man<\/em> (1941)<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Curt Siodmak may have the longest professional career of any writer in the science fiction field. Not counting a fairy tale he published at the age of eight in a children\u2019s magazine, he has been writing and publishing for over three-quarters of a century, with his first \u201cprofessional\u201d sale in 1919. And he is still writing and publishing.<\/p>\n

Like that of his older brother, Robert, his career began in Berlin in the days of the Weimar Republic. He has written short stories, novels, and plays, but it is as a Hollywood screenwriter that he made his mark. For twenty years, from 1938 to 1957, he regularly churned out original and adapted screenplays, some\u00adtimes two or three per year. In all, including collaborations, he crafted approximately forty-eight screenplays for films in Ger\u00admany, Great Britain, America, Sweden, France, and Switzerland. Meanwhile, he produced approximately fifteen novels in Ger\u00admany, America, and France, and his total number of short stories is unknown even to himself. Later in his career, Siodmak also directed a handful of Hollywood films, although it was his brother, Robert, who went on to become celebrated for directing such classics as The Spiral Staircase<\/em> and The Crimson Pirate<\/em>.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

Robert and Curt were the sons of a well-to-do Jewish banker in Leipzig, Germany (although Robert was actually born in 1900 in Memphis, Tenn., during a business trip by his father and Curt was born in Dresden two years later). Robert graduated from the University of Marburg and began acting in repertory theater, but the hyperinflation of the Weimar years forced him to give that up and become, first, a bank clerk, and then a failed businessman in a series of unsuccessful ventures. In 1925 he managed to find a job in Berlin as a title writer for imported American films. In 1926 Robert became a film editor. In 1929 Robert and his brother, Curt, collaborated with Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann\u2014both of whom later became prominent Hollywood directors\u2014in creating the noted feature documentary People on Sunday,<\/em> marking Robert\u2019s directorial and Curt\u2019s screenwriting debuts.<\/p>\n

Curt had hoped to graduate from a German university, but the inflation of the years immediately after World War I again inter\u00adfered. When his father was unable to finance his continued edu\u00adcation in Germany, Curt went to Zurich, Switzerland, where he obtained his B.A. in engineering in 1924. He was already writing short stories, which appeared in top German magazines. One such story, \u201cThe Eggs From Lake Tanganyika,\u201d was seen by Hugo Gernsback and reprinted in the fourth issue of his new sci\u00adence fiction magazine, Amazing Stories<\/em> (July 1926).2<\/sup> Thus, though he\u2019d never heard of either Gernsback or his magazine, Siodmak became a \u201cGernsback author,\u201d a reputation he has retained ever since.<\/p>\n

Upon graduation from the University of Zurich, Curt joined his brother in Berlin. There, the vagaries of the financial situation made it impossible to pursue his engineering career. Instead, he drifted into his brother\u2019s film circle and wrote scripts for several of Robert\u2019s films. Both brothers fled the Nazis in the early thir\u00adties and eventually ended up in Hollywood. Curt was quickly given a job writing a sarong picture for Dorothy Lamour and a succession of such assignments followed for the next two decades. A number of his assignments for Universal Pictures\u2014 The Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Son of Dracula,<\/em> and others\u2014have since become horror classics. This, as he makes clear in the following conver\u00adsation, was entirely accidental. He had no particular affection for or interest in either horror or science fiction\u2014indeed, he never read the stuff. It was merely a job.<\/p>\n

This unfamiliarity with the field may explain why Siodmak\u2019s output\u2014though prodigious\u2014is also so derivative. Siodmak never displayed much feeling for or understanding of the field. Even his most noted novel and film, Donovan\u2019s Brain,<\/em> a 1943 story about a disembodied brain kept alive in a vat, was a crude science fiction cliche at the time. The August 1926 issue of Amazing Stores,<\/em> for instance, the very next issue after the one that introduced Siodmak to America, featured a cover of two sci\u00adentists recoiling in horror from a still-living head in a lab vat.3<\/sup><\/p>\n

Nor, though Siodmak claims credit for creating the Wolf Man character in 1941, was his werewolf creation without precedent. The Wolf Man<\/em> was Lon Chaney Jr.\u2019s second horror film and the role for which he is most remembered. Indeed, he was honored with his in-character Wolf Man portrait on a U.S. postage stamp. Werewolves, however, were not new to cinema. As early as 1913 Bison Films had made a silent film, The Werewolf.<\/em> In 1933 Guy Endore\u2019s classic novel, The Werewolf of Paris,<\/em> burst upon the world and Endore was quickly snapped up by MGM as a screen\u00adwriter to turn his novel into a screenplay. Universal Studios rushed to beat MGM to the screen with their own werewolf story. In 1935 they turned out The Werewolf of London<\/em> with, not one, but two <\/em>werewolves, one of them an Oriental werewolf played by Warner Oland, of later Charlie Chan fame. Thus, when Universal Studios returned to the werewolf theme in 1941 with an assignment to Siodmak to write a screenplay, the ground was well-trodden\u2014although now-integral parts of the werewolf legend, such as Gypsy curses and silver bullets, made their first appearance in this film and might have been Siodmak\u2019s ideas. In addition, the script was unusually literate for both a B film\u2014and for Siodmak.<\/p>\n

In 1943 Siodmak coscripted I Walked with a Zombie,<\/em> a true horror classic from the team of producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur, who also brought us 1942\u2019s Cat People.<\/em> This was perhaps Tourneur\u2019s best work, almost poetic, complemented by the haunting camera work of J. Roy Hunt and the dialogue of Ardel Wray, based upon an original story by Inez Wallace. Here, also, however, the film, though nightmarishly beautiful, was basically the well-known story of Jane Eyre<\/em> transposed to the West Indies and it is unclear what, or how much, Siodmak con\u00adtributed to the film.<\/p>\n

Even at the time, Siodmak\u2019s films were recognized as plod\u00adding and predictable, if not outright ridiculous, confirming that his talents were of the stolid workmanlike variety which welded worn-out SF conventions onto mundane formulas. For example, of Curucu, Beast of the Amazon,<\/em> shot on location in Brazil, Variety<\/em> said, \u201cCurt Siodmak\u2019s screenplay and direction make for\u00admula thriller use of the settings.\u201d4<\/sup> Of Siodmak\u2019s Love Slaves of the Amazon,<\/em> based upon an unpublished short story of his, Variety<\/em> said it was:<\/p>\n

. . . a simple-minded, poorly-made adventure film of which everyone says, \u201cthere must be a market for them somewhere.\u201d It\u2019s being coupled by Universal with Monolith Monsters,<\/em> and, as part of such a package, probably will sneak by. If there\u2019s anything good to be said about it it\u2019s that the Eastman color is vivid and impressive, picking up some interesting landscapes in Brazil, where this was produced by Curt Siodmak . . . .
\nSiodmak\u2019s script is so clumsy, the temptation is great to con\u00adsider the whole thing a takeoff on jungle pix that have gone before. His direction isn\u2019t any much better, judging by the per\u00adformances. . . . Siodmak should have to answer to someone why nothing better came out.5<\/sup><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Damon Knight has pointed to Siodmak\u2019s screenplay for 1954\u2019s Riders to the Stars<\/em> as, \u201ca splendid example of all that is silliest and most unscientific in SF cinema.\u201d6<\/sup><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Siodmak has had the last laugh\u2014all the way to the bank. His novels are still in print, at least in Europe, he is financially comfortable, and he now \u201clives like a king\u201d on a sixty-acre ranch in the wilds of the California outback. If nothing else, the long-distance career of Curt Siodmak proves that there is always a lucrative market for formula.<\/p>\n

The great virtue of oral history, such as in the following con\u00adversation, is that it gives a first-person \u201ceyewitness\u201d account of events by someone who was there. The great flaw of oral history, however, is that memory is exceedingly fallible, especially about events which happened decades past. Oral testimony, therefore, always has to be verified, as much as possible, by comparison with the record. This is true of the following conversation, where both the great virtue and great flaw of oral history are both on display. This conversation with Curt Siodmak took place on June 11, 1991. Siodmak was eighty-eight years old at the time.<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Eric Leif Davin: You were born August 10, 1902, correct?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Curt Siodmak: Ja, I didn\u2019t choose it. I didn\u2019t choose my family and I didn\u2019t choose Dresden, where I was born. If I\u2019d had a choice, I\u2019d have been born two thousand years ago in Greece during the time of Aristotle, not during the time of Hitler.<\/p>\n

Are you Jewish?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My father says so and I am his child.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Slaughterhouse Five<\/em> Kurt Vonnegut described Dresden before the firebombing. Was that an accurate description ?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember. That was over fifty years ago. In your memory things are so different. I had a lovely big palazzo in Italy with a big staircase. I saw it thirty years later and it was a small house with a small staircase. We\u2019re used to big spaces in America. Now I live in California on a ranch. Sometimes we see a jeep on the fire roads and my wife says, \u201cLet\u2019s move out, it\u2019s getting crowded.\u201d
\nI\u2019ve been back to Europe a few times. I was invited recently by the head of the film museum in Berlin, who was a house guest here on my ranch a few weeks ago. I\u2019m also a new writer they\u2019ve just discovered over there. All my books are being republished and I had a new book out two weeks ago entitled The Riches of Paris. <\/em>Only published in France. A historical novel about Louis XIV.
\nAll my books have been continually in print. My book Donovan\u2019s Brain<\/em> has been published five or six times in Ger\u00admany. I was published by Bertelsmann, one of the largest Euro\u00adpean publishers. I was in Munich about two years ago with a book manuscript. They took it away and gave me cash!<\/p>\n

I think the 1953 film version of Donovan\u2019s Brain<\/em> was the first film I saw based on your work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t want me to direct that. I had a contract to direct it, but it didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

Were you satisfied with what they did?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t look at those pictures. They changed too much, espe\u00adcially adding references to God, so I didn\u2019t look at it. Another version was called The Brain,<\/em> made by an English company in 1962. They had a cancer cure in it. What is a cancer cure doing in that picture?7<\/sup>
\nBut, the book is still in print; sold about five million copies. I just had three of my books come out in one volume. It\u2019s written from the shifting viewpoint of a young man in the first story, middle aged in the second, and an old man in the third.<\/p>\n

So, you\u2019re still active?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What do you mean still<\/em> active? Of course! They just had a big parade for me in Austria. I\u2019m also a lyricist and song writer. I just wrote a play, The Song of Frankenstein.<\/em> It\u2019s a comedy. It\u2019s huge over there. It\u2019s in Vienna, then it goes to Berlin, then it goes to London.
\nI have also written about five hundred pages of my autobi\u00adography, which I\u2019ve been working on for some time. I threw the first draft away and started from scratch. There was a lady pho\u00adtographer visiting me from Zurich about three years ago. She was interviewing all the people of my circle from the thirties who are still alive. That started me thinking that I should write about my life and about those people, too.8<\/sup><\/p>\n

Can we talk about those early days? I think you must have the longest professional career<\/strong>\u2014wasn\u2019t your first professional sale in 1909? When you were eight years old you published a fairy tale in a magazine called Kinderwelt<\/em>, \u2018\u2018Children\u2019s World.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I wrote that fairy tale as a child and I wrote lots of sci\u00adence fiction. I remember one story, it was a long time ago, 1922. I described a telephone booth which would disassemble people into atoms and transmit them to another booth which would reassemble them into people\u2014a matter transmitter.<\/p>\n

What would you say your earliest influences were?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I studied engineering in Zurich, Switzerland, and in Stuttgart Hochschule, which was similar to a community college. I devel\u00adoped a car engine in \u201922, similar to the Wankel engine. I studied lasers in the thirties. My father refused to pay for my education because of the tremendous inflation at that time, so I lost my edu\u00adcation. But, I had two friends who invited me to Switzerland, where I met my wife, Henrietta.9<\/sup> She was an architect in Zurich. I met her at a fancy dress ball. I was then a student at the Uni\u00adversity of Zurich, from which I graduated.<\/p>\n

Do you credit that engineering education with your ability to think up science fiction ideas?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not at all. It\u2019s like a shoeshine boy asking you if you want a shine. How does he know? He looked at your shoes! I go through life and I see things others don\u2019t see because it\u2019s my profession. If you have the talent and you do it often enough, it becomes second nature. You don\u2019t need an engineering background to do that. And you don\u2019t need to read science fiction! I never did read science fiction. I think it\u2019s gibberish. I don\u2019t understand all the technical words they use.<\/p>\n

But, you\u2019ve written technical stories about outer space like City in the Sky\u00ad!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

City in the Sky<\/em> is possible!<\/em> But Star Wars<\/em> is not<\/em> possible.<\/p>\n

I see. Did you always think science fiction was gibberish?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, it was always gibberish. You know, the human mind is so limited. We write about societies on other worlds, and they resemble us so much. You look at the paintings of Brueghel or Bosch10<\/sup> and all those demons look like men with two eyes and two arms\u2014hard to think of a new shape. The same with societies. You go into outer space and you find fascism or communism or the Roman Empire or feudal Europe. We don\u2019t have much in our brains.
\nI wrote a few books about space, Skyport<\/em> and City in the Sky.<\/em>11<\/sup> A friend took me to visit engineers at Lockheed because he thought talking with them would help give me ideas. They got their ideas from reading my books!
\nFor instance, instead of launching rockets from the ground to reach orbit, why not have a huge elevator into space, miles high? Launch things from the top and they save so much on fuel!<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t Arthur C. Clarke already write about that in The Fountains of Paradise<\/em>?<\/strong>12<\/sup><\/p>\n

Who? I don\u2019t know. I never read that.<\/p>\n

How did you go from being an engineer to being a reporter and a writer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was always a writer. When I went to Berlin in 1924, the inflation made it impossible to make a living as an engineer, so I wrote for the newspapers. My education helped me a lot in my science fiction writing. I didn\u2019t know very much, but I knew a little.
\nBut, while my education helped with my science fiction, I also wrote love stories, all kinds of novels. My last one is a his\u00adtorical novel. If the idea is interesting, it doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s sci\u00adence fiction, or not. I\u2019m a writer. I can write about anything.<\/p>\n

Was there an active German science fiction community in the twenties?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wrote a short story called \u201cThe Eggs from Tanganyika.\u201d It was published in a German magazine and then I got some money from Hugo Gernsback when he republished it. I found an article in The Smithsonian<\/em> about four weeks ago which said he wanted stories which used a lot of scientific research.13<\/sup> But, I didn\u2019t do any research for that story! I\u2019d never heard of Gernsback before he published my story.<\/p>\n

Were there any American science fiction magazines repub\u00adlished in Germany?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It took six weeks for the boat to come over! An exchange didn\u2019t exist. Sometimes you got a hardback, but nothing from magazines. How much do you know about German publications? Why should I know what was published in America?<\/p>\n

How did you first become interested in film in Germany?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I just got a letter from a friend of mine who\u2019s my age. He reminded me that I made my first film in 1926. Then I wrote books. I wrote Antwortet Nicht.<\/em>14<\/sup> Then I wrote something called The Studio Murder Mystery.<\/em> In those days, newspapers still pub\u00adlished novels in serial form. These were reprinted in smaller and smaller papers, until you got to the village papers, each paying less money. But, you were paid for each publication. The Ger\u00admans paid very well, not like in America. Here, five weeks after publication your book is forgotten.<\/p>\n

Did you have much input into the making of<\/strong> F.P. 1 Does Not Answer<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, not at all. Someone said, \u201cThe writer is the most impor\u00adtant person in Hollywood. Don\u2019t give him any power!\u201d<\/p>\n

And that was true in Germany, too?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, in Germany a writer had standing.<\/p>\n

But,<\/strong> F. P. One <\/strong><\/em>was made in Germany!<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was made in Germany, but it was shot simultaneously in three languages. It was the studio\u2019s idea. They wanted an inter\u00adnational market. The producer for that film had imagination. He worked with Billy Wilder. He protected writers. But I didn\u2019t go onto sets. I didn\u2019t like actors. My brother, Robert, was the one who did that. He discovered Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Ernest Borgnine, Tony Curtis, he picked them out of the crowd. He was a star-maker. He did Spiral Staircase<\/em> and The Crimson Pirate, <\/em>which was Lancaster\u2019s first big film. He wanted me to change my name so there wouldn\u2019t be two Siodmaks.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange to hear you say you don\u2019t like actors, since you went on to become a director.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went where the money was. How much money does a writer get? I never made money from my writing. A director made lots more money. Now I live like a king and I own sixty acres in the wilds of California. Not because of my writing!<\/p>\n

Is that why you don\u2019t like actors? Because they make more money than writers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is an actor? Someone found in a drugstore! And if they become successful, they become a son-of-a-bitch! Who are the great actors through the ages? You know only when you know who directed<\/em> them! And how many films do you remember? But, you know Shakespeare, don\u2019t you? Who acted in his plays? Books you remember! Books go through the ages. Plays go through the ages. But who remembers the actors of yesterday? Hitchcock was right. Actors should be treated like cattle.
\nI knew Hitchcock. He came to my office in London and said to me, \u201cSiodmak, write me a story about a woman who is a deaf and dumb detective.\u201d That was a very good idea, but unfortu\u00adnately, I couldn\u2019t do it for him, because I left for America.<\/p>\n

What was the first film you worked on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I worked for a small German newspaper in \u201926 and was sent to do a story on Fritz Lang\u2019s Metropolis.<\/em> He didn\u2019t allow re\u00adporters on his set, so I and my wife got jobs as extras in the movie. We didn\u2019t get much money for it, and we ate up what\u00adever we got.
\nI never did like that movie. The thing I remember most about it was Brigitte Helm\u2019s costume catching fire during one of the disaster scenes. Helm was very pretty and very young. But, she was more hysterical than talented.15<\/sup>
\nIn 1929 we made a film, we five young men in Berlin. Robert Siodmak, myself, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Edgar Ulmer. We wrote a film called People on Sunday.<\/em> The British stole it and it was made into a film called Bank Holiday.<\/em> This picture is a classic, it\u2019s in every film museum, including the county museum here in Los Angeles. It was our first picture. It was the first money I made. We just took people on the street and turned them into actors, very cheap. It was the same style as what the French later called \u201cNew Wave,\u201d pictures like The Bicycle Thief.<\/em>16<\/sup> We did the same kind of film twenty years earlier, but we didn\u2019t get the credit. Truffaut got the credit.<\/p>\n

If you didn\u2019t like Metropolis<\/em>, why are you writing a sequel to it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A sequel? I\u2019m not writing a sequel to it. Who told you any\u00adthing as silly as that?<\/p>\n

Forrest J. Ackerman said so.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it might be because I have a friend who reads scripts in Hollywood and he mentioned the possibility of a sequel. I wrote him back some ideas of how a sequel might go, but that was all.<\/p>\n

Did you know Thea von Harbou, the coauthor with Lang of <\/strong>Metropolis<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I never met her. I saw her once. There was a split between her and Lang. He left Germany in the thirties, while she stayed. They were going to make Lang an \u201cHonorary Aryan\u201d and he said he\u2019d think it over. But, he was out of the country immediately after that.
\nIt was a nightmare time, the thirties. I don\u2019t like to think about it. I don\u2019t think the Germans have changed in their atti\u00adtudes toward Jews, even today. In 1985 I went back to Berlin to see how the people behaved, what Germany was like. I stayed in the best hotel in Berlin. I saw what kind of pictures they were showing. My name was still known. It was good for the ego. But the memories made me sick. There I was, standing on the same sidewalk in front of the same theater where I\u2019d stood sixty years before for a screening of my science fiction film The Invisible Agent.<\/em>17<\/sup> In the meantime, there\u2019d been a world war, they\u2019d killed my family. It made me feel sick. You Americans don\u2019t know what it was like to live through those times.
\nBut every country\u2019s the same. Here we had the Vietnam War. But we faced it. We have the Vietnam Memorial, we write books about it, we make pictures about it. But the Germans don\u2019t face it. You can\u2019t make a picture today in Germany and show the Nazis.
\nI met so many people who said they were anti-Nazi. I asked, \u201cWas that in 1945 or in 1942?\u201d They don\u2019t say anything. But this isn\u2019t about politics here.<\/p>\n

You left Germany in 1933, correct?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, I didn\u2019t leave Germany. They threw me out! I got a letter from the German writers\u2019 union telling me I wasn\u2019t permitted to work in Germany anymore because I\u2019m Jewish. In 1936 I re\u00adceived a letter in England from my publisher in Leipzig, Bertels\u00admann, now framed and hanging on my wall. It says, \u201cDear Mr. Siodmak: This is to inform you that all your books have been confiscated by the Gestapo. So sorry. Heil Hitler!\u201d This is the same publisher who published my latest book last week!<\/p>\n

Why did you leave England in 1937?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My wife wanted to go to America. She couldn\u2019t explain what it was. She was afraid of the Nazis coming. We tried moving to Switzerland but came back because she was pregnant and wanted to give birth to a British child. So, we moved to Los Angeles. Now we live in the country because she doesn\u2019t like the city anymore. I don\u2019t fight it; she\u2019s always right.<\/p>\n

How did you make contacts so quickly when you moved to Hollywood in \u201937?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Somebody took me to Paramount. I got a job the first week. My first assignment was writing a picture for Dorothy Lamour, Jungle Princess.<\/em>18<\/sup> It was standard in those days for old alcoholic screenwriters to be kept on and they\u2019d assign younger writers to work with them and do the writing. I was given such an assign\u00adment of writing Aloma of the South Seas.<\/em>19<\/sup> I made twenty-eight pictures for Universal. That was another time when you had to really work! My brother also had no job. So, Preston Sturges said he\u2019d get him a job. He called the head of Paramount and said, \u201cI have the most important director in Europe in my office.\u201d So, he was hired.20<\/sup><\/p>\n

How long did it take you to write a screenplay when you were working for Universal?<\/strong><\/p>\n

About ten weeks from scratch.<\/p>\n

How long for<\/strong> The Invisible Woman<\/em>, <\/strong>in 1941, John Barry\u00admore\u2019s last picture?<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was an absolute mess. Couldn\u2019t remember one line. So, I was on the set all the time. I wrote his dialog for him as he walked up and down the staircase and he could read it as he walked up and down. You had to be careful or he\u2019d walk out of camera range. I could tell you stories, but this is on tape.<\/p>\n

How about<\/strong> The Son of Dracula<\/em>?<\/strong>21<\/sup><\/p>\n

It was an interesting idea. Here was a woman in love with a man who would live forever, a vampire.<\/p>\n

Was that your idea?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, of course. The directors had no ideas. Actors have no ideas.<\/p>\n

Did you come up with the idea for<\/strong> The House of Franken\u00adstein<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, of course. I had a little altar in my room. I\u2019d say to it, \u201cMy weekly check, my weekly check,\u201d and I\u2019d go back to my typewriter. You have to write a lot of jobs to feed a family. I didn\u2019t want to make art!<\/em> By chance the times have caught up with me and some people think the things are interesting. But, it was just a job. You didn\u2019t get much money for writing these things, $400 or $500, perhaps $1,000. That was good money in those days, but you had to keep working.<\/p>\n

And you originated the idea for<\/strong> Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man<\/em>, didn\u2019t you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course! And I created the character of The Wolf Man. I wish I had the copyright on him, but Universal owns it. Origi\u00adnally it was just entitled The Wolf Man,<\/em> and would have had Boris Karloff in it, but he had to make another picture, so we had Lon Chaney Jr. I had two hours to come up with the idea for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.<\/em> I was told, \u201cHere are your actors: Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy, Lon Chaney.22<\/sup> You\u2019ll have a budget of $80,000. You begin shooting in two weeks. Good\u00adbye!\u201d So, I quickly wrote a script and was working on it right up to the last moment. I didn\u2019t have the money to hire another writer, so I had to write it myself. There\u2019s a book coming out on the classic Universal monster movies and it publishes my orig\u00adinal shooting script for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.<\/em>
\nYou know, I never made the big pictures. In those days, there was something called \u201cBlock Booking.\u201d A theater had to buy three hours of entertainment from the studio, okay? So, most of my films were made just to fill out the block. They\u2019ve become \u201chorror classics,\u201d but that was not of my doing. I was just making a living, that\u2019s all. I wrote sixty producible film scripts. I have two which have never been filmed.<\/p>\n

Why were so many of your films horror stories?<\/strong><\/p>\n

They were just assignments given to me.<\/p>\n

Did you respect the things you were writing, or did you just consider it trash?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I respected it. If you spit at your work, it will spit back at you. In your life, you are merely the echo of your own energies. I put all my energy into every job I had. I took them all seriously. I did a picture in England called Transatlantic Tunnel.<\/em> It was the first time the British engaged American actors. Richard Dix, others. It opened up the whole English film industry. It was based on a famous novel by a German, Bernhard Kellerman, Der Tunnel.<\/em>
\nNapoleon came up with the idea first, though. I got the job because I could read the original. They asked, \u201cCan you write a script for it in three days?\u201d I said, \u201cOh, sure.\u201d However, it took six months.23<\/sup><\/p>\n

What\u2019s your method for so much productivity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I write twenty-four hours a day. When I\u2019m on the phone, walking around, I\u2019m writing in my mind. Basically, you\u2019re like a lighthouse keeper; you\u2019re married to the thing. Writing becomes the world, and the world becomes a dream. I\u2019ve never had a problem with ideas, they just come. I have in my garage two hundred books with my stories, and that\u2019s only a third of my output. A young man came to me and said, \u201cI want to be a writer. How do I get an agent? How much money can I make?\u201d I took him to the garage and told him, \u201cWhen you have that many books, come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

What should I do to reach the age of ninety and still be active, like you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Be curious. The brain is a muscle. As long as you work with it constantly, it stays young. \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. Robert Siodmak died in Switzerland on May 10, 1973.<\/p>\n

2. This was the story\u2014with a Frank R. Paul illustration for the magazine\u2019s cover showing a giant fly attacking a warship\u2014which cap\u00adtured the young Raymond Z. Gallun\u2019s eye and moved him to purchase his very first science fiction magazine. He was an instant convert to the genre. It has been reprinted in Forrest J. Ackerman, ed., The Gernsback Awards I, 1926<\/em> (London: Turret, 1982).<\/p>\n

3. Siodmak turned his novel into the original screenplay for the 1953 film of the same name. The film starred Nancy Davis (the future First Lady, Nancy Reagan) and Lew Ayres, World War II pacifist who briefly served time with pacifist SF editor Charles D. Hornig.
\n
\n4. Variety,<\/em> Nov. 7, 1956.<\/p>\n

5. Variety,<\/em> Dec. 4, 1957.<\/p>\n

6. Quoted in Peter Nicholls, ed., The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction<\/em> (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1979), p. 548.
\nA small selection of other films for which Siodmak wrote the orig\u00adinal screenplays include: House of Frankenstein<\/em> (1944), in which all the Universal monsters were thrown together to revive the flagging series; Bride of the Gorilla<\/em> (1951), also directed by Siodmak, in which Raymond Burr is a were-gorilla killed by cops Lon Chaney Jr. and black actor Woody Strode in his debut; and The Magnetic Monster <\/em>(1953), cowritten with Ivan Tors and directed by Siodmak. The latter film starred Richard Carlson, omnipresent actor in 1950s\u2019 Grade B sci\u00adence fiction films. Siodmak and Tors wrote the screenplay in hopes of creating a TV series based on Carlson\u2019s character, who was an agent of the Office of Scientific Investigations. Sounds like X-Files.<\/em>
\nSome of Siodmak\u2019s adapted screenplays include: Black Friday <\/em>(1940), cowritten with Eric Taylor, in which Boris Karloff performs a brain transplant; The Invisible Man Returns<\/em> (1940), cowritten with Lester Cole and Joe May, who directed it. This was Vincent Price\u2019s first starring vehicle; Tarzan\u2019s Magic Fountain<\/em> (1949), cowritten with Harry Chandlee. Basically Lost Horizon<\/em> in the jungle, this was the first Tarzan movie to star Lex Barker, who made several sequels; and Earth<\/em> vs. the Flying Saucers<\/em> (1956), cowritten with George Worthing Yates and Ray\u00admond T. Marcus [Bernard Gordon], with special effects by Ray Harryhausen. Based on Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe\u2019s 1953 book, Flying Saucers From Outer Space,<\/em> although greatly influenced by George Pal\u2019s 1953 film, War of the Worlds.<\/em> Indeed, except for War of the Worlds, Earth<\/em> vs. the Flying Saucers<\/em> is the only 1950s\u2019 SF film to feature a mass invasion of aliens. It contains the famous Harryhausen-engineered scene of a flying saucer crashing into the dome of the U.S. Capitol Building, a scene later spoofed in the TV cartoon series The Simpsons.<\/em><\/p>\n

7. A British-West German production, it is also known as Vengeance<\/em> and Ein Toter Sucht Seinen Moerder.<\/em><\/p>\n

8. Unable to find a publisher, Siodmak self-published his com\u00adpleted autobiography on August 10, 1997, in a signed and boxed edi\u00adtion. Its title, Even A Man Who Is Pure in Heart<\/em>. . . , comes from the opening lines of The Wolf Man.<\/em> The publication date coincided with the U.S. Post Office release of the commemorative Lon Chaney \u201cWolf Man\u201d stamp.<\/p>\n

9. Henrietta De Perrot, whom he married in 1931. They had one child, a son, Peter, born in Great Britain and now a well-to-do Amer\u00adican businessman.<\/p>\n

10. Pieter Brueghal (1564?-?1638), Flemish painter known for his paintings of demons and infernal regions. Hieronymus Bosch (1450?\u20141516), Dutch painter of devils, monstrosities, and other gruesome subjects.
\n
\n<\/em>11. Skyport<\/em> (New York: Crown, 1959). Basically Ayn Rand\u2019s Fountainhead<\/em>\u2014in the sky. City in the Sky<\/em> (New York: Putnam, 1974). Basically Grand Hotel<\/em>\u2014in the sky.<\/p>\n

12. Published in 1979, it won the Hugo in 1980 as Best Novel.<\/p>\n

13. Daniel Stashower, \u201cA Dreamer Who Made Us Fall In Love With The Future,\u201d The Smithsonian<\/em> 21, no. 5 (August 1990).<\/p>\n

14. F. P. 1 Antwortet Nicht<\/em> (Berlin: Keils, 1931). Published in America as F. P. 1 Does Not Reply<\/em> (Boston: Little, Brown, 1933). Filmed in Germany in 1933, for which Siodmak wrote the screenplay. An Eng\u00adlish version was released in 1938 in Great Britain by Gaumont. It is about floating airports\u2014\u201dFlight Platforms\u201d\u2014in the middle of the ocean.<\/p>\n

15. Talented or not, Brigitte Helm\u2014only a teenager when she por\u00adtrayed both<\/em> the heroine and the evil robot-vamp in Lang\u2019s classic silent SF film Metropolis<\/em>\u2014went on to make a string of films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound and starred as the Queen of Atlantis in G. W. Pabst\u2019s excellent 1932 film, L\u2019 Atlantide.<\/em> As with the filming of Siodmak\u2019s F. P. 1, <\/em>Pabst\u2019s film was shot simultaneously in German, French, and English with different casts, except for Helm, who starred in all three. According to Nicholls, Pabst\u2019s film, \u201cis generally regarded as superior, not only because of its visual flair, but also for Brigitte Helm\u2019s striking performance as the queen\u201d (p. 49). Brigitte Helm\u2019s last film was Ein Idealer Gatte (An Ideal Spouse),<\/em> in 1935. She died in Switzerland on June 11, 1996, at the age of ninety.<\/p>\n

16. In fact, this was a 1947 Italian film directed by Vittorio de Sica, which won a special Academy Award before foreign films had their own category.<\/p>\n

17. Invisible Agent<\/em> was made in Hollywood in 1942 as an espi\u00adonage thriller in which the son of the original Invisible Man volunteers to spy on the Nazis and Japanese for the Allies. Highly unlikely that this war propaganda film would have been screened in Berlin anytime before 1945.<\/p>\n

18. Actually, Her Jungle Love,<\/em> 1938. Starring Lamour and Ray Milland as her lover, this South Seas sarong-film was essentially a remake of Lamour\u2019s sarong-debut, Jungle Princess,<\/em> which paired her with Milland in 1936, before Siodmak left England.<\/p>\n

19. 1941, another Dorothy Lamour sarong film.<\/p>\n

20. Robert Siodmak settled in Paris after being expelled from Ger\u00admany in 1933. He left Paris for Hollywood in 1940, just ahead of the German army.<\/p>\n

21. Released in 1943, it was cowritten with Eric Taylor and directed by Siodmak\u2019s brother, Robert. It starred Lon Chaney Jr. as \u201cCount Alucard\u201d (\u201cDracula\u201d spelled backward).<\/p>\n

22. Actually, these were the actors in The Wolf Man<\/em> (1941). Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man<\/em> (1943) starred Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Ilona Massey, and Maria Ouspenskaya. Siodmak is obviously thinking about The Wolf Man<\/em> (cowritten with Gordon Kann, which brings into question Siodmak\u2019s claim to have created the char\u00adacter) all the while he is talking about Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man,<\/em> for which he was, indeed, the sole screenwriter.
\n
\n<\/em>23. The Tunnel<\/em> (aka Transatlantic Tunnel)<\/em> was actually cowritten with L. Du Garde Peach and Clemence Dane, a well-known British author. It was released in 1935 and told the story of the construction of a tunnel beneath the Atlantic linking Britain and America. There was a previous 1933 German film, Der Tunnel,<\/em> based upon the same novel, which linked America with the Continent, bypassing England. The epic grandeur of the German film was lost in Siodmak\u2019s cowritten screen\u00adplay, which turned the construction of the Tunnel into a love-story tri\u00adangle centered around the master engineer, his wife, and a vamp.
\nNapoleon\u2019s idea for a tunnel, which Siodmak mentions, was for an undersea link between England and the rest of Europe\u2014which now exists as the \u201cChunnel.\u201d This is yet another science fiction idea which has become reality!\u00a0\u00a0\u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Eric Leif Davin is a history lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of many books, including:
\nPioneers of Wonder<\/em> (Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\/Amazon.com<\/a>),\u00a0Partners in Wonder:\u00a0Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965<\/em> (Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\/Amazon.com<\/a>), and a new novel The Great Strike of 1877<\/em> (Lulu.com<\/a>).
\nMore information is available at his ISFDB page<\/a>, Amazon.com page<\/a>, and\u00a0website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Pioneers \"\"<\/a>\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Originally published in Pioneers of Wonder, Promethus Books. Reprinted by kind permission of the author.\u00a0\u00a9 1999 Eric Leif Davin. Photograph courtesy of Curt Siomak.   Even a man who is pure in heart And says his prayers at night, May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms And the autumn moon shines bright. Curt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-1sc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5592"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5607,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5592\/revisions\/5607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}