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The Master of the B’s

When recalling the great directors of Hollywood’s golden age, one name that is all too often undeservedly overlooked is Edgar G. Ulmer.

Ulmer is unique in that he did almost all of his best work outside the established studio system of Hollywood.

This was no small accomplishment during the 30s and 40s – when Ulmer was at his peak – since the major studios (MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros., Fox, RKO) all maintained such control over top talent both in front of and behind the cameras.

Working largely on “Poverty Row” at studios like PRC, Ulmer nonetheless created a unique and quite personal body of work that remains fascinating for what he achieved in spite of the limitations under which he was working.

Ulmer’s career goes back to Germany in the 1920s, where he worked in the art department of the famed UFA studio, the powerhouse of the German film industry during the Weimar period. Working with directors such as Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, Ulmer learned his craft under ideal circumstances. Ulmer worked largely as a set designer and assistant art director in the Expressionist tradition. Among the films Ulmer is reported to have worked on are The Golem, Metropolis, Siegfried, and The Last Laugh.

Arriving in Hollywood at the end of the silent era, Ulmer had his first major directorial effort with Universal’s The Black Cat in 1934. A horror film, steeped in the Expressionist style in which Ulmer had been trained at UFA, it is memorable today for the pairing of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

It was during the making of this film that Ulmer ran afoul of Universal president Carl Laemmle, supposedly after having an affair with the wife of one of Universal’s producers, who also just so happened to be Carl Laemmle’s nephew. This is supposed to have resulted in Ulmer’s blacklisting from working at major studios, though he later claimed that he chose to work at smaller, Poverty Row studios because “I didn’t want to be ground up in the Hollywood hash machine.”

Whatever the reason, Ulmer would spend the rest of his career working on the fringes of Tinseltown. Yet it was under these very conditions that he would do his best work. Intriguingly, during the mid- to late-30s, Ulmer became involved in the New York film scene directing Yiddish-language films featuring stars of the Yiddish theater.

He also directed “race” films in New York, such as Moon Over Harlem, aimed at black audiences. This film in particular includes a historic performance by the great jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet, and as a result, represents a kind of historical artifact.

Returning to Hollywood, Ulmer began directing for Producers Releasing Corporation, an ultra-low budget company. PRC’s films were made on a very tight schedule and an even tighter budget, but Ulmer made the most of these restrictions by finding creative solutions around the limitations. The first great film he made at PRC was Bluebeard (1944), starring John Carradine in a memorable performance as an artist who murders his models after he is done painting them. Ulmer applied the Expressionistic technique he’d learned at UFA in creating a stylized cinematic vision.

The following year saw Ulmer’s masterpiece, Detour. In this tight little film noir, bottom-of-the-barrel New York nightclub pianist Al Roberts (Tom Neal) decides to hitchhike west to be with his girlfriend Sue Harvey (Claudia Drake) who’s struggling to find work in Hollywood. Along the way, he hitches a ride with Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald), a big-shot gambler, who dies en route. Panicking, Roberts assumes the dead man’s identity (and money), and all seems to be going well until he picks up the only person in the world who could blow his cover – Vera (Ann Savage), a ruthless woman who had ridden with Haskell earlier on his trip, and who blackmails Roberts to get exactly what she wants.

Shot largely in front of a process screen, Detour is a veritable text-book of innovative cinematic technique. Ulmer and his cinematographer, Benjamin H. Kline, achieve a claustrophobic feel that perfectly mirrors the way in which the world is closing in on the protagonist.

The Strange Woman is memorable for a star performance by Hedy Lamarr as a scheming woman married to an older man, and who begins to immediately turn her sights on his attractive son who comes home to visit. The film is a period piece, and Ulmer makes the most of the settings and costumes. This one was independently produced by Hunt Stromberg (who produced many great films for MGM) for distribution through United Artists, giving the film a more expensive appearance than many of his PRC efforts.

Ulmer would never achieve major recognition as a director during his peak creative years, but would later be championed by critics who found in his work a unique personal style and innovative technique that surpassed the expectations of the low budgets and tight schedules under which he was working. He would pass away in 1972, but his best work continues to be studied and admired today.



Ulmer achieved a distinct screen art through his work, and never let budgetary or time constraints stand in the way of his creativity.

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