Biography

Curt Siodmak

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Born in Dresden, Germany, in 1902, Curt Siodmak worked as an engineer and a newspaper reporter before entering the literary and movie fields. It was as a reporter that he got his first break (of sorts) in films: in 1926 he and his reporter-wife hired on as extras on Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) in order to get a story on the director and his film. One of Siodmak's first film-writing assignments was the screenplay for the German sci-fi picture F.P.1 Doesn't Answer (1932) (US title: "Floating Platform 1 Does Not Answer"), based on his own novel. Compelled to leave Germany after Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took power, Siodmak went to work as a screenwriter in England and then moved to Hollywood in 1937. He got a job at Universal through his director-friend Joe May, helping write the script for May's The Invisible Man Returns (1940). Because the film went over well, Siodmak says, he fell into the horror/science-fiction "groove."
- IMDb mini biography by: Tom Weaver <TomWeavr@aol.com>

Obtained a PhD in Mathematics before turning to writing novels.
Decided to emigrate from his native Germany to England after hearing an anti-Semitic tirade by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
Landed a worldwide success with his novel "Donovan's Brain" in 1942, which was filmed four times over the next 20 years.
His science-fiction novel "F.P. 1 antwortet nicht" attracted great attention and was filmed as F.P.1 Doesn't Answer (1932) with Hans Albers and Sybille Schmitz. The movie was a great international success. It was his last film in Germany before he fled to Switzerland in 1933 to escape the Nazis. However, in Switzerland he was chased away as an illegal immigrant and had to go to England via France. There he had his breakthrough with the draft for Transatlantic Tunnel (1935).
Brother of Robert Siodmak.

Every night I say "Heil Hitler", because, without the son of a bitch [Adolf Hitler], I wouldn't be in Three Rivers, California, I'd still be in Berlin.
[about The Wolf Man (1941), one of Universal Pictures' biggest hits of 1941, which he wrote] After "The Wolf Man" made its first million, [producer-director] George Waggner got a diamond ring for his wife and [executive producer] Jack Gross got a $10,000 bonus. I wanted $25 more a week and [Universal] wouldn't give it to me.
[about Peter Lorre, with whom he worked on The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)] He was really a sadistic son of a bitch--liked to look at operations. He really was the type, a very weird character.
My pictures run on television and I don't get a penny out of it. But the guys are all dead, and I'm still alive, so who's winning?
[on Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956)] I had no money at the time, so I wrote "Curucu" . . . It was done in Brazil . . . I shot it down there, in the jungles. I never recovered, physically.