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Wolf Man's Maker: Memoir of a Hollywood Writer
German-born Curt Siodmak is perhaps best known for his cult classic sci-fi and horror movies, such as The Wolf Man and Son of Dracula . This outstanding writer, one of the founding members of the Writers Guild of America, has also written 26 novels, in English and his native language. Among these, Donovan's Brain was hailed by Stephen King as a unique work that surpassed even the originality of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Not only was it filmed four times, but Orson Welles adapted it into a radio presentation. A gifted writer, screenwriter, and director, Siodmak recently received the Commander's Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In his autobiography, he recalls being forced to emigrate to the United States in the 1930s as the Nazis took power in Germany. As a Jewish immigrant, Siodmak's experience of adjusting to his new home amid the turmoil of World War II powerfully affected his perception of freedom and of human dynamics. Wolf Man's Maker describes how this writer, through the genres of sci-fi and horror, created stories which reflected this historical perspective and his search for a truth which affects all of his viewers.
In his autobiography, he recalls being forced to emigrate to the United States in the 1930s as the Nazis took power in Germany. As a Jewish immigrant, Siodmak's experience of adjusting to his new home amid the turmoil of World War II powerfully affected his perception of freedom and of human dynamics. Wolf Man's Maker describes how this writer, through the genres of sci-fi and horror, created stories which reflected this historical perspective and his search for a truth which affects all of his viewers.
512 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
26 people want to read
About the author
Curt Siodmak
62 books21 followersCurt Siodmak (1902–2000) was a novelist and screenwriter, author of the novel Donovan's Brain, which was made into a number of films. He also wrote the novels Hauser's Memory and Gabriel's Body.
Born Kurt Siodmak in Dresden, Germany, Curt Siodmak acquired a degree in mathematics before beginning to write novels. He invested early royalties earned by his first books in the movie Menschen am Sonntag (1929), a documentary-style chronicle of the lives of four Berliners on a Sunday based on their own lives. The movie was co-directed by Curt Siodmak's older brother Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, with a script by Billy Wilder.
In the following years Curt Siodmak wrote many novels, screenplays and short stories including the novel F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht (F.P.1 Doesn't Answer) (1933) which became a popular movie starring Hans Albers and Peter Lorre.
Siodmak decided to emigrate after hearing an anti-semitic tirade by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and departed for England where he made a living as a screenwriter before travelling to the USA in 1937.
His big break came with the screenplay for The Wolf Man (1941) which established this fictional creature as the most popular movie monster after Dracula and Frankenstein's monster.
In The Wolf Man Siodmak made reference to many werewolf legends: being marked by a pentagram; being practically immortal apart from being struck/shot by silver implements/bullets; and the famous verse:
"Even a man who is pure in heart, And says his prayers by night May become a Wolf when the Wolfbane blooms And the autumn Moon is bright" (the last line was changed in the sequels to The Moon is full and bright).
Siodmak's science-fiction novel Donovan's Brain (1942) was a bestseller and was adapted for the cinema several times. Other notable films he wrote include Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, I Walked With a Zombie and The Beast With Five Fingers.
Born Kurt Siodmak in Dresden, Germany, Curt Siodmak acquired a degree in mathematics before beginning to write novels. He invested early royalties earned by his first books in the movie Menschen am Sonntag (1929), a documentary-style chronicle of the lives of four Berliners on a Sunday based on their own lives. The movie was co-directed by Curt Siodmak's older brother Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, with a script by Billy Wilder.
In the following years Curt Siodmak wrote many novels, screenplays and short stories including the novel F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht (F.P.1 Doesn't Answer) (1933) which became a popular movie starring Hans Albers and Peter Lorre.
Siodmak decided to emigrate after hearing an anti-semitic tirade by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and departed for England where he made a living as a screenwriter before travelling to the USA in 1937.
His big break came with the screenplay for The Wolf Man (1941) which established this fictional creature as the most popular movie monster after Dracula and Frankenstein's monster.
In The Wolf Man Siodmak made reference to many werewolf legends: being marked by a pentagram; being practically immortal apart from being struck/shot by silver implements/bullets; and the famous verse:
"Even a man who is pure in heart, And says his prayers by night May become a Wolf when the Wolfbane blooms And the autumn Moon is bright" (the last line was changed in the sequels to The Moon is full and bright).
Siodmak's science-fiction novel Donovan's Brain (1942) was a bestseller and was adapted for the cinema several times. Other notable films he wrote include Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, I Walked With a Zombie and The Beast With Five Fingers.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 13, 2024
The fact that it took me a full month and a half to make it through this book is probably a pretty good review unto itself: at times it's a slog, but never boring enough that I wasn't compelled to finish it. Siodmak had an interesting and turbulent life. There's a lot we Americans don't really understand, or perhaps have forgotten, about the Holocaust--"Why didn't more Jews simply leave when they saw what lay just beyond the horizon?"--and this book is perhaps at its best when explaining the mechanics of exactly how difficult it was for Jews to emigrate from Germany even before the concentration camps took shape. There are also interesting anecdotes about Siodmak's Hollywood life, including his excursion to the Amazon to become the first filmmaker to bring back a "completed film" from the inhospitable jungle (and risking his main starlet's life in the process to get a shot of her being squeezed by a boa constrictor). Siodmak constantly reminds the reader that, while he is most well-known for a Hollywood creation, he seems to have nothing but disdain and impatience for the city and mindset itself. This doesn't seem entirely unfounded, as many Hollywood characters come across in a less-than-flattering light. Siodmak claims at one point that Joan Fontaine was fond of spreading false rumors simply to see if she could break up friendships.
The downside is that Siodmak is quite prone to rambling. The book is structured haphazardly, jumping back and forth in time in ways that are often confusing, with Siodmak reflecting on a particular incident and then connecting it philosophically to another event earlier or later on in life. Often you wish he'd skip the detours and continue with the narrative at hand, especially since a number of stories and allusions are repeated elsewhere in the text. The work really could have used an editor.
Siodmak is also very open about his frequent infidelities, typically presenting them in a sort of bemused and helpless fashion--"An attractive woman came on to me; what was I to do?" It's unclear if he's attempting to portray himself as a flawed person or simply bragging to the reader about his many conquests. He seems to love his wife, Henrietta, but there are probably fewer words devoted to her across these 500 pages than are devoted, in total, to his affairs. At a few points he avoids getting romantically involved with another woman, but it never has anything to do with any reverence for his own marriage so much as a calculation on his part that the woman in question would be more trouble than she's worth. I think there was an old-world European attitude that there are women you have good times with and then women you marry, and never the twain shall meet. We never find out how Henrietta felt regarding any of this.
If you're looking to this book to find out about the production of The Wolfman, skip it. There's much less info about Siodmak's seemingly tossed-off screenplay than about his other works in literature and film.
The downside is that Siodmak is quite prone to rambling. The book is structured haphazardly, jumping back and forth in time in ways that are often confusing, with Siodmak reflecting on a particular incident and then connecting it philosophically to another event earlier or later on in life. Often you wish he'd skip the detours and continue with the narrative at hand, especially since a number of stories and allusions are repeated elsewhere in the text. The work really could have used an editor.
Siodmak is also very open about his frequent infidelities, typically presenting them in a sort of bemused and helpless fashion--"An attractive woman came on to me; what was I to do?" It's unclear if he's attempting to portray himself as a flawed person or simply bragging to the reader about his many conquests. He seems to love his wife, Henrietta, but there are probably fewer words devoted to her across these 500 pages than are devoted, in total, to his affairs. At a few points he avoids getting romantically involved with another woman, but it never has anything to do with any reverence for his own marriage so much as a calculation on his part that the woman in question would be more trouble than she's worth. I think there was an old-world European attitude that there are women you have good times with and then women you marry, and never the twain shall meet. We never find out how Henrietta felt regarding any of this.
If you're looking to this book to find out about the production of The Wolfman, skip it. There's much less info about Siodmak's seemingly tossed-off screenplay than about his other works in literature and film.
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