- Historian/critic/director Peter Bogdanovich praises Ulmer's directorial work on low-budget movies like The Naked Dawn (1955) and The Cavern (1964), which he considers "classics", adding that "the astonishing thing is that so many of Ulmer's movies have a clearly identifiable signature [despite being] accomplished with so little encouragement and so few means . . . ". Ulmer worked in set design beginning as a teenager for Austrian director Max Reinhardt. He came with Reinhardt to the US in 1923 with the play "The Miracle", which opened on Broadway. He was blackballed from Hollywood work after he had an affair with Shirley Castle (he eventually married her and she became known as Shirley Ulmer), who at the time was the wife of B-picture producer Max Alexander, a nephew of powerful Universal Pictures president Carl Laemmle. Ulmer spent the bulk of his remaining career languishing at PRC, the lowest rung on the ladder of Hollywood's "Poverty Row" studios. He signed a long-term contract there in October 1943 after directing the "big-budget" (by PRC standards) Jive Junction (1943), becoming the company's #1 director. Ulmer remains the principal reason PRC is mentioned in Hollywood history at all.
- While at the poverty row Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), he became the de facto head of production, overseeing productions by other directors and aiding the president of the company in planning the year's production schedule.
- Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich's "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh." NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
- Despite being the resident "artist" at PRC, after signing his long-term contract with the studio, it immediately assigned Ulmer to direct a series of short subjects produced by the R. Wolff Advertising Agency for Coca-Cola. The project took some five months and kept him busy while the studio was involved in a substantial upgrade resulting from its purchase of various bankrupt properties along "Poverty Row".
- Ulmer's father was a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I and was killed in battle in 1916, when Ulmer was just 12 years old.
- Ulmer found a niche making melodramas on tiny budgets and with often unpromising scripts and actors for Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), with Ulmer describing himself as "the Frank Capra of PRC". His PRC thriller Detour (1945) has won considerable acclaim as a prime example of low-budget film noir, and it was selected by the Library of Congress among the first group of 100 American films worthy of special preservation efforts.
- Spent the first three years of his career in the U.S. (1930-33) as an art director. Began to direct features from late 1933. Except for brief stints at Universal in the mid-'30s and United Artists (1946-47), was primarily associated with "Poverty Row" studios, especially PRC.
- His film, The Black Cat (1934), starring Béla Lugosi and Boris Karloff, was made for a major studio, Universal Pictures. Demonstrating the striking visual style that would be Ulmer's hallmark, the film was Universal's biggest hit of the season.
- Many of his films involved pure geometric patterns.
- Actor Peter Marshall reminisces about the making of Ulmer's final film The Cavern (1964) in the book "A Sci-Fi Swarm and Horror Horde" (McFarland & Co., 2010) by Tom Weaver.
- Ulmer, began an affair with Shirley Beatrice Kassler, who had been married since 1933 to independent producer Max Alexander, nephew of Universal studio head Carl Laemmle. Shirley's divorce in 1936 and her subsequent marriage to Ulmer the same year led to his being exiled from the major Hollywood studios. Ulmer would spend most of his directorial career making B movies at Poverty Row production houses. His wife, now Shirley Ulmer, would act as script supervisor on nearly all of his films, and she wrote the screenplays for several. Their daughter, Arianne, appeared as an extra in several of his films.
- After his success with The Black Cat (1934) for Universal, Fox wanted to borrow Ulmer for a Shirley Temple musical. The director walked out on his contract rather than do it, consigning himself to Poverty Row studios like PRC, where he could choose his own subject matter for his career.
- Profiled in Lizzie Francke's "Retrospective". (1997)
- Ulmer did get a chance to direct two films with substantial budgets, The Strange Woman (1946) and Ruthless (1948). The former, featuring a strong performance by Hedy Lamarr, is regarded by critics as one of Ulmer's best.
- In 2005, researcher Bernd Herzogenrath uncovered the address where Ulmer was born in Olomouc. A memorial plaque commemorating Ulmer's birth home was unveiled on September 17, 2006, on the occasion of Ulmerfest 2006-the first European academic conference devoted to Ulmer's work.
- He became well-known as a director who was able to created impressive results with limited budgets - both feature movies and short movies.
- Ulmer's wife Shirley Ulmer discusses the life and career she shared with him in an interview in Tom Weaver's book "I Was a Monster Movie Maker" (McFarland & Co., 2001). Their daughter Arianne Ulmer shares her memories of Ulmer in Weaver's "Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Flashbacks" (McFarland & Co., 1998).
- With the movie "Menschen am Sonntag" (1930) Edgar G. Ulmer made his debut as a director, screenwriter and producer. Shortly afterwards he returned to the USA again for good and he spent the rest of his life there.
- In 1947, Ulmer made "Carnegie Hall" with the help of conductor Fritz Reiner, godfather of the Ulmers' daughter, Arianné. The film features performances by many leading figures in classical music, including Reiner, Jascha Heifetz, Artur Rubinstein, Gregor Piatigorsky and Lily Pons.
- Consigned to the fringes of the U.S. motion picture industry, Ulmer specialized first in "ethnic films," notably in Ukrainian-Natalka Poltavka (1937), Cossacks in Exile (1939)-and Yiddish-The Light Ahead (1939), Americaner Shadchen (1940). The best-known of these ethnic films is the Yiddish Green Fields (1937), co-directed with Jacob Ben-Ami.
- Ulmer came to Hollywood for a few years with Murnau in 1926 to assist with the art direction on Sunrise (1927). He returned to Germany where he created the set for the movies "Spione" (1928), "Flucht in die Fremdenlegion" (1929) and "M" (1931).
- The director and production designer Edgar G. Ulmer finished a study for applied arts in order to become a set designer for the theater. Soon the film became his main focus and he forged his age to start his profession as a production designer in 1920.
- His last cinematical works as a director came in Italy into being with "Antinea, l'amante della citta sepolta" (1961) and "Sette contro la morte" (1964).
- Ulmer died in 1972 in Woodland Hills, California, after a crippling stroke.
- He took part in many well-known productions in the silent movie era, among them "Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam" (1920), "Sodom und Gomorrha" (1922), the monumental films "Die Nibelungen" (1924), "Gösta Berlings Saga" (1924), "Die freudlose Gasse" (1925) and Fritz Lang' science fiction classic "Metropolis" (1927). During this time he already made first experiences as a director assistant .
- In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, he also recalled making two-reel westerns in Hollywood at the end of the 20s.
- Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 1107-1112. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
- Cousin of Gustav H. Heimo.
- Profiled in John Belton's "American Directors, Vol. 1". (1983)
- He is interred in the Hall of David Mausoleum in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, CA. His wife, Shirley Ulmer, is interred nearby.
- The moving image collection of Edgar G. Ulmer is held at the Academy Film Archive. The film material at the Academy Film Archive is complemented by material in the Edgar G. Ulmer papers at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library.
- Commemorating the 30th anniversary of his death, a three-day symposium of lectures and screenings was held at New York City's New School in November 2002.
- Father of Arianne Ulmer.
- As a young man he lived in Vienna, where he worked as a stage actor and set designer while studying architecture and philosophy.
- He was known to brag that many of his films were made in only six shooting days. Surviving production records show that some of them required more than six shooting days.
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