Ulmer was born in
Olomouc,
Moravia,
Austria-Hungary (now the
Czech Republic). His family were
Moravian Jews. As a young man he lived in
Vienna, where he worked as a stage actor and set designer while studying architecture and philosophy. He did set design for
Max Reinhardt's theater, served his apprenticeship with
F. W. Murnau, and worked with directors including
Robert Siodmak,
Billy Wilder,
Fred Zinnemann and cinematographer
Eugen Schüfftan, inventor of the
Schüfftan process. He also claimed to have worked on
Der Golem (1920),
Metropolis (1927), and
M (1931), but there is no evidence to support this. Ulmer came to Hollywood with Murnau in 1926 to assist with the art direction on
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). In an interview with
Peter Bogdanovich, he also recalled making two-reel westerns in Hollywood around this time.
Film director The first feature he directed in North America,
Damaged Lives (1933), was a low-budget
exploitation film exposing the horrors of venereal disease. His next film,
The Black Cat (1934), starring
Béla Lugosi and
Boris Karloff, was made for
Universal Pictures. Demonstrating the striking visual style that would be Ulmer's hallmark, the film was Universal's biggest hit of the season. Ulmer, however, had begun an affair with
Shirley Beatrice Kassler, who had been married since 1933 to independent producer
Max Alexander, nephew of Universal studio head
Carl Laemmle. Kassler's divorce in 1936 and her marriage to Ulmer later the same year led to his being exiled from the major Hollywood studios. Ulmer was relegated to making
B movies at
Poverty Row production houses. His wife, now Shirley Ulmer, acted as script supervisor on nearly all of these films, and she wrote the screenplays for several. Their daughter, Arianne, appeared as an extra in several of his films. Consigned to the fringes of the U.S. motion picture industry, for a time Ulmer specialized first in "ethnic films," 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 eventually 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. 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. 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. He directed a low-budget science-fiction film with a noirish tone,
The Man from Planet X (1951). His last film,
The Cavern (1964), was shot in Italy. == Death ==