Continental-Kunstfilm As
Joe May, he made ten films for
Continental-Kunstfilm GmbH in
Berlin; the first,
In der Tiefe des Schachtes (In the Depths of the Pit) was released in November 1912, followed by
Vorglühen des Balkanbrandes (The Balkan Traitors) (starring
Ernst Reicher). In the spring of 1914 May directed the first three of the '
Stuart Webbs' films, a popular series in which Reicher played a
gentleman detective modelled on
Sherlock Holmes:
Die geheimnisvolle Villa (The Black Triangle);
Der Mann im Keller (The Man in the Cellar); and ''Der Spuk im Haus des Professors (The Spook in the Professor's House)''.
Stuart Webbs-Film May and Reicher fell out with the managers of Continental over the 'Stuart Webbs' films, and left Continental together. Having formed their own production company, Stuart Webbs-Film GmbH, they made the next in the 'Stuart Webbs' series,
Das Panzergewölbe (
The Armoured Vault) in June 1914, using Continental-Kunstfilm's new studios at 9 Franz Joseph-Strasse,
Weissensee Studios, for the filming. When the
First World War broke out in August 1914, May had to return to his native
Vienna to do his military service, and on his return to Berlin he and Reicher split up. May's last film at Continental was
Der geheimnisvolle Nachtschatten (The Secret Shadows of Night) which he produced in December 1914, with
Harry Piel directing. Reicher then leased the studio at 9 Franz Joseph-Strasse from Continental, and continued to make the 'Stuart Webbs' films with his Reicher & Reicher company until 1918.
May-Film In 1915 he founded his own film production company, May-Film GmbH and began to produce a successful series of
crime films, whose detective hero went by the name of
Joe Deebs. Some of these were directed by May himself, others by
Harry Piel;
Max Landa and later
Harry Liedtke played the title role. In 1917 May gave
Fritz Lang one of his earliest breaks in the film industry as
screenwriter on the film
Die Hochzeit im Excentricclub (Wedding in the Eccentric Club) and Lang also worked on other May films at this time. After the end of
World War I May-Film leased the double glasshouse studios at 5–7 Franz Joseph-Strasse (belonging to
Deutsche Vitascope) in 1919 for 600,000 marks, which became known as the May-Atelier. He also built a film studio in
Woltersdorf a village northeast of Berlin in
Brandenburg. There he went on to produce and direct a series of popular and exotic adventure films, among them the monumental three-hour-long
Veritas vincit (1919), the eight-part series
Die Herrin der Welt (The Mistress of the World) (1919–20) as well as the two-part adventure film
Das indische Grabmal (The Indian Tomb) (1921) starring
Conrad Veidt and written by
Fritz Lang and
Thea von Harbou. These featured Mia May in leading roles and she regularly worked under her husband's direction in a number of melodramas like
Tragedy of Love (1922/23) co-starring
Emil Jannings. Their teenage daughter
Eva May (born 1902 in Vienna) tried to build her own career as an actress but committed suicide in 1924 after the end of her third marriage with the film directors Manfred Liebenau,
Lothar Mendes and
Manfred Noa. Towards the end of the 1920s, May moved away from adventure films and produced more realist works, notable among them the World War I love-triangle
Heimkehr (The Return Home) (1928) and the contemporary thriller
Asphalt (1929). During the early years of sound film he worked as a producer for
Erich Pommer at
Ufa then for different production companies in Germany, Austria and France directing a series of multilingual versions in German and French among those is ''Ihre Majestät die Liebe / Son altesse l'amour'' (1930) one of the best musical comedies of the
Weimar Cinema. ==Emigration to the United States==