"A man of conviction is often more to be desired than a man of experience." -- Curt Siodmak
Curt Siodmak (August 10, 1902–September 2, 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. He made a name for himself in Hollywood with horror and science fiction films. He is the brother of noir director Robert Siodmak.
"A bath and a tenderloin steak. Those are the high points of a man's life.""Every country we conquer feeds us. And these are just a few of the good things we'll have when this war is over. Slaves working for us everywhere while we sit back with a fork in our hands and a whip on our knees.""It's good for you to see your friends arrested. It hardens you. There's no place in our New Order for sentimentalists.""Weapons are created to be used. There's no place for the weak on this earth.""You'll find superstition a contagious thing. Some people let it get the better of them."
Born Kurt Siodmak in Dresden, Germany, to a Polish Jewish family, 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 collaboration with Fred Zinneman and cameraman Eugen Schüfftan.
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), starring Lon Chaney Jr., which established this fictional creature as the most popular movie monster after Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. In the film, 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 nightMay become a Wolf when the Wolfbane bloomsAnd 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 that was translated into many languages 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. There is an extensive interview with Siodmak about his career in both Germany and Hollywood in Eric Leif Davin's Pioneers of Wonder. In the plots of his work, Siodmak utilised the latest scientific findings combining those with pseudo-scientific motifs like the Jekyll and Hyde complex, the Nazi trauma and the East-West dichotomy.
Curt died in his sleep on September 2, 2000, at his home in Three Rivers, California.
