Edgar G. Ulmer(1904-1972)

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.

I really am looking for absolution for all the things I had to do for money's sake.