Robert Siodmak (August 8, 1900 - March 10, 1973) was a German born American film director. Siodmak was born to a Polish Jewish family in Dresden, Germany (the myth of his American birth in Memphis, Tennessee was necessary for him to obtain a visa in Paris). He worked as a stage director and a banker before becoming editor and scenarist for Curtis Bernhardt in 1925. At twenty-six he was hired by his cousin, producer Seymour Nebenzal, to assemble original silent movies from the stock footage of old ones. Siodmak worked at this for two years before he persuaded Nebenzal to finance his first feature, the silent chef d'oeuvre, Menschen am Sonntag (1929).
With the rise of Nazism he left Germany for Paris and then Hollywood. Siodmak arrived in Hollywood in 1939, where he made 23 movies, many of them widely popular thrillers and crime melodramas, which critics today regard as classics of film noir.
Brother of writer/director Curt Siodmak, brother-in-law of Henrietta Siodmak.
Nephew of producer Seymour Nebenzal.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1001-1005. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
