जीवनी

A star during the silent movie, he was pushed into a corner by the sound film, He was unable to continue that status into the sound era--a fate shared by all too many o his European and American colleagues. As a result. his influence on the film industry in general and the German film industry in particular has been vastly underestimated.

Was hired by Universal Pictures to make films in the US. Unfortunately, he could not put up with the working conditions there and broke his contract. He left the US for England, where he became a production manager and writer as well as a director.

He was rocketed to prominence with Varieté (1925), which was a huge hit not only in Germany but also in the US.

His last film in Germany was Salto Mortale (1931), after which he was hired by Universal Pictures to make films in the US. Unfortunately, his career never really caught on there and he drifted from Universal to Paramount to MGM and then to Warners. . Things got so bad there that while directing Hell's Kitchen (1939) with the East Side Kids, he actually came to blows with at least one of the cast members; he was fired and replaced by Lewis Seiler. He didn't wok as a director for ten years after that, spending that time as a talent agent.

In 1918 he was hired by Stern-Film-GmbH as an author and director for a detective serial with Max Landa. Up to that time he had never been inside a film studio. Over the next year he shot 12 of the serial's chapters.