EDGAR G. ULMER

Edgar G Ulmer is perhaps best known today for Detour often considered the epitome of a certain noir style that transcends its B list origins But in his lifetime he never achieved the celebrity of fellow Austrian and German émigré directors like Billy Wilder Otto Preminger Fred Zinnemann and Robert Siodmak and spent most of his career as an itinerant filmmaker earning modest paychecks for films frequently overlooked or forgotten In this fascinating account of a career spent on the margins of Hollywood Noah Isenberg sheds new light on little known details of Ulmer s personal life and his wide ranging eclectic films features aimed at minority audiences horror and sci fi flicks genre pictures made in the United States and abroad As he follows the twists and turns of Ulmer s fortunes Isenberg shows that Ulmer s unconventional path was in many ways more typical than that of his more illustrious colleagues advancing a new understanding of low budget filmmaking in the studio era and beyond