Sidney Salkow; Film Director Helped Shape CSUN Program
By ROBERTO J. MANZANO, Times Staff WriterSidney Salkow, who directed more than 50 motion pictures and a number of television programs, and later headed the film program at Cal State Northridge, has died. Salkow died Oct. 18 at his home in Valley Village. He was 89. Born to Hungarian parents in New York City, Salkow first worked as a child actor in theater. He later attended City College of New York, and received a master's degree from Columbia University, his widow, Patricia, said Tuesday. At 19, Salkow was admitted to Harvard Law School, "but the lure of the stage drew him away from that," Patricia Salkow said.
He directed two plays on Broadway, then signed a contract in the early 1930s with Paramount Studios. Early in his career, he directed films starring the Three Stooges and Bing Crosby. Salkow wasn't the only member of his family to find his calling in Hollywood. His brothers, Lester and Irving, became successful agents. Their father, Louis, was a tailor for Western Costume, a major outfitter to the film industry. At the beginning of World War II, Salkow joined the Marines, rising to the rank of major. He suffered shrapnel injuries to his back when Japanese planes attacked an aircraft carrier, where he was part of a film unit documenting the war. After the war, Salkow returned to his film career and directed and wrote many films, including "Faithful in My Fashion" (1946), "Sitting Bull" (1954), " Twice-Told Tales ( to see poster click here .) " (1963) and "Last Man on Earth" (1964). He also directed episodes of the TV shows "The Addams Family" and "Lassie." In the early 1970s, Salkow began teaching film at Northridge, where he became a professor emeritus and headed the film side of the Radio, Television and Film Department. At 62, Salkow returned to college and earned a master's of fine arts at USC. "He really put our film program together," said Karen Kearns, a Northridge professor. Salkow mobilized his studio contacts to secure donations for film equipment for the fledgling program, she said. During about 20 years at Northridge, Salkow was a popular if demanding film production teacher, Kearns said. "He taught kids if they wanted to succeed in the film industry they had to meet deadlines," Kearns said. "This business is so young-oriented. It was good for him to come and teach because that kept him young." In addition to his wife, he is survived by six children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Independent, The (London), Oct 31, 2000 by Tom Vallance
THE DIRECTOR of over 50 films, Sidney Salkow will be known to aficionados of the "B" movie. During his long career he made several entertaining supporting features, notably a consecutive sequence of four films in the enjoyable "Lone Wolf" series starring Warren William.
His most durable work was done in the Forties when under contract to Columbia, but earlier he had worked in the theatre, directed film shorts with Bing Crosby and the Three Stooges, and made some swiftly paced action films for Republic and Universal. A resourceful director, he was noted for bringing his films in on time and within the budget.
Born to Hungarian parents in 1909 in New York City, he worked as a child actor in the theatre before attending City College of New York and Columbia University. He was then admitted to Harvard Law School but, said his widow Patricia, "the lure of the stage drew him away from that".
After working as an assistant director, he directed two short- lived Broadway plays, Bloodstream (1932), a well-meaning but bitter drama about racism set in a prison coal mine, and The Black Tower (1932), starring Walter Kingsford as a failed sculptor who perfects a means of petrifying human beings into lifelike works of art.
Salkow wrote and directed several movie shorts in New York, then went to Hollywood as a writer for Paramount. He co-scripted Anything Goes (1936), starring Bing Crosby, and The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936) but within months he had accepted an offer from Universal to direct.
His first film, Four Days' Wonder (1937), was adapted from an A.A. Milne story about a teenager who takes flight when she fears she will be implicated in the death of her aunt. Salkow's direction was praised for capturing the whimsical flavour of the book and coaxing a convincing performance from Jeanne Dante in the main role (although the young star made no further films).
Salkow directed three other 1937 releases including the murder mystery Girl Overboard, which had an impressive cast headed by Gloria Stuart, Sidney Blackmer and Walter Pidgeon. The restless Salkow next moved to Republic, where his films included a newspaper thriller, The Night Hawk (1938), a heavy drama of love and self-sacrifice, The Zero Hour (1939) and a horse-racing tale, Fighting Thoroughbreds (1939). He began his tenure at Columbia with Cafe Hostess (1940), starring Ann Dvorak as the title character, saved by a brave sailor (Preston Foster) from life in a night-club run by gangsters.
This was followed by Salkow's first film featuring the reformed thief turned gentleman detective the Lone Wolf. In 1926 Columbia had bought the rights to the character, created by the writer Louis Joseph Vance in 1914, and had occasionally produced a Lone Wolf movie, but it was not until the success of The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt in 1939 that they felt they had found the right approach and the right actor (Warren William) to embark on a series.
The second film with William, The Lone Wolf Strikes (1940), was given to Salkow, who did well enough to be given the next three. The Lone Wolf Strikes had a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo (later to become one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to testify before the Un- American Activities Committee) and featured Joan Perry, the wife of studio head Harry Cohn, as the female lead. It set what was to become a standard formula for the films, with the Lone Wolf helping an innocent party (usually an attractive female) solve a crime while he himself is suspected by the police because of his former life. (When shown in revival or television seasons, the formula can seem tiresome, but in their day they were of course seen months apart.)
Eric Blore, as a former pickpocket turned valet, was a cast regular and provided a neat contrast to William. The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady (1940) was one of the best of the series, with Jean Muir the damsel in distress and Salkow keeping up a lively pace. The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance (1941), involving the theft of a set of engraving plates, was almost as good, but Salkow's last film in the series, The Lone Wolf Keeps a Date (1941) was less memorable, lacking pace and featuring a poorer supporting cast than average.
Salkow moved on to a lively musical starring Ann Miller, Time Out for Rhythm (1941). One of the first musicals set against a television background, its thin plot about rival theatrical agents was bolstered by Miller's splendid tap-dancing and a cast that included Rudy Vallee, the Three Stooges and Glen Gray's Casa Loma Band, who featured in the most striking sequence when the musicians disappear into a black background so that only their instruments are seen.
Columbia were impressed enough by Salkow's work to reward him with an "A" movie, The Adventures of Martin Eden (1942), based on Jack London's stirring tale of a brutalised seaman (Glenn Ford) whose memoirs bring about the conviction of a Bligh-like captain and the freeing of an innocent man. A powerful indictment of a cruel merchant- marine system, it was sometimes too disturbing for audiences and, despite an excellent cast including Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, Claire Trevor, Stuart Erwin and Dickie Moore, it was not a great success.
ord also starred in Salkow's Flight Lieutenant (1942), with Pat O'Brien as his father, guilt-ridden over having caused the death of the man whose daughter (Evelyn Keyes) Ford wants to marry. Salkow could do little with a familiar plotline, but his next film City of Women (1943) was a gripping, small-scale drama with a group of fine performances from a primarily female cast including Linda Darnell, Glenda Farrell, Margaret Hamilton and Sara Allgood, playing women who live in a boarding house near the prison where their menfolk are serving sentences. As with many films during the Second World War, its release had been held up while more timely product was released.
Salkow meanwhile had enlisted in the Marines shortly after the United States entered the war, rising to the rank of Major. When Japanese planes attacked the aircraft carrier on which he was shooting a documentary with a film unit, Salkow suffered shrapnel injuries to his back. After the war, he returned to a changing Hollywood where, after directing a romantic comedy at MGM, Faithful in My Fashion (1946), he concentrated on action films, many of them swashbuckling adventures.
They included Sword of the Avenger (1948), which he also produced, Scarlet Angel (1952), starring Yvonne DeCarlo, The Golden Hawk (1952), in which pirate Sterling Hayden wooed lady pirate Rhonda Fleming (actually a society girl in disguise), The Pathfinder (1952, from James Fenimore Cooper's novel), Prince of Pirates (1953, with an unusually lively Barbara Rush in a swashbuckling role), and Raiders of the Seven Seas (1953). Most of these films had plenty of action to compensate for thin plots and Salkow was able to give them a lavish appearance that disguised limited budgets.
As the impact of television made the need for such double-bill fare superfluous in the late Fifties, Salkow made mainly low-budget thrillers and westerns during his last years as a director, plus two horror movies starring Vincent Price, Twice Told Tales (1963) and The Last Man On Earth (1964) (play Flash movie (flv) ). ( Get Flash Catch To Play Flash Movies )In 1965 he made The Great Sioux Massacre (cover image click here ) while at Columbia Pictures. Sidney's last film was a British "B" movie, The Murder Game (1966), starring Ken Scott, Marla Landi and Trader Faulkner in a tale of blackmail and murder.
Salkow directed some television episodes of such series as Lassie and The Addams Family, then at the age of 62 he earned a master's degree of fine arts at the University of Southern California. In the early Seventies he began teaching film at California State University in Northridge, where he headed the film side of the Radio, Television and Film Department. Salkow taught at Northridge for nearly 20 years and became a professor emeritus.
Tom Vallance
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