Douglas SirkFilmography

My Life For Zarah Leander

Actors: Zarah Leander, Margot Hielscher, Douglas Sirk, Michael Jary

Synopsis: Director Christian Blackwood has brought forth more than 40 documentaries in 25 years, most of them specializing in artists' and filmmakers' work and/or biographies. This docudrama represents a new approach and melds the single-minded adoration of one fan, Paul Seiler, with film clips and archival Read More

Harvey Middleman, Fireman

Crew: Director

Actors: Eugene Troobnick, Hermione Gingold, Patricia Harty, Arlene Golonka, Will MacKenzie

Synopsis: In this comedy, an even-tempered fireman with a happily tepid life, finds his peaceful world disrupted when he becomes infatuated with the woman he saved from a burning building. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Imitation of Life

Crew: Director

Actors: Lana Turner, John Gavin, Juanita Moore, Sandra Dee, Dan O'Herlihy, Robert Alda, Susan Kohner

Synopsis: This glamorized remake of the 1934 film Imitation of Life bears only a passing resemblance to its source, the best-selling novel by Fannie Hurst. Originally, the heroine was a widowed mother who kept the wolf from the door by setting up a successful pancake business with her black housemaid. In Read More

A Time to Love and a Time to Die

Crew: Director

Actors: John Gavin, Liselotte Pulver, Keenan Wynn, Erich Maria Remarque, Don DeFore, Thayer David, Jock Mahoney

Synopsis: Douglas Sirk directed this doomed World War II love story, seen from the German side of the war, as filtered through a distinctly late-'50s Hollywood banality. The film is based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the author of the classic World War I anti-war novel All Quiet On the Western Read More

The Tarnished Angels

Crew: Director

Actors: Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Jack Carson, Robert Middleton

Synopsis: William Faulkner's novel Pylon was optioned by Universal producer Albert Zugsmith, who used it as the source for his 1957 production The Tarnished Angels. Robert Stack is a disillusioned World War One ace eking out a living as a barnstorming pilot/parachutist during the early 1930s. New Orleans Read More

Interlude

Crew: Director

Actors: June Allyson, Rossano Brazzi, Marianne Cook, Françoise Rosay, Keith Andes

Synopsis: Like many of his best works, filmmaker Douglas Sirk's Interlude is a remake of an earlier Universal soap opera. In this case, Sirk's source material is the 1939 Irene Dunne-Charles Boyer vehicle When Tomorrow Comes. Based on a story by (of all people) James M. Cain, the story concerns the romance Read More

Never Say Goodbye

Crew: Director

Actors: Rock Hudson, Cornell Borchers, George Sanders, Ray Collins, David Janssen

Synopsis: This emotional drama concerns a WWII medic who marries a German woman but leaves her in a jealous rage, taking their baby with him. They lose touch after she is arrested behind the Iron Curtain after the war. Eight years later, she sees him in a Chicago cafe, rushes across the street to see him Read More

There's Always Tomorrow

Crew: Director

Actors: Gigi Perreau, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Joan Bennett, William Reynolds, Judy Nugent

Synopsis: There's Always Tomorrow is a remake of a 1934 film of the same name. Fred MacMurray is a toy company executive whose wife (Joan Bennett) and kids (Gigi Perreau, William Reynolds and Judy Nugent) take him for granted. Barbara Stanwyck is Fred's former girlfriend, whose own business activities Read More

Written on the Wind

Crew: Director

Actors: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith

Synopsis: Perhaps the definitive Douglas Sirk production, Written on the Wind is based on the novel by Robert Wilder. The story revolves around the Hadleys, a wealthy but thoroughly debauched family of Texas oil millionaires. Robert Stack is self-destructive alcoholic Kyle Hadley, while Dorothy Malone won Read More

Battle Hymn

Crew: Director

Actors: Rock Hudson, Anna Kashfi, Dan Duryea, Don DeFore, Martha Hyer

Synopsis: Battle Hymn was inspired by the true story of American minister Dean Hess, played here with rare sensitivity by Rock Hudson. A bomber pilot during World War II, Hess inadvertently releases a bomb which destroys a German orphanage. Tortured by guilt, Hess relocates in Korea after the war to offer Read More

Captain Lightfoot

Crew: Director

Actors: Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Jeff Morrow, Kathleen Ryan, Finlay Currie

Synopsis: Rock Hudson stars as Michael Martin, a naive and impetuous young would-be rebel in 1815 Ireland, who turns to robbery in his desire to support the cause against England. Now wanted by the British and forced into hiding, he crosses paths with the renowned rebel leader Captain Thunderbolt aka John Read More

All That Heaven Allows

Crew: Director

Actors: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Conrad Nagel, Virginia Grey

Synopsis: One of director Douglas Sirk's best and most successful romantic soapers of the 1950s, All That Heaven Allows is predicated on a May-December romance. The difference here is that the woman, attractive widow Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), is considerably older than the man, handsome gardener-landscaper Read More

Taza, Son of Cochise

Crew: Director

Actors: Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Gregg Palmer, Bart Roberts, Morris Ankrum

Synopsis: In this unusual Western directed by Douglas Sirk, Rock Hudson stars as Taza, whose legendary father Cochise (Jeff Chandler) is on his deathbed. Taza promises his father that he will keep the tribe -- which Cochise united and ruled -- at peace. But Taza's brother wants the tribe to join with Read More

Sign of the Pagan

Crew: Director

Actors: Jeff Chandler, Jack Palance, Ludmilla Tcherina, Rita Gam, Jeff Morrow

Synopsis: Jeff Chandler may be the top-billed star of Sign of the Pagan, but the film belongs to Jack Palance, cast as no less than Attila the Hun. As Attila's hordes advance upon Rome, noble centurion Marcian (Chandler) mounts a counteroffensive. Alas, the Scourge of God cannot be stopped by weaponry or Read More

Magnificent Obsession

Crew: Director

Actors: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Agnes Moorehead, Otto Kruger

Synopsis: This second film version of Lloyd C. Douglas' spiritual novel Magnificent Obsession is in its own way as successful as the first (filmed in 1935) in glossing over the plot holes and logic gaps in the original novel. Rock Hudson plays Bob Merrick, a reckless playboy who is indirectly responsible Read More

Take Me to Town

Crew: Director

Actors: Ann Sheridan, Sterling Hayden, Phillip Reed, Lee Patrick, Lee Aaker

Synopsis: An outdoor adventure musical comedy, Take Me to Town features Ann Sheridan as Vermilion O'Toole, a barroom singer with a shady past who has taken refuge in a small timber town in the Pacific Northwest. She's on the run from a federal agent, Ed Daggett (Larry Gates). Just out of town lives Will Read More

All I Desire

Crew: Director

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Carlson, Lyle Bettger, Marcia Henderson, Maureen O'Sullivan, Lori Nelson

Synopsis: All I Desire an early exercise in Douglas Sirk Baroque, is set at the turn of the century. Long divorced from her husband Richard Carlson, itinerant actress Barbara Stanwyck returns to her home town to watch her daughter perform in a high school play. Stanwyck decides to turn over a new leaf and Read More

Has Anybody Seen My Gal?

Crew: Director

Actors: Piper Laurie, Rock Hudson, Charles Coburn, Lynn Bari

Synopsis: Douglas Sirk directed this frothy musical comedy set in the 1920s starring Charles Coburn as Samuel Fulton, an elderly man with a multi-million dollar fortune. With no family of his own to whom he can leave his money, Fulton is pondering what to do with his estate. Years ago, he was in love with a Read More

No Room for the Groom

Crew: Director

Actors: Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie, Don DeFore, Spring Byington, Lillian Bronson

Synopsis: Pity poor ex-GI Alvah Morrell (Tony Curtis). While on his honeymoon with perky Lee Kingshead (Piper Laurie), he comes down with a bad case of chicken pox. The moment he recovers, he's shipped overseas. And when Alvah returns home, he finds his house festooned with his wife's troublesome relatives Read More

Meet Me at the Fair

Crew: Director

Actors: Dan Dailey, Diana Lynn, Chet Allen, Scatman Crothers, Hugh O'Brian

Synopsis: Despite its ebullient title and the presence of lightweight dancing star Dan Dailey, Meet Me at the Fair has a lot more meat on its bones than most musicals of the early 1950s. Dailey plays an early-1900s medicine show huckster who finds himself the reluctant guardian of orphanage escapee Chet Allen Read More

The First Legion

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Charles Boyer, William Demarest, Lyle Bettger, Leo G. Carroll

Synopsis: Since its lapse into public domain in 1978, First Legion has joined Love Affair and Algiers as the most readily available of Charles Boyer's films. Boyer plays Fr. Marc Arnoux, the head of St. Gregory's seminary, who can never quite shake the feeling that he shouldn't have given up his career as Read More

Thunder on the Hill

Crew: Director

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Ann Blyth, Robert Douglas, Anne Crawford, Phillip Friend

Synopsis: Charlotte Hastings' West End stage hit Bonaventure was adroitly translated to the American screen as Thunder on the Hill. The bulk of the action takes place at convent, presided over by Sister Mary (Claudette Colbert). Circumstances -- namely, a dangerous rainstorm and raging flood -- dictate that Read More

Weekend with Father

Crew: Director

Actors: Van Heflin, Patricia Neal, Virginia Field, Richard Denning

Synopsis: This seminal Brady Bunch stars Van Heflin as a widower and Patricia Neal as a widow. Both parties have several children by their first marriages. Heflin and Neal fall in love and decide to marry, each hoping to adopt the other's kids. The couple idealistically subscribes to the "one big happy Read More

The Lady Pays Off

Crew: Director

Actors: Linda Darnell, Stephen McNally, Virginia Field, Ann Codee

Synopsis: The Lady Pays Off is a formative example of filmmaker Douglas Sirk's elegant exotica. Linda Darnell plays the title character, a vacationing schoolteacher and one-time gambler named Evelyn Warren. Unfortunately, that "one time" leaves Evelyn indebted to casino owner Matt Braddock (Stephen McNally) Read More

Mystery Submarine

Crew: Director

Actors: MacDonald Carey, Märta Torén, Robert Douglas, Carl Esmond, Ludwig Donath

Synopsis: The trendy elegance of director Douglas Sirk's later big-budget soap operas is nowhere to be found in Sirk's Atomic-Age melodrama Mystery Submarine. MacDonald Carey stars as Brett Young, a U.S. undercover agent whose job it is to prevent atomic secrets from falling into the wrong hands. Marta Toren Read More

Slightly French

Crew: Director

Actors: Dorothy Lamour, Don Ameche, Janis Carter, Willard Parker, Adele Jergens

Synopsis: Director Douglas Sirk's love of cinematic esoterica was kept in check in the musical comedy Slightly French. Dorothy Lamour stars as Mary O'Leary, a carnival entertainer who's discovered by enterprising director John Gayle (Don Ameche). The plot dictates that Gayle must pass off Mary as an elegant Read More

Shockproof

Crew: Director

Actors: Cornel Wilde, Patricia Knight, John Baragrey, Esther Minciotti, Howard St. John

Synopsis: Beauty contest winner Patricia Knight's one bid for screen stardom was Columbia's Shockproof. Knight plays Jenny Wright, a convicted murderess paroled in the care of probation officer Griff Marat (Cornel Wilde). What begins as an aloof professional relationship eventually blossoms into romance. Read More

Sleep, My Love

Crew: Director

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Robert Cummings, Don Ameche, Hazel Brooks, Rita Johnson, George Coulouris

Synopsis: This noir mystery thriller was produced by Mary Pickford and her husband Buddy Rogers, and directed by Douglas Sirk. Claudette Colbert stars as Alison Courtland, a wealthy New York socialite who awakens on a Boston-bound train with no memory of how she got there. A kindly older woman, Mrs. Read More

Lured

Crew: Director

Actors: George Sanders, Lucille Ball, Charles Coburn, Alan Mowbray, Cedric Hardwicke

Synopsis: Lucille Ball is an American taxi-dancer living in London whose roommate has disappeared. The missing girl had left to answer a job offer in the "personal" column of the Times...just like several other women who've vanished without a trace. Scotland Yard detective George Zucco suggests that Ball Read More

A Scandal in Paris

Crew: Director

Actors: George Sanders, Signe Hasso, Carole Landis, Akim Tamiroff, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: A Scandal in Paris is a liberal adaptation of the life story of Eugène François Vidocq, who was French prefect of police during the Napoleonic era. George Sanders stars as Vidocq, who spends most of the film as an aimless rogue willing to lie, cheat, and steal for his own comfort. The women who Read More

Summer Storm

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: George Sanders, Linda Darnell, Anna Lee, Edward Everett Horton, Hugo Haas

Synopsis: Summer Storm is a remarkably effective Hollywood filmization of Anton Chekhov's The Shooting Party. Linda Darnell stars as the young and beautiful wife of a middle-aged Russian civil servant (Hugo Haas). Darnell becomes the object of the affections of her husband's employer, a lecherous count (Edward Everett Horton Read More

Hitler's Madman

Crew: Director

Actors: Patricia Morison, John Carradine, Alan Curtis, Howard Freeman, Ralph Morgan

Synopsis: Hitler's Madman is based on an all-too-real wartime atrocity. John Carradine portrays Heydrich, the vicious SS officer put in charge of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Heydrich is killed by the Czech underground, prompting the Nazis to plan a horrible retaliation. The Gestapo selects the Czech Read More