Erich Pommer

Erich Pommer (July 20, 1889 – May 8, 1966) was a German-born film producer and executive. He was involved in the German Expressionist film movement during the silent era as the head of production at Decla, Decla-Bioscop and from 1924 to 1926 at Ufa responsible for many of the best known movies of the Weimar Republic such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen (1924), Michael (1924), Der Letzte Mann / The Last Laugh (1924), Variety (1925), Tartuffe (1926), Faust (1926), Metropolis (1927) and The Blue Angel (1930). He later worked in American exile before returning to Germany for a time after the war.

Early life and career

Pommer was born in Hildesheim, Province of Hanover, to Gustav Pommer and his wife Anna. After a commercial practice with the Herrenkonfektion Machol & Lewin, Pommer began his film career in 1907, with the Berlin branch of the Gaumont company, eventually taking over the Viennese branch in 1910. In 1912, Pommer concluded his military service and became a representative of the French Éclair camera company in Vienna, where he was responsible for their business in Central and Eastern Europe. From 1913, he was Éclair general representative for Central Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Poland, based in Berlin. In the same year, he married Gertrud Levy and became, together with Marcel Vandal, the director-general of the Viennese office of Éclair. Under Pommer's direction, the company began the production of feature films including Das Geheimnis der Lüfte / Le mystère de l'air (in English, the Mystery of the Air). Another five films followed in 1915.

With French capital from Éclair, and together with Fritz Holz, Pommer - while serving as an officer at the Western front - established in 1915 the Decla-Film-Gesellschaft-Holz & Co.(Decla Film Society Holz & Co.) in Berlin. The Decla ("German Eclair") produced adventure and detective films, drama, and society pieces, as well as short film series. Its own Decla rental business, led by Hermann Saklikower, also presented foreign films. Pommer served in the First World War at the West and Eastern fronts, but injuries suffered in action led him to return to Berlin in 1916, where he was responsible for teaching recruits and later worked for the Office for Film and Picture (Bufa) at the War Ministry.

After the 1919 merger of Decla with the Meinert-Film-Gesellschaft, Rudolf Meinert became head of production while Erich Pommer took charge of representation abroad. Decla's production became more ambitious. The brands "Decla Abenteuerklasse" (producing, among others, Fritz Lang's Die Spinnen. 2. Teil: Die Brillantenschiff (The Spiders, Part 2: The Diamond Ship, 1920) and "Decla Weltklasse" (including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), under the direction of Robert Wiene) were created.

Decla merged with German Bioskop AG to create the Decla Bioskop AG, thus becoming in 1920 the second largest German film company after Ufa. Decla owned a studio in Neubabelsberg and a cinema chain. Two subsidiaries were formed: Uco-Film GmbH and Russo Films. The Uco Film GmbH, in whose establishment the Ullstein publishing house was involved, dedicated itself to filming serials from novels. Schloß Vogelöd / The Haunted Castle and Phantom, under the direction of F. W. Murnau, as well as Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, were released. The adaptation of works of world literature was the focus of Russo Films. In an interview in 1922, Pommer stated the international success of the German films would have to be linked to the production of quality pictures.

Pommer gathered around him talented directors (Carl Froelich and Fritz Wendhausen), script writers (Thea von Harbou, Carl Mayer, and Robert Liebmann), cameramen (Karl Freund, Carl Hoffmann, and Willy Hameister), architects (Walter Roehrig and Robert Herlth), as well as actors and actresses. In November 1921, Decla-Bioskop was taken over by Ufa, although it maintained a modicum of independence.

In early 1923, Erich Pommer joined the Ufa executive committee, to oversee the Decla-Bioskop operations. At the same time, he became the first chairman of the Central Organization of the German Film Industry (SPIO), which would shape German cinema during the Weimar Republic. The country's hyper inflation made expencive productions possible: in that time the work of several classical authors were adapted into movies, and internationally successful big budget films released like Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924), Variety (1925), Faust (1926), and Manon Lescaut (1926). High production costs lead Ufa to a financial crisis. Finally, due to the enormous cost increase of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (6 million marks, the most expensive to date) Pommer's contract was not extended and he left with his family for Hollywood.

Working for Paramount Pictures, he produced two films starring Pola Negri, Hotel Imperial and Barbed Wire (both 1927). Pommer was called back by the new management of Ufa (1927) that had been taken over by the right-wing press magnate Alfred Hugenberg. From the USA, Pommer brought organizational and technical novelties, such as the use of turning plans or of camera crane cars.

As head of the "Erich-Pommer-Produktion der Ufa" (Erich Pommer production of the Ufa), he produced Heimkehr (Homecoming) and Ungarische Rhapsodie (Hungarian Rhapsody, both 1928). His last silent productions were Asphalt directed by Joe May and Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna starring Brigitte Helm and Franz Lederer

Pommer was a pioneer of sound film in Germany and of multiple language versions (MLV) as a means to cope with selling big productions to different countries: Melodie des Herzens / Melody of the Heart, made at the end of 1929 in Berlin, was produced in an German, English, French, Hungarian as well as a silent version. The "Erich-Pommer-Produktion der Ufa" turned out several international box office hits in the following years, most notably Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930), starring Marlene Dietrich. Among his productions was a series of popular musical comedies such as Die Drei von der Tankstelle and Der Kongreß tanzt / Congress Dances or the science fiction spectacle F.P.1 shot in three versions.

Exile and eventual return

After the Nazi came to power early in 1933, Ufa rescinded Pommer's contract and he picked up an offer of Fox Film Corporation to build Fox Europa as its European arm in Paris, where he produces Max Ophüls' On a volé un homme (1933) and Fritz Lang's Liliom (1934), and then went on to Hollywood again. In 1936, he worked in Britain for Alexander Korda (Fire Over England, 1937). In 1937 he formed a production company, the Mayflower Picture Corp., with actor Charles Laughton. Their first film, Vessel of Wrath (1938 film) (also known as The Beachcomber) was Pommer's only attempt at directing a film. In 1938, he produced St. Martin's Lane directed by Tim Whelan starring Laughton and Vivien Leigh) and in 1939 Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn again with Laughton.

In 1939 he signed with RKO Radio Pictures, in Hollywood, for whom he produced two pictures. Becoming seriously ill in 1941 (the chain-smoker suffered a heart attack), his contract with RKO was not renewed. Between 1942 and 1946, Pommer worked on a few film projects, some of which eventually went into production but without him. Pommer and his wife rented a small apartment and lived off the proceeds from the sale of personal valuables. They also helped two close friends, Fred Pinkus (a former business manager from Berlin) and his wife, silent movie star Eliza La Porta, who bought chinaware and glasses and then hand-painted them to sell to the higher-class department stores. Pommer's wife helped with the painting, and Pommer alternated with Pinkus to work the drying oven in Pinkus' garage. Having resided continuously in the United States since 1939, Pommer became a naturalized American citizen in 1944.

In 1946, Pommer returned to Germany, where he became the highest-ranking film control officer of the American military Government OMGUS responsible for the reorganisation of the German film industry overseeing the reconstruction of studios and assigning production licenses. After some controversy, in 1949 Pommer resigned his office and returned to the United States. He attempted to launch Signature Pictures to produce German-American films, an endeavor that failed.

In 1951 he started the "Intercontinental Film GmbH" in Munich, making a few movies: Nachts auf den Strassen (1951) and Kinder, Mütter und ein General (1955). However, restrictions forced on Pommer lead him to resettle in California. Physically badly shaken (Pommer used a wheelchair after the amputation of a leg) his career as a producer was ended.

Pommer died in Los Angeles, California, in 1966.

Awards

• 1953 German Film Award for "Nachts auf den Strassen".
• 1955 Golden Globe Award for Best Picture for "Kinder, Mütter, und ein General".
• 1956 Grand-Prix de l'Union de la Critique de Cinéma (UCC) for "Kinder, Mütter, und ein General".

References

• Hans-Michael Bock (Ed.): The Concise CineGraph. Encyclopedia of German Cinema. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books 2009.
• The Silent Cinema Reader, edited by Lee Grieveson and Peter Kramer.
• IMDB
• Deutsches Film Institut, article by Laura Bezerra [1]

External links

• IMDb