Film director Douglas Sirk, whose reputation blossomed in the generation after his 1959 retirement from Hollywood filmmaking, was born Hans Detlef Sierck on April 26, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany, to a journalist. Both of his parents were Danish, and the future director would make movies in German, Danish and English. His reputation, which was breathed to life by the French nouvelle vague critiques who developed the "auteur" , but he did not feel that he was a brother-in-arms of the unabashed communist Brecht, as many of his critics would have it. Like one of his own characters, Sirk was now subjected to societal forced outside his control, quite unlike the worlds he had controlled as a director in Germany and the United States. Ironically for the great ironist, when Douglas Sirk died on January 14, 1987, his reputation was not yet in full flower. He continues to exert his influence on a new generation of filmmakers all over the world.
Father of Klaus Detlef Sierck (1925-1944).
Director John Waters has cited him as one of his greatest influences.
Was voted the 38th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Far from Heaven was intended as a tribute to Sirks films, which are also said to have been the original influence for TV soap operas.
Directed 5 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Jane Wyman , Dorothy Malone , Robert Stack , Susan Kohner and Juanita Moore. Malone won an Oscar for Written on the Wind .
In 1980 the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival wanted him to be President of the Jury. The telegram sent to their Hollywood office was to read, "Request Douglas Sirk for jury". However, a typo and an extra comma resulted in it reading, "Request Douglas, Kirk for jury". Kirk Douglas became the President of the 1980 jury.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 779-782. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1999.
In Quentin Tarantino s Pulp Fiction , inside of the movie-homage diner "Jack Rabbit Slims" one of the characters orders a "Douglas Sirk Steak" from the menu.
Was of Danish heritage but grew up in Germany.
Although Sirk made no more Hollywood films after his greatest success, "Imitation Of Life", in 1959, he did not retire from film-making immediately, as is sometimes reported. After "Imitation" was released, he was named as director of a projected film about Suzanne Valadon, the mother of the artist Maurice Utrillo, to star Lana Turner; it was never made. He was also mentioned (in 1962) in connection with a proposed remake of "Madame X", also to star Turner. However, the project was postponed and when Turner finally made the film in 1966, her director was David Lowell Rich.
Douglas Sirk said in an interview with Jon Halliday in 1971 that he did some work on preparing "Never Say Goodbye", that he brought over Cornell Borchers from Germany and that he re-shot scenes with George Sanders on the latters and the studios request.
[on art] This is the dialectic-there is a very short distance between,high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is,by this very quality nearer to art.
I certainly believe that happiness exists, if only by the simple fact,that it can be destroyed.
[on Clark Gable]: That face of a tomcat - what did people see in it?,And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.
In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is. .
