future stars, including Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine, Tony Curtis, Debra Paget, Maria Schell, Mario Adorf, Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Dorothy McGuire, Yvonne de Carlo, Barbara Stanwyck, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Ella Raines. He directed Charles Laughton (a close friend) and George Sanders, and got from both perhaps the unlikeliest, most natural and under-acted performances of their careers. From Lon Chaney, Jr. he drew an uncharacteristically controlled and coldly menacing performance for Son of Dracula. He managed with Lancaster to capture a youthful vulnerability in The Killers, despite the actor's age (he was 33). He was able to get a believable, dramatic performance from Gene Kelly. He also helped raise Ava Gardner's public profile. Return to Europe Before leaving for Europe in 1952, following the problematic production The Crimson Pirate for Norma Productions (distributed through Warner Bros.) and producer Harold Hecht, his third and last film with Burt Lancaster (Siodmak dubbed the chaotic experience "The Hecht Follies"), Siodmak had directed some of the era's best films noirs (twelve in all), more than any other director who worked in that style. However, his identification with film noir, generally unpopular with American audiences, may have been more of a curse than a blessing. He often expressed his desire to make pictures "of a different type and background" than the ones he had been making for ten years. Nevertheless, he ended his Universal contract with one last noir, the disappointing Deported (1951) which he filmed partly abroad (Siodmak was among the first refugee directors to return to Europe after making American films). The story is loosely based on the deportation of gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Siodmak had hoped Loretta Young would star, but settled for the Swedish actress Märta Torén. Those "different type" of films he had made—The Great Sinner (1949) for MGM, Time Out of Mind (1947) for Universal (which Siodmak also produced), The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951) for Columbia Pictures (Ernest Borgnine's debut and Dorothy Gish's return to the screen)—all proved ill-suited to his noir sensibilities (although in 1952 The Crimson Pirate, despite the difficult production, was a surprising and pleasing departure—in fact, Lancaster believed it was inspiration for the tongue-in-cheek style of the James Bond films). The five months he collaborated with Budd Schulberg on a screenplay tentatively titled A Stone in the River Hudson, an early version of On the Waterfront, was also a major disappointment for Siodmak. In