becoming successor to Rene Clair, until Hitler again forced him out. Siodmak arrived in California in 1939, where he made 23 movies, many of them widely popular thrillers and crime melodramas, which critics today regard as classics of film noir. Hollywood career Beginning in 1941, he first turned out several B-films and programmers for various studios before he gained a seven-year contract with Universal Studios in 1943. The best of those early films are the thriller Fly by Night in 1942, with Richard Carlson and Nancy Kelly, and in 1943 Someone to Remember, with Mable Paige in a signature role. As house director, his services were often used to salvage troublesome productions at the studio. On Mark Hellinger's production Swell Guy (1946), for instance, Siodmak was brought in to replace Frank Tuttle only six days after completing work on The Killers. Siodmak worked steadily while under contract, overshadowed by high-profile directors, like Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he had been often compared by the press. At Universal, Siodmak made yet another B-film, Son of Dracula (1943), the third in the studio's series of Dracula movies (based on his brother Curt's original story). His second feature was the Maria Montez/Jon Hall vehicle, Cobra Woman (1944), made in Technicolor. His first all-out noir was Phantom Lady (1944), for staff producer Joan Harrison, Universal's first female executive and Alfred Hitchcock's former secretary and script assistant. It showcased Siodmak's skill with camera and editing to dazzling effect, but no more so than in the iconic jam-session sequence with Elisha Cook Jr. in throes on the drums. Following the critical success of Phantom Lady, Siodmak directed Christmas Holiday (1944) with Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly (Hans J. Salter received an Oscar nomination for best music). Beginning with this film, his work in Hollywood attained the stylistic and thematic characteristics that are evident in his later noirs. Christmas Holiday, adapted from a W. Somerset Maugham novel by Herman J. Mankiewicz, was Durbin's most successful feature. Siodmak's use of black-and-white cinematography and urban landscapes, together with his light-and-shadow designs, followed the basic structure of classic noir films. In fact, he had a number of collaborations with cinematographers, such as Nicholas Musuraca, Elwood Bredell, and Franz Planer, in which he achieved the Expressionist look he had cultivated in his early years at UFA. During Siodmak's tenure, Universal made the most of the noir style in The Suspect, The Strange