orig. Claus Detlef Sierck
born April 26, 1900, Hamburg, Ger.
died Jan. 14, 1987, Lugano, Switz.
German-U.S. film director.
He was artistic director of theatres in Bremen (192329) and Leipzig (192936), Ger., and made several films before fleeing the country in 1937. He arrived in Hollywood in 1939, and in 1943 he directed his first American film, Hitler's Madman . He joined Universal Pictures in 1950, where he directed comedy, western, and war movies but was best known for popular melodramas such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), There's Always Tomorrow (1956), Written on the Wind (1956), and The Tarnished Angels (1957), in which frightful emotional warfare lurks beneath the facade of upper-middle-class life. After directing his greatest success, Imitation of Life (1959), he retired to Europe.