Joe May

Biography

Joe May arrived on a Berlin film set in 1911 already carrying the polish of a man who had sold leather goods and staged light operas; within months the camera replaced the cash-register, and by 1915 he had stitched together his own production banner. Among the first hires of that fledgling studio was a former architecture student named Fritz Lang, handed a pen and told to “think in pictures.” When the Nazis marched in, May—Jewish, restless, 52—boarded the next Atlantic steamer with one suitcase and a pocketful of Expressionist instincts. Universal Pictures put him to work on brisk thrillers—The Invisible Ray, The House of the Missing—but his refusal to master more than phrase-book English and his habit of barking orders like a Prussian drill sergeant kept him off the gilt-edged “A” lots. At 64 he signed on for one last assignment, the Monogram quickie The House of Frankenstein, then traded megaphone for menu, opening a small Bavarian bistro on Hollywood Boulevard. Patrons who balked at his insistence on choosing their entrée soon stayed away; May closed the doors, shrugged, and receded into Los Angeles fog, still speaking fluent cinema if only broken English.