Background
Joe May was born on 7 November 1880 in Vienna, Wien, Austria.
Joe May was born on 7 November 1880 in Vienna, Wien, Austria.
May’s first American film, Music in the Air, was a Gloria Swanson picture at Fox, while Confession was made for Warners. He settled down at Universal on second features, of which The Invisible Man Returns, with Cedric Hardwicke, is the most interesting. His last film, for Monogram, paired Simone Simon and the voung Robert Mitchum.
Hit the Road
1941The Invisible Man Returns
1940Music in the Air
1934Although a major figure of the German industry some years before Fritz Lang entered it, May looks like Lang’s dull brother. One of the originators of the German adventure serial, May was out-classed by Lang’s Die Spinnen and Mabuse films.
And while May worked in Germany, France, and America—exactly Lang’s pattern—he only illustrated the way Lang regularly exceeded German limits. And yet Lang was May’s scriptwriter on Die Hochzeit im Excentric-club and Das Indische Grabmal, at a time when May had his own production company.