{"id":156,"date":"2008-12-02T10:15:26","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T15:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/cinemasexiles\/2008\/12\/03\/biography-joe-may\/"},"modified":"2011-09-30T14:26:27","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T18:26:27","slug":"biography-joe-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/cinemasexiles\/biographies\/the-directors\/biography-joe-may\/156\/","title":{"rendered":"Biography: Joe May"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dartmouth.edu\/%7Egerm43\/resources\/biographies\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Biography by Gerd Gem\u00fcnden<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nProfessor of German Studies, Film and Media Studies, and Comparative Literature<br \/>\nDartmouth College<\/p>\n<p>(b. Vienna 1880 \u2013 d. Hollywood 1954)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/cinemasexiles\/files\/2008\/12\/may_post.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-154\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/cinemasexiles\/files\/2008\/12\/may_post.jpg\" alt=\"Joe May\" width=\"150\" height=\"241\" \/><\/a>Born Josef Mandel. Director. A businessman and operetta director, Joe May can be considered one of the founders of the German cinema. He began directing films in 1911 and started his own production company a few years later. He gave famous German director <a href=\"\/wnet\/cinemasexiles\/2008\/12\/02\/fritz-lang\/\">Fritz Lang<\/a> his start in films by employing him as a screenwriter in his  early films. May visited Hollywood in 1929 while working with <a href=\"\/wnet\/cinemasexiles\/2008\/12\/02\/biography-erich-pommer\/\">Erich Pommer<\/a> on <em>Asphalt<\/em> (1929) and returned to Germany with valuable information on the techniques of sound film. He was forced to emigrate in 1934, however, and arrived in California to make films for Paramount.<\/p>\n<p>May&#8217;s first two films, <em>Music in the Air<\/em> (produced by Pommer and scripted by <a href=\"\/wnet\/cinemasexiles\/2008\/12\/02\/billy-wilder\/\">Billy Wilder<\/a> and Robert Liebmann, 1934) and <em>Confession<\/em> (1937) were flops. After directing a handful of abysmal b-movies, May found himself bankrupt by the mid-1940s. He and his wife Mia, a former actress who starred in many of his early films, struggled to run a restaurant for much of the remainder of their lives; in a bittersweet tone of irony, they called their establishment &#8220;The Blue Danube.&#8221; One of Germany&#8217;s most celebrated early directors, May never regained the fame he had enjoyed in Weimar Germany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Biography by Gerd Gem\u00fcnden Professor of German Studies, Film and Media Studies, and Comparative Literature Dartmouth College (b. Vienna 1880 \u2013 d. Hollywood 1954) Born Josef Mandel. Director. A businessman and operetta director, Joe May can be considered one of the founders of the German cinema. He began directing films in 1911 and started his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3323],"tags":[3434,2755,3493],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-directors","tag-biography","tag-director","tag-joe-may"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Biography: Joe May | Cinema&#039;s Exiles | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/cinemasexiles\/biographies\/the-directors\/biography-joe-may\/156\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Biography: Joe May | Cinema&#039;s Exiles | PBS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Biography by Gerd Gem\u00fcnden Professor of German Studies, Film and Media Studies, and Comparative Literature Dartmouth College (b. 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