Thanks to his work as a producer at German Universal, the later film agent Paul Kohner knew his way around the German film scene. He had left Berlin in 1933 and, since then, had been observing from afar where the directors, actors and writers who had fled from the Nazis had ended up. The director Robert Siodmak, who Kohner had offered to represent in Hollywood a few months before the beginning of World War II, was one of the few artists able to consolidate his career in exile. Following the premier of his film Das brennende Geheimnis (The Burning Secret; 1933) Siodmak had gone to France and worked a great deal there from the outset. Only a few weeks after his arrival, he had already filmed the comedy Le Sexe Faible (1933) commissioned by the “Nero Film” producer Seymour Nebenzahl, who had also fled into exile. This was followed by eleven more productions in six years. No other German director has ever made as many films in France as Siodmak. Nevertheless, Kohner’s offer was still interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, his last project, the film version of Ödön von Horwárth’s novel Jugend ohne Gott, had just flopped. He was also attracted by new challenges, and by Hollywood of course, where his brother Curt had already been living since 1937. Not least in importance for his decision was the worsening of the political situation in Europe. Ultimately, it was a last-minute escape: Siodmak and his wife left Paris one day before the outbreak of World War II and Kohner gained a new client, soon to be very successful in Hollywood.