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Sidney Salkow attended City College and Columbia University before entering Harvard Law School. He returned to New York and established himself in theater as an assistant director and later as a theatrical director. He joined the movie industry in 1932 as a dialogue director and quickly moved up to associate director and eventually became a writer/director of short films. He made his first feature film, Four Day's Wonder, in 1937 for Universal, but most of his work for the next two years was for Republic Pictures, after which he moved to Columbia Pictures, where his most notable pictures were several entries in the Lone Wolf mystery series, and The Adventures of Martin Eden, based on Jack London's book. Salkow was best known as a very capable if not necessarily stylish, maker of action films and westerns, although his wartime films included City Without Men, a prison melodrama that was an early starring vehicle for Linda Darnell. Among his most popular films was the 1964 Italian co-production of The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price, based on Richard Matheson's classic vampire chiller I Am Legend. He made his last movie, The Murder Game, in 1966 for 20th Century-Fox.