Rudolph Flothow

[4] Flothow was born November 23, 1895, in Frankfurt, Germany,[5] into a mercantile family involved in the China shipping trade, and was apparently a distant relation of the Bavarian composer Friedrich von Flotow.

[6] He married a former model, Martha Tekla Sikorski, the daughter of Polish immigrants, and had one son, Rudy Flothow.

[5] His half-brother Wolfgang Hoeffer, a U.S. counterintelligence agent, was found shot to death in the immediate aftermath of Otto John's defection to East Germany.

[5] Flothow consistently worked with small budgets,[2] with film shoots typically lasting just 21 days.

[3] The program's African setting had its source in Flothow's longstanding fascination with Africa,[8] crystallizing in a dressing-room conversation with Jon Hall.