THE DIRECTOR of over 50 films, Sidney Salkow will be known to aficionados of the "B" movie. During his long career he made several entertaining supporting features, notably a consecutive sequence of four films in the enjoyable "Lone Wolf" series starring Warren William.

His most durable work was done in the Forties when under contract to Columbia, but earlier he had worked in the theatre, directed film shorts with Bing Crosby and the Three Stooges, and made some swiftly paced action films for Republic and Universal. A resourceful director, he was noted for bringing his films in on time and within the budget.

Born to Hungarian parents in 1909 in New York City, he worked as a child actor in the theatre before attending City College of New York and Columbia University. He was then admitted to Harvard Law School but, said his widow Patricia, "the lure of the stage drew him away from that".

After working as an assistant director, he directed two short- lived Broadway plays, Bloodstream (1932), a well-meaning but bitter drama about racism set in a prison coal mine, and The Black Tower (1932), starring Walter Kingsford as a failed sculptor who perfects a means of petrifying human beings into lifelike works of art.

Salkow wrote and directed several movie shorts in New York, then went to Hollywood as a writer for Paramount. He co-scripted Anything Goes (1936), starring Bing Crosby, and The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936) but within months he had accepted an offer from Universal to direct.