Erich von Stroheim

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Erich von Stroheim

Erich von Stroheim (born Erich Oswald Stroheim ; born September 22, 1885 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † May 12, 1957 in Maurepas near Paris , France ) was an American director , actor , screenwriter and writer of Austrian origin.

As an actor, Stroheim was often seen in the role of the arrogant and unscrupulous villain . That's why the producers came up with the slogan "The man you like to hate" for him. In the 1920s Stroheim was one of the leading directors in Hollywood with films such as Greed and The Merry Widow . His costly attention to detail as well as his disregard for censorship regulations and shooting schedules meant that most of his directorial work was cut short, remained unfinished or that he was fired during the shooting. Today none of his films exist in the original version. After 1933 he was no longer employed as a director and worked again as an actor. He had great success as an actor in films such as The Great Illusion or Sunset Boulevard , but also appeared in numerous B-movies .

The works of the Viennese writer Arthur Schnitzler exerted a significant influence on Stroheim's work as a director and screenwriter. The figure of the easy-going officer or student in Schnitzler's novels, who falls in love with the “simple Viennese girl”, was repeatedly used as a motif in Stroheim's films.

The early years

Erich von Stroheim's childhood and youth in Vienna are largely in the dark, and few facts from this period have come to light. His birth certificate shows that he and his family were members of the Jewish community . Stroheim later confessed to Catholicism .

For some time Stroheim worked in his father's business, a straw hat factory. His alleged military career, of which he often spoke later, is unproven. For reasons that have never been clarified, Erich von Stroheim left his hometown around 1909. An uncle gave him the travel money, and on November 15, 1909, he traveled from Bremerhaven to the United States on the ocean liner Prince Friedrich Wilhelm .

After immigrating to the United States, Stroheim worked in a wide variety of jobs and only came into contact with the film industry in 1914. He gained his first experience in the young California film industry as an extra and stuntman , including in DW Griffith's groundbreaking film The Birth of a Nation , where he broke his rib while jumping off the roof of a house. Through this spectacular action, Griffith became aware of Stroheim and gave him more important tasks in his environment.

The aristocracy and the military exerted a great fascination on von Stroheim from an early age, and so he invented and cultivated an image in Hollywood as a descendant of an old noble family and claimed that his full name was Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria Stroheim von Nordenwall . This was supplemented by his assertion that he was the son of a count and a German Baroness and myself as a cavalry - officer served and bodyguard of his majesty. This and his appearance gave him roles as a military man in the most varied of shades throughout his entire acting career.

For the film adaptation of the play Alt-Heidelberg by John Emerson in 1915 he was hired as a technical advisor because of his great knowledge of military matters and played a supporting role. This was followed by other, now increasingly important, tasks as assistant director, outfitter, scriptwriter and actor, mostly as a German or Austrian officer or as a villain in films with Douglas Fairbanks . From 1917, when the USA entered the First World War against the German Reich and Austria-Hungary, there was an increasing need for film villains who corresponded to the expectations of the American audience of the German soldier, the " Hun ". With his grim demeanor and the image mentioned - Stroheim is said to have worn his uniforms outside of the film sets at times - he was ideally suited to effectively portray such characters. He caused a sensation in 1918 in a scene in the film The Heart of Humanity by Allen Hollubar in the role of a German officer who wants to rape a nurse and throws an annoying, screaming baby out of the window. In the same year he played a similar role in The Unbeliever , where, as a German officer, he unscrupulously lets a child and his grandmother shot. Such appearances were resented by Stroheim in Germany decades later. When the screening of Stroheim's third film as a director - Foolish Women - was announced in 1921 , pamphlets and calls for a boycott against Stroheim and his films appeared in the German press:

“The former Austrian officer Erich Oswald von Stroheim was expelled from the army in 1909 after an embarrassing incident and went to America . Through the embodiment of his officer roles, this Austrian nobleman is primarily responsible for the anti-German incitement of the cinema audience in America and in the entire outside world. This traitor to the fatherland, who unscrupulously put himself in the service of his enemy in order to earn money, has crept up, partly through these roles, from a poor flypaper salesman to one of the greatest film directors in America. " ( Egon Jacobsohn in" Film-Hölle "No. August 8, 1921)

The 1920s

Blind Husbands (1919)

In Blind Husbands 1919 Stroheim conducted its first director and also took a starring role. He filmed a script he wrote himself about a fateful love triangle among tourists in the Dolomites . The film became a huge box-office success and earned him additional directing assignments for Universal Studios . Stroheim's second film, The Devil's Passkey from 1920, is now believed to be lost and only a few stills exist. This film was also very successful, so that Stroheim could throw himself into wild and costly extravagances in his next production, Foolish Wives (1921). The producers initially let him go because of his previous successes. Because he also played one of the leading roles in the film, he could threaten the studio with the fact that if he was fired as a director, he would no longer be available as an actor.

With his growing obsession with detail and the associated rising costs and excessive shooting times, however, he dealt with increasing problems with the producing studios. Many anecdotes about Stroheim's eccentric directorial style made the rounds and were widely spread in the press. He is said to have had a tantrum while recording because - in a silent film - a doorbell didn't work. Another time he had an elaborate crowd scene repeated because a waiter in the background was not wearing white gloves. For his notorious orgy scenes, he supposedly hired real prostitutes as extras . For another scene, Stroheim asked for real caviar .

During the production of Merry-Go-Round (1923) Stroheim was dismissed by the studio boss Irving Thalberg after a few weeks of shooting because he had again failed to adhere to the studio's guidelines. Stroheim ordered the necessary military uniforms in Vienna, since, in his opinion, this is the only way to show the necessary authenticity . Extras posing as soldiers, he left for days to parade until he was satisfied with the recordings. He had the Vienna Prater rebuilt in great detail on the studio premises. In contrast to Foolish Wives , Thalberg had this time prevented Stroheim himself from appearing in a role in the film. That way it was easier to replace him as a director. The film was finally completed by the director Rupert Julian .

Stroheim switched to the Metro company for his next project. During the shooting of Greed , the company merged with Louis B. Mayer to form MGM , and so in 1924 he again had to deal with their studio boss Thalberg during the production of Greed . "From" as Stroheim was then called, was nothing less than the novel in this project McTeague by Frank Norris film word for word. The film was shot exclusively on location in California . Filming in the scorching sun in the salt flats of California's Death Valley , where the film's finale takes place, is notorious . The film was radically cut by MGM and was a disastrous failure financially. Greed is now one of the most outstanding works in film history.

Louis B. Mayer said in an interview about Greed and Stroheim in 1954 :

“Von Stroheim was the best director in the world. It's a fact, and no one who knows movies would doubt it. But he was impossible, a crazy artist. If he had only taken back ten percent of himself and had he been only ten percent more reliable, we would still be making films together today. "

Stroheim was very disappointed by these interventions, but was not prepared to make any concessions with regard to his costly directing style. The film adaptation of Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow followed in 1925 . Little was left of the originally harmless comedy in its adaptation, and the shooting was accompanied by fierce controversy between the director, the producer and the star Mae Murray . Regardless, The Merry Widow was Stroheim's greatest commercial success.

In 1926 Stroheim became a US citizen .

Due to the great success of the Merry Widow , Stroheim was given a free hand again and was initially able to design the production of The Wedding March at Paramount according to his own ideas. But again he exceeded the planned shooting time and budget so much that the shooting was canceled. The film was severely shortened by the studio and the censors and was released in two parts. Today only a fragment of the first part still exists. The second part, The Honeymoon , is considered lost .

His last silent film , the melodrama Queen Kelly , was shot in 1929. Once again, the shooting was overshadowed by fierce controversy between Stroheim and the producers - this time Gloria Swanson , who also played the lead role, and her then partner Joseph P. Kennedy . Stroheim was eventually fired after spending countless hours of footage on the prologue alone . Swanson had a few more scenes shot without Stroheim to bring the plot to an end. This version was only performed a few times in Europe and then disappeared in the archives. A restored version of the existing material based on Stroheim's original plans was only made available to the public in 1985.

His reputation as a director was ruined, and Stroheim was forced to return to the camera as an actor for other directors. In 1929 he played the title role in his first sound film The Great Gabbo by James Cruze . As at the beginning of his career, he was often seen again as a villain in supporting roles. During this time, Stroheim was also often forced to work as a technical advisor and assistant dramaturge.

Remakes of Stroheim's films under his direction have been announced several times . But none of the projects, such as remakes of Blind Husbands or the fairground of life , got beyond the preparatory stage.

From the 1930s

In early 1930 Stroheim starred alongside Constance Bennett for Warner Brothers in the spy drama Three Faces East . He received good reviews for the interpretation of his role. For example, on July 19, 1930, the Illustrated Daily News magazine read:

“Erich von Stroheim and Constance Bennett showed exemplary acting as secret agents during World War II. Von Stroheim's profile, his stubborn stubbornness and arrogant dignity are shown to their best advantage. "

In 1932 Stroheim was at the side of Greta Garbo in How you wish to see me in an important role. He worked in the same year at RKO in the long underrated drama Final four ( The Lost Squadron ) of George Archainbaud with. In it he appears in a parody of himself as a megalomaniac director of war films who does not shrink from murder himself in order to obtain realistic flying scenes.

In 1933 Stroheim was surprisingly given the opportunity to direct another film: Walking Down Broadway , his only sound film. Once again, his work met with complete incomprehension among the producers. Among other things, it was said that Stroheim's film, due to the explicit representation of human conflicts, was at best suitable for being shown “at a congress of psychoanalysts ”. His last directorial work was also mutilated beyond recognition by the producers and released as a B-movie with the title Hello Sister! released.

In his private life, Stroheim went through severe crises during this time. His wife, actress Valerie Germonprez , suffered severe facial burns in an accident in a hairdressing salon, and one of Stroheim's son fell ill with polio . During this time Stroheim repeatedly thought of suicide . Friends like Clark Gable , who had one of his first film appearances as an extra in Stroheim's The Merry Widow , were able to dissuade him from this plan.

Von Stroheim, who lived with his wife in the hospital for days, processed some of his experiences in his original screenplay The Doctor and Women , which was one of the few projects that was actually filmed in 1937 - not under his direction, of course, but that of George B. Seitz .

From 1936, von Stroheim found hardly any satisfactory work even as an actor in Hollywood . This prompted him to accept an offer from France - one of the main roles in a film about the spy Marthe Richard . When Jean Renoir hired him for La Grande Illusion , Stroheim settled in France for the next few years. Renoir, who was a great admirer of Stroheim, expanded his originally small role considerably in the course of the filming and played a key role in the scriptwriting. In this film, Stroheim played one of his most famous roles as Rauffenstein's fortress commander.

The occupation of France by the National Socialists forced von Stroheim to spend the war years in the United States again. He was blacklisted by the National Socialists because he was of Jewish descent and had participated in an appeal against the Nazis on French radio .

Back in the USA, Stroheim played officers and spies in propaganda films, as he did at the beginning of his career, or was involved in B-movies such as The Mask of Diijon . Stroheim's financial situation was tight. This prompted him to take on Boris Karloff's role as Jonathan Brewster in Joseph Kesselring's well-known black comedy Arsen und Spitzenhäubchen on a theater tour from 1941 to 1943 .

The embodiment of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in Billy Wilder's Five Graves to Cairo from 1943 brought Stroheim one of his few successes during this time. In this role too, he attached great importance to attention to detail. For example, he is said to have demanded that the camera he wore around his neck as Rommel also had a film inserted - although it was never used during the plot. Stroheim was of the opinion that the prop only looked so authentic. Wilder recalled his first meeting with Stroheim as follows:

"Stroheim was a living monument. When I first met the great, admired filmmaker, I was of course embarrassed. And to cover up this embarrassment, I told him:" You were ten years ahead of your time with your films. ' Stroheim looked at me briefly and corrected: ?? Twenty years! '"

After the end of the Second World War , von Stroheim returned to Europe and was still in great demand as an actor. In 1946 he took part in a screenplay based on the drama Totentanz by August Strindberg and played the leading role in the film adaptation. The main female role was played by Stroheim's partner Denise Vernac . Marcel Cravenne , a director who was still inexperienced at the time, was entrusted with the shooting. The film took up numerous motifs from Stroheim's own films, and it would appear that Stroheim was at least partially directing them. The shooting was once again overshadowed by various disputes. The producers refused to fund some additional scenes that would have been necessary for a better understanding of the plot. This film was unsuccessful and rarely shown.

Billy Wilder brought Stroheim back to the United States in 1950. In Sunset Boulevard , he assumed the role of a silent film director, who had finished his career to a reclusive, aging Hollywood - Diva , played by Gloria Swanson, his former leading lady in Queen Kelly to be as a chauffeur and butler at your service. For this role, von Stroheim received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor . It was the last time he worked in Hollywood.

In 1952 Stroheim played the lead role alongside Hildegard Knef in a remake of Alraune . It was his only film appearance in Germany . In one of his last roles in front of the camera he played the deaf Ludwig van Beethoven in Sacha Guitry's Napoleon in 1955 .

Shortly before his death, Erich von Stroheim was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government . He and his partner Denise Vernac retired to Maurepas near Paris , where he died and was also buried.

Stroheim as a novelist

Stroheim also emerged as the author of several novels, including Paprika (1935) and Les Feux de Saint Jean (1951).

Films as a director

Films as an actor (selection)

See also

literature

  • Peter Noble: Hollywood scapegoat: the biography of Erich von Stroheim , London: The Fortune Press, 1950
  • Maurice Bessy: Erich von Stroheim. A picture monograph. Schirmer-Mosel, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-88814-166-4 (German).
  • Wolfgang Jacobsen , Helga Belach, Norbert Grob (eds.): Erich von Stroheim. Aargon, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-87024-263-9 (German).
  • Richard Koszarski: From. The Life and Films of Erich Von Stroheim. Revised and expanded edition, 1st Limelight edition. Limelight Editions, New York NY 2001, ISBN 0-87910-954-8 (English).
  • Denis Marion et al: Stroheim (= Etudes Cinématographiques. Vol. 48/50, ISSN  0014-1992 ). Lettres Modernes Minard, Paris 1966 (French, with copies of the birth certificates of Stroheim, his brother and his parents).
  • Erich von Stroheim: Paprika. Novel. Pygmalion-Gérard Watelet, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-85704-337-6 (French).
  • Herman G. Weinberg: Stroheim. a pictorial record of his nine films. Dover Publications, New York NY 1975, ISBN 0-486-22723-5 (English).

Web links

Commons : Erich von Stroheim  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. These were the cinematic sequels of Arthur Schnitzler and his Viennese stories - with the "slow decline of the Habsburg Empire, its pomp, its boxes, in a satanic twilight of the gods ... seen with X-ray eyes"
  2. Denis Marion and others: Stroheim. 1966, pp. 16-20.
  3. quoted from Jacobsen, Belach, Grob (ed.): Erich von Stroheim. 1994, p. 258.
  4. Jacobsen, Belach, Grob (ed.): Erich von Stroheim. 1994, p. 33.
  5. ^ "As secret service operatives in the world war, Erich von Stroheim and Constance Bennett do a classic example of acting. The von Stroheim profile, his brusqueness and his stiff-backed, haughty dignity, are applied to the best advantage. "In: Illustrated Daily News , July 19, 1930.
  6. Jacobsen, Belach, Grob (ed.): Erich von Stroheim. 1994, p. 71.
  7. Maurice Bessy: Erich von Stroheim. A picture monograph. 1985, p. 173.
  8. Jacobsen, Belach, Grob (ed.): Erich von Stroheim. 1994, p. 289.
  9. http://www.filmmuseum-potsdam.de/Fuenf-Graeber-bis-Kairo.html
  10. Jacobsen, Belach, Grob (ed.): Erich von Stroheim. 1994, pp. 154-155.
  11. knerger.de: The grave of Erich von Stroheim