Erich von Stroheim

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Erich von Stroheim (September 22, 1885 – May 12, 1957) was a filmmaker and actor, noted for his arrogant Teutonic character parts. As an actor, he became known as "The Man You Love to Hate" because of the many villains he played.

Erich von Stroheim as Sergius Karamzin in Foolish Wives
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Erich von Stroheim as Sergius Karamzin in Foolish Wives

Contents

[edit] Background

Stroheim's most recent biographers [citation needed] say that he was born in Vienna, Austria in 1885 as Erich Oswald Stroheim, the son of Benno Stroheim, a middle-class hat-maker, and Johanna Bondy, both of whom were practising Jews.

Stroheim himself claimed to be Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall, the son of Austrian nobility like the characters he played in his films, but both Billy Wilder and Stroheim's agent Paul Kohner claimed that he spoke with a decidedly lower-class Austrian accent. Jean Renoir writes in his memoirs: “Stroheim spoke hardly any German. He had to study his lines like a schoolboy learning a foreign language.”

Later, while living in Europe, Stroheim claimed in published remarks to have "forgotten" his native tongue.

[edit] Film career

By 1914 he was working in Hollywood. He began working in movies in bit-parts and as a consultant on German culture and fashion. His first film, in 1915, was The Country Boy in which he was uncredited. His first credited role came in Old Heidelberg.

He began working with D. W. Griffith, taking uncredited roles in Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. Later, he played the sneering German in such films as Sylvia of the Secret Service and The Hun Within. In The Heart of Humanity, he threw a baby out a window.

Following the end of the First World War, Stroheim turned to writing and then directing his own script for Blind Husbands in 1919. As a director, Von Stroheim was known to be dictatorial and demanding, often antagonizing his actors. He was one of the first filmmakers along with DeMille, to define the stereotype of the Teutonic tyrant, often wearing a monocle and carrying a riding crop while directing. In the 1932 movie The Lost Squadron he starred as a detail-obsessed German film director who tells soldier extras, that when they are "dead" to stay dead!

In 1923, von Stroheim began work on his film Merry-Go-Round. He cast the American actor Norman Kerry as his alter-ego 'Count Franz Maximilian Von Hohenegg' and newcomer Mary Philbin in the lead actress role. However studio executive Irving Thalberg fired Von Stroheim during filming and had him replaced by director Rupert Julian. Although controversial at the time, the film is now considered a classic.

Probably Stroheim's most famous work as director is Greed, a detailed filming of the novel McTeague by Frank Norris. Stroheim filmed and edited a staggering nine-hour version of the story, shot mostly at the locations depicted in the book, including San Francisco and Death Valley. After his attempts to cut it to less than three hours failed, MGM cut the film to a little over two hours, and, in what is considered one of the greatest losses in cinema history, eventually destroyed the excess footage. The shortened release version was a box-office failure, and was angrily disowned by Stroheim. The film was partially reconstructed in 1999, using the existing footage mixed with surviving still photographs, but Greed has passed into cinema lore as a lost masterpiece.

Von Stroheim's dictatorial manner and extreme attention to detail - his scripts were sometimes as long as the novels he was adapting - caused him to go to war with the studios, and he received fewer directing opportunities. Other directorial efforts included The Devil's Passkey, Foolish Wives, The Merry Widow, and The Wedding March.

The film Queen Kelly saw the end his career as a major director. After spending huge sums of money and as a result of bitter conflicts with star Gloria Swanson, he was fired from the director's chair halfway through filming by producer and financier Joseph P. Kennedy.

After Queen Kelly he directed only two more films, instead, returning to acting. He is perhaps best known for Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion and Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, co-starring with Swanson. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Max von Mayerling in the latter movie. The Mayerling character states that he used to be one of the three great directors of the silent era, along with D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille; many film critics agree that Stroheim was indeed one of the greatest early directors.

Stroheim was married four times, the last to actress Denise Vernac, who had been his longtime secretary and companion for years before their marriage in 1957, shortly before his death.

Von Stroheim spent the last part of his life in France where his silent film work was much admired by artists in the French film industry. In France he acted in films, wrote several novels that were published in French, and worked on various unrealized film projects. He was awarded the French Légion d'honneur shortly before his death from cancer at age 71 in Maurepas, France.

[edit] Filmography (as Director)

[edit] External links

  • [1] All about Erich
  • [2] The Stroheim Wing
  • [3] Blind Husbands
  • [4]Foolish Wives
  • [5] Merry-Go-Round
  • [6] Greed
  • [7] The Merry Widow
  • [8]The Wedding March
  • [9] Queen Kelly
  • [10] The Great Gabbo (Portrait of Erich)
  • [11] Grand Illusion
  • [12] Sunset Boulevard
  • [13] Find-A-Grave profile for Erich von Stroheim
  • [14] The Films of Erich von Stroheim, ToxicUniverse.com article by Dan Callahan
  • [15] Blind Biographers: The Invention of Erich von Stroheim
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