Stroheim, Erich von b. September 22, 1885;Vienna,Austria d. May 2l, 1957; Maurepas Castle, France
Austrian-born, U.S. film director and scriptwriter, also French actor. Born Erich Oswald Stroheim to a Viennese Jewish family, Erich Stroheim spent his childhood in Vienna and many summer holidays in Tyrol.
At twenty-three he emigrated to the United States and from March 1909 began working in various jobs, first in New York City and later in California. From 1914, under the aristocratic name he invented, Erich von Stroheim, he was hired in Hollywood as a stuntman in some productions. The next year he was extra, advisory, and later second assistant in David W. Griffith’s masterpieces: Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), and Heart of the World (1918). This last collaboration with Griffith, in which Stroheim played a part that he repeated several times (a German officer), was shot in England, France, and Hollywood during World War I. However, Stroheim wanted his chance as a film director. The German-born Carl Laemmle accepted Stroheim’s first script in 1918, possibly because it was given for free!The multitalented Stroheim became a film director, set designer, actor, and scriptwriter in the United States during the silent era and remained an international actor when the talkies appeared, working mostly in France between 1936 and 1939, and from 1945 until his death. The shift from behind the camera to the screen was not a matter of technique, but rather because Stroheim could not accept any compromise from the studios’ producers, having simultaneously an uncontestable genius, a strong ego, and a bad temper. Studios refused to give new projects to Stroheim as a director, because he was an extravagant genius, ahead of his time. In other words, it was not Stroheim who freely decided not to direct anymore after 1929; it was just that doors were closed to him as a director. He remained on demand as an actor and adviser.
As a director, Stroheim created all his masterpieces in just a decade.
Among them are his debut Blind Husbands (1919), Foolish Wives (1922), Greed (1924), The Merry Widow (1925), The Wedding March (1928), and the unfinished Queen Kelly (1928). Sadly, many of these films were edited, mutilated, and shortened by their producers and U.S. censors, without Stroheim’s approval. The original version of Greed (1924) edited under Stroheim’s supervision was more than eight hours long; it was reduced by MGM to only two hours. His film Merry-Go Round (1922) was taken away by the producer and finished by director Rupert Julian; his film The Honeymoon (1928) was finished by Josef von Sternberg, and banned by censors in many states.After sixteen years in the United States and a conversion to Catholicism, Stroheim became a U.S. citizen and abandoned his Austrian citizenship in 1926. He remained in conflict with many Hollywood producers and studios. It was difficult for him to find new partners. His reputation made him an undesirable perfectionist who made no concessions. His movies were innovative, but also expensive and sometimes cruel, even scandalous; their shootings often took many months. As a director, Stroheim was more or less banished from the studios after 1929, but he could still work as a screenwriter, adviser, and actor (sometimes uncredited) in minor produc
tions, although this unfair situation left him unsatisfied and frustrated.
On November 26, 1936, Stroheim emigrated to France, where his talent was more respected. Fluent in French, he appeared in seventeen films in just three years. Oddly, he was one of the few Austrian-born artists to cross the Atlantic from America to Europe. As an actor often playing German characters, he appeared in various French classics: a German general from World War I in Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937), but also as a magician for director Pierre Chenal (L’Alibi, 1937), and again as an Austrian officer in Ultimatum (1938), directed in France by German filmmakers Robert Wiene and Robert Siodmak.
On November 26, 1939, von Stroheim returned to the United States, where he pursued his career exclusively as an actor.Back in France in 1945 with his beloved companion, the actress Denise Vernac, Erich von Stroheim appeared in a dozen French films and wrote three novels in French: Paprika (1949), followed by Veronika (1951), and Constanzia (1954), which are the two parts of a cycle set in Austria, titled Les Feux de la Saint-Jean. His appearance at sixty-four in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), his last presence in a Hollywood movie, remains unforgettable, probably because the character of Max von Mayerling resembles in many points Stroheim’s own life. Possibly the only film he made in Germany, Stroheim played the scientist Jacob ten Brinken in a minor remake of an expressionist film, Al- raune (1952), directed by Arthur Maria Rabenalt. His last participation in a movie was a small part for author Sacha Guitry; Stroheim played the role of Beethoven in Napoleon (1955).
Yves Laberge
See also Hollywood; Sternberg, Josef von;
Wilder, Billy
References and Further Reading
Bergut, Bob. Erich von Stroheim. Paris: Le Terrain Vague, 1960.
Henry, Nora. Ethics and Social Criticism in the Hollywood Films of Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, and Billy Wilder. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001.
Mitry, Jean. Dictionnaire du cinema. Paris: Larousse, 1963.