to squeeze The Salvation Hunters in. [Chaplin] told me afterwards he was “bewildered at the success of this unknown director.” Within a quarter of an hour of my going to see him at his request, Douglas Fairbanks had bought a quarter share in the picture for a sum exceeding many times its cost [von Sternberg says $20,000] and had promised to put The Salvation Hunters on the market for us.4
Since Arthur had sold his car, they hired one so they could arrive at United Artists in style. Confused by the unfamiliar controls, they couldn’t find the brakes and came to a stop only by crashing into the gate.
Those who knew Chaplin’s sensitivity about his lack of education were unsurprised by his support of The Salvation Hunters. To extol such an “arty” production bolstered his intellectual credentials. Was he genuinely impressed? Probably not. He invested no money himself, and after the film went on general release in February 1925, he distanced himself, leaving his partners in United Artists, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, holding the bag. In 1929 he would similarly exploit the Dali/Buñuel surrealist short Un Chien Andalou, screening it a number of times at his home and declaring it a masterpiece, only to dismiss it in private as “a stupid film.” When May Reeves, his girlfriend at the time, asked why, he told her, “Oh, one has to keep people amused, and look up-to-date.”5
A Genuine Genius
I don’t think Josef von Sternberg is working anywhere. I think he’s a genuine genius again.
—Walter Winchell, 1926
WITH UNITED ARTISTS BACKING it, The Salvation Hunters looked like the salvation of everyone involved. Georgia Hale became Chaplin’s mistress, then his leading lady in The Gold Rush. George Arthur won some acting roles, including in a couple of von Sternberg films, and he later became a successful producer of short features, but von Sternberg never mentioned him in interviews. As he would do with increasing frequency, he wrote a collaborator out of his life.
The director himself was feted. The New Yorker took pleasure in writing up his exploits as a case of a smart East Coast Jew putting one over on dumb West Coast goyim. “Joseph Sternberg drifted from the East Side, via Broadway, to Hollywood, a well-frayed shoestring pinned carefully in an inner pocket. He returns Josef von Sternberg, the ‘von’ having blossomed under the beneficence of the Californian sun. Out of experiences with butterfly movie companies, he wrought The Salvation Hunters, one of the most discussed of the current reticent dramas. Forty-seven hundred dollars was Mr. von Sternberg’s producing capital, garnered in reluctant fives, tens and twenties by a native salesmanship which would see nothing incongruous in attempting to peddle grand pianos from a pushcart.”1
Not to be outdone by Chaplin, Pickford signed von Sternberg to a two-film contract. As part of the publicity buildup, he was photographed chatting with baseball star “Babe” Ruth (one struggles to imagine on what topic) and strolling on the lawns of “Pickfair” with Doug and Mary. “I believe him to have those qualities of freshness and originality for which we have long been seeking,” trilled Pickford. “He is a master technician and has a sense of drama possessed by few.”2 But her offer was a poisoned chalice. Habitually, she vacillated between aspiring to be considered a serious actress and clinging to her position as “America’s Sweetheart.” Von Sternberg, after a research visit to Pennsylvania, submitted the outline of another von Stroheim–influenced melodrama called Backwash, in which Pickford would play a blind girl living in the squalor of industrial Pittsburgh. Most of the film would be subjective camera, with the action, including a cameo for Chaplin, taking place in her mind. As in The Salvation Hunters, he foresaw images of poverty, dirt, and urban ugliness.
After reading it, Pickford hurriedly backpedaled, according to von Sternberg. “My star-to-be,” he wrote acidly, “asked me to wait ten weeks, to accustom herself to the idea while she made a ‘normal’ film with a ‘normal’ director”—in this case, Marshall Neilan. After that, their contract lapsed by mutual consent. Subsequently, Pickford professed to find him ridiculous. “He proved to be a complete boiled egg,” she scoffed. “The business of ‘von’ Sternberg, and carrying a cane, and that little moustache! I’m so glad I didn’t do the film.” Her rejection, however, is suspect. Playing a blind girl would have been nothing new for her. She had already done so in A Good Little Devil, one of her earliest stage successes. Von Sternberg also told Sergei Eisenstein that she took Backwash sufficiently seriously to prepare for the role by spending time in a home for the blind, studying their behavior. It’s more likely she pulled out once The Salvation Hunters proved to be a flop. It played for less than a week in New York and only sporadically elsewhere, losing most of the Pickford-Fairbanks investment. She didn’t mind displaying her acting skills in an atypical role, but only if it was also a commercial success.
The Salvation Hunters put its director on the map, however, and the big studios made offers, if only to ensure that competitors didn’t grab a potential moneymaker. B. P. Schulberg, West Coast production manager of Famous Players–Lasky (soon to be renamed Paramount Publix) was interested, but von Sternberg elected to sign an eight-film contract with MGM. The decision was ill-advised. The richest of the big companies, MGM was also the most rigid, with a factory ethic to which every employee was subordinated. To von Sternberg, however, one fact counted more than any other: Erich von Stroheim was on its payroll, which made the offer irresistible. In only a short time he realized his error. That he had become just another cog in Louis B. Mayer’s machine was emphasized when he was ordered to line up with every other director and technician to be photographed for a promotional film celebrating the studio’s concentration of talent. He stands glowering at the camera, smoldering cigarette in hand. But predictably, he is at the shoulder of his hero, who, in duster and floppy driving cap, looks like he’s on his way to a spin in the country.
While waiting for his first assignment, von Sternberg drove to the studio every day with Robert Florey, who had become his assistant. After telling his secretary not to disturb him, he would drape a red shawl around his shoulders, as men did in the coffee shops of Vienna, and play Florey at chess. Periodically, he completed odd jobs for Mayer. These included directing a screen test for the Moscow-based Jewish Habima Theatre Company, whose forty members arrived in the United States in December 1926. They would tour for two years until the group fragmented, some remaining in the United States, and others moving to Tel Aviv to become the nucleus of the National Theatre of Israel. The test, the producer told von Sternberg, was a courtesy and a gift to the company, which was too distinguished to lower itself to make a film, least of all in Hollywood. No admirer of expressionist acting, in which emotions are externalized, often in exaggerated gestures or shouts, von Sternberg was secretly pleased when the performers, flinging themselves around the soundstage and shouting “Prostitute!” demonstrated that they had no movie potential whatsoever. Knowing nothing of acting technique, he distrusted those who did. In The Docks of New York, Olga Baclanova played her role as she had learned to do in Russia. “Just because you were at the Moscow Art Theatre,” he told her, “don’t think that you understand everything.” He bullied her, as he did many performers, to the point of tears, which resulted in the unrehearsed effect he desired. Years later, meeting in Europe, she told him, “I only began to make pictures when you started to yell at me.”
Irving Thalberg, head of production at MGM, finally assigned him a British novel by Alden Brooks, published in 1924 as The Enchanted Land and in the United States as Escape. Brooks, a survivor of the Somme, based it on the war experiences of his friend, painter Matthew Smith, who was hospitalized for a year with shrapnel wounds and shell shock. The book’s main character, Dominique Prad, a frustrated artist, almost dies on the battlefield. Convalescing, he swears he will “never do anything
