was retiring, von Stroheim, a born actor, blustered his way to celebrity. Casually accessing a “von” to suggest aristocracy, the actor shaved his head, screwed a monocle into his eye, and adopted a variety of quasi-military uniforms, accentuated by a riding crop or cane. Humorist and scriptwriter S. J. Perelman wrote admiringly of von Stroheim’s screen persona: “his stiff-necked swagger, his cynical contempt for the women he misused, and, above all, his dandyism—the monogrammed cigarettes, the dressing gowns with silk lapels, the musk he sprayed himself with to heighten his allure.” A publicist labeled him “The Man You Love To Hate.”8
Von Stroheim had never been near a film studio before arriving in the United States, but this didn’t prevent him from affecting the white gloves of a director. Von Sternberg was among the admirers who adopted the custom, but gloves were only one element of his costume, which changed from film to film. He might arrive for the first day of shooting in a silk dressing gown. On others, he wore a boilersuit, a solar topee with high riding boots and breeches, a velvet coat and beret, or a robe with a scarf wound round his head like a turban—always with his cane and, in time, a huge megaphone or public-address system. With such accessories, his small stature, low voice, timidity, and lack of education evaporated. No actor cast as an artistic genius could have entered more completely into the part.
One element of his wardrobe gave particular offense. “They’ll tell you he’s arrogant and impudent,” wrote a journalist, “a four-flusher and a faker, and they point with telling effect to his cane. Hollywood, you must understand, doesn’t go in for canes. Plus-fours, puttees and polo shirts, maybe, but no canes.” Von Sternberg responded by sporting even more ostentatious examples. George Grosz was almost alone in realizing that the canes were not just fashion accessories. “In Germany [canes] were still the hallmark of a ‘gentleman,’” he wrote, “and, along with gloves and a leather briefcase, identified the former Corps [fraternity] student, managing director or social climber…. In von Sternberg’s hand, moreover, the simple walking stick was also a sort of fetish or magic wand, something that brought good luck to those who carried it and misfortune to those who mislaid or forgot it.” Initially, von Sternberg insisted to Grosz that he wasn’t superstitious, then conceded that the canes had a ritual significance. “This stick has powers one can’t explain,” said Grosz, “just like a divining rod.”9 (Nicholas von Sternberg confirms, “My father was very superstitious. He particularly hated a black cat crossing his path.”10 Black cats play an ominous role in some of his films, notably Underworld, Thunderbolt—the criminals frequent a bar called The Black Cat—and Dishonored, in which secret agent Dietrich takes her pet on every mission, even in the open cockpit of an aircraft, and is eventually betrayed by it.)
As von Sternberg attained more independence, he widened his personal image into an entire lifestyle. For a time, whenever he ate in a restaurant, he demanded that a plate with six black grapes await him at the table. To maintain an impression of creative dominance, he held script conferences or auditions in secret, locking the doors and permitting no one to enter or leave. On the set, nobody was allowed to make the slightest noise. He even banned watches, claiming that their ticking distracted him. Food and drink were forbidden on the set. These rules were quite common among European directors such as Max Reinhardt; if a visitor didn’t respectfully remove his hat, Reinhardt would snatch it off his head and throw it into the wings. “Everyone in Hollywood has … a ‘gag,’” wrote the New Yorker in 1931, defining this as “some trait or mannerism [or] role which attracts attention.” British actors formed the Hollywood Cricket Club and staged kipper breakfasts or fish-and-chip suppers. Russians gathered at the Russian-American Art Club to hear the songs and dances of czarist days. American actresses married European aristocrats and flaunted them at garden parties. However, as the writer concluded admiringly, “von Sternberg’s gag has been von Sternberg.”11
Over There
How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree)?
—Song by Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis, 1918
BY THE TIME THE war ended with the armistice of November 1918, von Sternberg had left the Army War College and was attached to the Medical Corps in Washington, D.C. He wasn’t demobilized until 1919, and then only after William Brady intervened. He found the film industry much changed. In 1916 Brady had forced Lewis Selznick out of World and switched to stage-bound melodramas that exploited his Broadway connections. These proved so unpopular that he sold his interest back to Selznick in 1918, having lost millions for his backers and instilled a caution about investing in the cinema that persists on Wall Street today.
With World nearly defunct, von Sternberg looked for other work in New York but had little success. Some of the French artists and technicians from Fort Lee were back in Paris, but Émile Chautard remained. He hired von Sternberg as his assistant on the 1919 adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s detective story The Mystery of the Yellow Room and let him direct a few scenes. In August 1920 he worked for two weeks as assistant on Twisted Souls, a country house murder melodrama directed by George Kelson, a former World director who frequently worked as assistant to Harley Knoles. Stage magician Howard Thurston appeared in the film as an upright Western spiritualist who unmasks the methods of fake mediums from India. Von Sternberg also received credit (as “Jo Sternberg”) as assistant to Wallace Worsley (later director of The Hunchback of Notre Dame) on The Highest Bidder, released in 1921. It marked his first meeting with actor Lionel Atwill, his alter ego in The Devil Is a Woman.
With the industry migrating west, von Sternberg turned to Hollywood, which was flourishing as the public developed a taste for spacious action films. Unwilling to pay for a sleeping berth on the train, he sat up for the entire five-day journey, sustained by sandwiches. But Los Angeles proved no paradise. After New York, with its teeming crowds, public transport, and easy access, the emptiness disquieted him. He saw “only a barren village, [and] after a week of walking along empty streets lined with eucalyptus trees, not having seen a single soul connected with films, I made my way back again.”
War had shattered the cinemas of Germany and France, allowing the U.S. industry, fat on three years free of competition, to devour most continental theater chains, production facilities, and talent. Any European director or performer of conspicuous ability quickly received an invitation from Hollywood. All the same, von Sternberg felt a greater affinity with European methods than American ones, and he crossed the Atlantic on a cattle boat in 1921. He went straight to Vienna, visiting the city six times that year. On each occasion he lived at Gartnerstrasse 9, listing his profession as “film director.” (The apartment apparently belonged to a relative, since he also stayed there in 1925.) He looked up his old teacher Karl Adolph, who had won a late reputation for his writing. No doubt pleased to be described by his ex-pupil as “an old-fashioned man who knows [the Viennese] better than any man alive today,”1 Adolph authorized him to make an English version of his 1914 Tochter, a series of stories about working-class life that reflected his years spent as a housepainter. On May 24 von Sternberg called on Arthur Schnitzler, but overcome with nerves, he couldn’t stop talking. Schnitzler had to remind his visitor that he had come to hear the thoughts of the author of Reigen and Traumnovelle, not vice versa. “But,” von Sternberg said, “he told me he had never listened to such a cultured and interesting talk.” For the rest of his life, an inscribed photograph of Schnitzler hung in his office. Of his boldly sexual plays and tales, he said, Schnitzler “was the first one to give me artistic courage.”
From Austria he went to England, where he bought a Triumph motorcycle and crashed it, breaking a kneecap. Looking for work, he gravitated to the Alliance Film Corporation, formed by advertising entrepreneur Sir David
