Josef von Sternberg

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Josef von Sternberg

Born Jonas Sternberg

May 29, 1894

Vienna, Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria)

Died December 22, 1969 (aged 75)

Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Years active 1925–1957

Riza Royce
Spouse(s)

(m. 1926; div. 1930)

Jean Annette McBride

 (m. 1945; div. 1947)

Meri Otis Wilner

(m. 1948)

Children Nicholas Josef von Sternberg

Josef von Sternberg (German: [ˈjoːzɛf fɔn ˈʃtɛʁnbɛʁk]; born Jonas Sternberg;
May 29, 1894 – December 22, 1969) was an Austrian-American filmmaker
whose career successfully spanned the transition from the silent to
the sound era, during which he worked with most of the major Hollywood
studios. He is best known for his film collaboration with actress Marlene
Dietrich in the 1930s, including the highly regarded Paramount/UFA
production, The Blue Angel (1930).[1]
Sternberg's finest works are noteworthy for their striking pictorial compositions,
dense décor, chiaroscuro illumination, and relentless camera motion, endowing
the scenes with emotional intensity.[2] He is also credited with having initiated the
gangster film genre with his silent era movie Underworld (1927).[3][4] Sternberg's
themes typically offer the spectacle of an individual's desperate struggle to
maintain their personal integrity as they sacrifice themselves for lust or love. [5]
He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Morocco (1930)
and Shanghai Express (1932).[6]

Contents

 1Biography
o 1.1Early life and education
o 1.2Early career
 2Assistant director: 1919–1923
 3United Artists – The Salvation Hunters: 1924
 4Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: 1925
 5Chaplin and A Woman of the Sea: 1926
 6Paramount: 1927–1935
o 6.1Silent era: 1927–1929
o 6.2Sound era: 1929–1935
 6.2.1Magnum opus: The Blue Angel: 1930
o 6.3The Sternberg-Dietrich Hollywood Collaborations: 1930–1935
 6.3.1Morocco (1930) and Dishonored (1931)
 6.3.2Literary contretemps – An American Tragedy: 1931
 6.3.3Shanghai Express: 1932
 6.3.4Blonde Venus: 1932
  6.3.5The Scarlet Empress: 1934
 6.3.6The Devil is a Woman: 1935
 7Columbia Pictures: 1935–1936
o 7.1Crime and Punishment: 1935
o 7.2The King Steps Out: 1936
 8London Films – I, Claudius: 1937
 9M-G-M redux: 1938–1939
o 9.1Sergeant Madden: 1939
 10United Artists redux – 1940–1941
o 10.1Shanghai Gesture: 1941
 11Department of War Information – "The American Scene": 1943–1945
o 11.1The Town: 1943
 12RKO Pictures: 1949–1952
o 12.1Jet Pilot: 1951
o 12.2Macao: 1952
 13Later career
 14Comments by contemporaries
 15Filmography
o 15.1Silent films
o 15.2Sound films
o 15.3Other projects
 16References
 17Sources
 18External links

Biography[edit]
Early life and education[edit]
Josef von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to an impoverished Orthodox
Jewish family in Vienna, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.[7] When Sternberg was three years old, his father Moses Sternberg, a
former soldier in the army of Austria-Hungary, moved to the United States to
seek work. Sternberg's mother, Serafine (née Singer), a circus performer as a
child [8] joined Moses in America in 1901 with her five children when Sternberg
was seven.[9][10] On his emigration, von Sternberg is quoted as saying "On our
arrival in the New World we were first detained on Ellis Island where the
immigration officers inspected us like a herd of cattle."[11] Jonas attended public
school until the family, except Moses, returned to Vienna three years later.
Throughout his life, Sternberg carried vivid memories of Vienna and nostalgia
for some of his "happiest childhood moments."[12][13]
The elder Sternberg insisted upon a rigorous study of the Hebrew language,
limiting his son to religious studies on top of his regular
schoolwork.[14] Biographer Peter Baxter, citing Sternberg's memoirs, reports that
"his parents' relationship was far from happy: his father was a domestic tyrant
and his mother eventually fled her home in order to escape his
abuse."[15] Sternberg's early struggles, including these "childhood traumas"
would inform the "unique subject matter of his films."[16][17][18]
Early career[edit]
In 1908, when Jonas was fourteen, he returned with his mother to Queens, New
York, and settled in the United States.[19] He acquired American citizenship in
1908.[20] After a year, he stopped attending Jamaica High School and began
working in various occupations, including millinery apprentice, door-to-door
trinket salesman and stock clerk at a lace factory.[21] At the Fifth Avenue lace
outlet, he became familiar with the ornate textiles with which he would adorn his
female stars and embellish his mise-en-scène.[22][23]
In 1911, when he turned seventeen, the now "Josef" Sternberg, became
employed at the World Film Company in Fort Lee, New Jersey. There, he
"cleaned, patched and coated motion picture stock" – and served evenings as a
movie theatre projectionist. In 1914, when the company was purchased by actor
and film producer William A. Brady, Sternberg rose to chief assistant,
responsible for "writing [inter]titles and editing films to cover lapses in continuity"
for which he received his first official film credits.[24][25]
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, he joined the US Army
and was assigned to the Signal Corps headquartered in Washington, D.C.,
where he photographed training films for recruits.[26][23][27]
Shortly after the war, Sternberg left Brady's Fort Lee operation and embarked
on a peripatetic existence in America and Europe offering his skills "as cutter,
editor, writer and assistant director" to various film studios.[26][23]

Assistant director: 1919–1923[edit]

The Origins of the Sternberg "von"
The nobiliary particle "von" – used to indicate a family descending from nobility – was inserted
gratuitously to Sternberg's name on the grounds that it served to achieve an orderly configuration of
personnel credits.[28][23] The producer and matinee idol Elliott Dexter suggested the augmentation
when Sternberg was assistant director and screenwriter for Roy W. Neill's By Devine Right (1923) in
hopes that it would "enhance his screen credit" and add "artistic prestige" to the film.[29]
Director Erich von Stroheim, also from a poor Viennese family and Sternberg's beau idéal, had
attached a faux "von" to his professional name. Although Sternberg emphatically denied any
foreknowledge of Dexter's largesse, film historian John Baxter maintains that "knowing his respect
for Stroheim it is hard to believe that [Sternberg] had no part in the ennobling."[28][30]
Sternberg would ruefully comment that the elitist "von" drew criticism during the 1930s, when his
"lack of realist social themes" would be interpreted as anti-egalitarian.[31][32]

Sternberg served his apprenticeship years with early silent filmmakers,

including Hugo Ballin, Wallace Worsley, Lawrence C. Windom and Roy William
Neill.[33] In 1919, Sternberg worked with director Emile Chautard's on The
Mystery of the Yellow Room, for which he received official screen credit as
assistant director. Sternberg honored Chautard in his memoirs, recalling the
French director's invaluable lessons on photography, film composition and the
importance of establishing "the spatial integrity of his images."[34][26] This advice
led Sternberg to develop his distinctive "framing" of each shot to become "the
screen's greatest master of pictorial composition."[33]
Sternberg's 1919 debut in filmmaking, though in a subordinate capacity,
coincided with the filming and/or release of D. W. Griffith's Broken
Blossoms, Charlie Chaplin's Sunnyside, Erich von Stroheim's The Devil's Pass
Key, Cecil B. DeMille's Male and Female, Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari, Victor Sjöström's Karin Daughter of Ingmar and Abel
Gance's J'accuse.[32]
Sternberg travelled widely in Europe between 1922 and 1924, where he
participated in making a number of movies for the short-lived Alliance Film
Corporation in London, including The Bohemian Girl (1922). When he returned
to California in 1924, he began work on his first Hollywood movie as assistant to
director Roy William Neill's Vanity's Price, produced by Film Booking
Office (FBO).[35][36] Sternberg's aptitude for effective directing was recognized in
his handling of the operating room scene, singled out for special mention
by New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall.[37]

United Artists – The Salvation Hunters: 1924[edit]

Main article: The Salvation Hunters

Josef von Sternberg and Mary Pickford at the Pickfair Estate, Beverly Hills, California, in 1925.
Dubbed "Mary Pickford's New Director", photos of Sternberg and Pickford were widely circulated in
the press, "but the entente was short-lived."[38]

The 30-year-old Sternberg made his debut as a director with The Salvation
Hunters, an independent picture produced with actor George K. Arthur.[39][40] The
picture, filmed on the minuscule budget of $4,800 – "a miracle of organization" –
made a tremendous impression on actor-director-producer Charles Chaplin and
co-producer Douglas Fairbanks Sr. of United Artists (UA).[41][42] Influenced by the
works of Erich von Stroheim, director of Greed (1924), the movie was lauded by
cineastes for its "unglamorous realism", depicting three young drifters who
struggle to survive in a dystopian landscape.[40][43][44]
Despite its considerable defects, due in part to Sternberg's budgetary
constraints, the picture was purchased by United Artists for $20,000 and given a
brief distribution, but fared poorly at the box-office.[45]
On the strength of this picture alone, actor-producer Mary Pickford of UA
engaged Sternberg to write and direct her next feature. His screenplay,
entitled Backwash, was deemed to be too experimental in concept and
technique, and the Pickford-Sternberg project was cancelled.[38][46][47]
Sternberg's The Salvation Hunters is "his most explicitly personal work", with
the exception of his final picture Anahatan (1953).[48] His distinctive style is
already in evidence, both visually and dramatically: veils and nets filter our view
of the actors, and "psychological conflict rather than physical action" has the
effect of obscuring the motivations of his characters.[49][50]

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer: 1925[edit]
The Exquisite Sinner (1926 film). M-G-M studios set. Director von Sternberg seated (right).

Released from his contract with United Artists, and regarded as a rising talent in
Hollywood, Sternberg was sought after by the major movie studios.[51][52] Signing
an eight-film agreement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925, Sternberg entered
into "the increasingly rigid studio system" at M-G-M, where films were
subordinated to market considerations and judged on profitability.[53][54] Sternberg
would clash with Metro executives over his approach to filmmaking: the picture
as a form of art and the director a visual poet. These conflicting priorities would
"doom" their association, as Sternberg "had little interest in making a
commercial success."[55][56][57]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer first assigned Sternberg to adapt author Alden Brooks'
novel Escape, retitled The Exquisite Sinner. A romance set in post-World War
I Brittany, the movie was withheld from release for failing to clearly set forth its
narrative, though M-G-M acknowledged its photographic beauty and artistic
merit.[58]
Sternberg was next tasked to direct film stars Mae Murray and Roy
D'Arcy in The Masked Bride, both of whom had played in Stroheim's highly
acclaimed The Merry Widow (1925). Exasperated with his lack of control over
any aspect of the production, Sternberg quit in two weeks – his final gesture
turning the camera to the ceiling before walking off the set. Metro arranged a
cancellation of his contract in August 1925. Frenchman Robert Florey,
Sternberg's assistant director, reported that Sternberg's Stroheim-like histrionics
emerged on the M-G-M sets to the consternation of production managers.[46][59][60]

Chaplin and A Woman of the Sea: 1926[edit]

Main article: A Woman of the Sea
When Sternberg returned from a sojourn in Europe following his disappointing
tenure at M-G-M in 1925, Charles Chaplin approached him to direct a
comeback vehicle for his erstwhile leading lady, Edna Purviance. Purviance had
appeared in dozens of Chaplin's films, but had not had a serious leading role
since the much admired picture A Woman of Paris (1923). This would mark the
"only occasion that Chaplin entrusted another director with one of his own
productions."[61][62]
Chaplin had detected a Dickensian quality in Sternberg's representation of his
characters and mise-en-scène in The Salvation Hunters and wished to see the
young director expand on these elements in the film. The original title, The Sea
Gull, was retitled A Woman of the Sea to invoke the earlier A Woman of Paris.[63]
Chaplin was dismayed by the film Sternberg created with cameraman Paul
Ivano, a "highly visual, almost Expressionistic" work, completely lacking in the
humanism that he had anticipated.[63] Though Sternberg reshot a number of
scenes, Chaplin declined to distribute the picture and the prints were ultimately
destroyed.[64][65]

Paramount: 1927–1935[edit]
The failure of Sternberg's promising collaboration with Chaplin was a temporary
blow to his professional reputation. In June 1926 he travelled to Berlin at the
request of impresario Max Reinhardt to explore an offer to manage stage
productions, but discovered he was not suited to the task.[66] Sternberg went to
England, where he rendezvoused with Riza Royce, a New York actress
originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who had served as an assistant on the
ill-fated A Woman of the Sea. They wedded on July 6, 1927. Sternberg and
Royce would have a tempestuous marriage spanning three years. In August
1928, Riza von Sternberg obtained a divorce from her spouse that included
charges of mental and physical abuse, in which Sternberg "seems to have
acted a husband's role on the model his [abusive] father provided." The pair
remarried in 1928, but the relationship continued to deteriorate, ending in a
second and final divorce on June 5, 1931.[67][68]
Silent era: 1927–1929[edit]
In the summer of 1927, Paramount producer B. P. Schulberg offered, and
Sternberg accepted, a position as "technical advisor for lighting and
photography."[69] Sternberg was tasked with salvaging director Frank
Lloyd's Children of Divorce, a movie that the studio executives had written off as
"worthless". Working "three [consecutive] days of 20-hour shifts" Sternberg
reconceived and reshot half the picture and presented Paramount with "a critical
and box-office success." Impressed, Paramount arranged for Sternberg to film a
major production based on journalist Ben Hecht's story about Chicago
gangsters: Underworld.[70]
This film is generally regarded as the first "gangster" movie, to the extent that it
portrayed a criminal protagonist as tragic hero destined by fate to meet a violent
death. In Sternberg's hands the "journalistic observations" provided by Hecht's
narrative are abandoned and substituted with a fantasy gangsterland that
sprang "solely from Sternberg's imagination."[71][72][73] Underworld, "clinical and
Spartan" in its cinematic technique made a significant impression on French
filmmakers: Underworld was surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel's favorite film.[74]
With Underworld, Sternberg demonstrated his "commercial potential" to the
studios, delivering an enormous box-office hit and Academy Award winner (for
Best Original Story). Paramount provided Sternberg with lavish budgets for his
next four films.[75] Some historians point to Underworld as the first of Sternberg's
accommodations to the studio profit system, whereas others note that the film
marks the emergence of Sternberg's distinctive personal style.[76][77]
The movies Sternberg created for Paramount over the next two years – The
Last Command (1928), The Drag Net (1928), The Docks of New York (1929)
and The Case of Lena Smith (1929), would mark "the most prolific period" of his
career and establish him as one of the greatest filmmakers of the late silent
era.[78][79][80] Contrary to Paramount's expectations, none were very profitable in
distribution.[81][82]
The Last Command earned high praise among critics and added luster to
Paramount's prestige. The film had the added benefit of forging collaborative
relations between the director and its Academy Award-winning star Emil
Jannings and producer Erich Pommer, both temporarily on loan from
Paramount's sister studio, UFA in Germany.[83] Before embarking on his next
feature, Sternberg, at the studio's behest, agreed to "cut down to manageable
length" fellow director Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March. Sternberg's
willingness to accept the assignment had the unhappy side effect of
"destroying" his relationship with von Stroheim.[84]
The Drag Net, a lost film, is believed to be a sequel to Underworld.[85] The Docks
of New York, "today the most popular of Sternberg's silent films", combines both
spectacle and psychology in a romance set in sordid and brutal environs.[86]
Of Sternberg's nine films he completed in the silent era, only four are known to
exist today in any archive. That Sternberg's output suffers from "lost film
syndrome" makes a comprehensive evaluation of his silent oeuvre
impossible.[87][88] Despite this, Sternberg stands as the great "Romantic artist" of
this period in film history.[89]
A particularly unfortunate loss is that of The Case of Lena Smith, his last silent
movie, and described as "Sternberg's most successful attempt at combining a
story of meaning and purpose with his very original style."[90][91] The film fell victim
to the emerging talkie enthusiasm and was largely ignored by American critics,
but in Europe "its reputation is still high after decades of
obscurity."[92][86] The Austrian Film Museum has assembled archival material to
reconstruct the film, including a 5-minute print fragment discovered in 2005.[93]