Josef von Sternberg

Josef von Sternberg
Born	Jonas Sternberg May 29, 1894(1894-05-29) Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died	December 22, 1969(1969-12-22) (aged 75) Hollywood, California
Spouse	Riza Royce (1926-1930) Jean Annette McBride (1945-1947) Meri Otis Wilner (1948-1969)

Josef von Sternberg (29 May 1894 – 22 December 1969) — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.

Biography

Youth

Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish family in Vienna. When he was two years old the family moved to America, and he spent most of his childhood in New York City and Lynbrook, New York. His father, Moses (Morris) Sternberg, a former soldier in the army of Austria-Hungary, twice tried to make a home for the family in the US before finding employment as a lace worker. (The false aristocratic title 'von' was added in 1925 by actor/co-producer Elliott Dexter during the production of By Divine Right, supposedly to "even up" the credits as they appeared on screen. Sternberg did not protest, since it invited comparison with his hero, Erich von Stroheim.^{[citation needed]}).

Early career

Von Sternberg dropped out of Jamaica High School and worked as an errand boy in a lace warehouse. He later obtained a job cleaning and repairing movie prints, and by about 1915 found himself working for William A. Brady at the World Film Company at Fort Lee, New Jersey, mentored by Emile Chautard and other French-speaking directors and cinematographers at World. Chautard hired him as assistant director in 1919 for a version of The Mystery of the Yellow Room, and Sternberg made his directorial debut in 1925 with The Salvation Hunters, called by some the first American independent film.^[who?]

Charlie Chaplin was impressed by The Salvation Hunters, and encouraged Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford to acquire the rights to it. Pickford also asked Sternberg to direct a film with her as star, but rejected his first scenario. Chaplin also commissioned him to write and direct A Woman of the Sea (also known as The Sea Gull), starring his former star and lover Edna Purviance, but this film was later destroyed by Chaplin. Still photographs from A Woman of the Sea were published by Purviance's family in 2008.

Von Sternberg had commercial success later in the decade at Paramount Pictures with the late-period silent films The Last Command and The Docks of New York (1928), both noted for their influential cinematography. His reputation was also advanced by a series of early gangster films including Underworld and Thunderbolt.

Dietrich

Von Sternberg's career suffered a decline after Thunderbolt and he accepted an invitation to make a film in Germany. In 1929, Sternberg worked in Berlin and directed the widely acclaimed film Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel; 1930) in both German and English versions simultaneously, one of the first German-language talkies (Melodie des Herzens was released in 1929). It was Sternberg's second film with the German actor Emil Jannings as the doomed Professor Rath. (The first was The Last Command.)

Von Sternberg also cast the not well known Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola, the female lead, and overnight made her an international star. Sternberg and Dietrich continued to collaborate on Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), and The Devil is a Woman (1935). The Scarlet Empress is particularly celebrated for its atmospheric and suggestively demonic production design.

In 1932, von Sternberg commissioned architect Richard Neutra to design the 'Von Sternberg House', an avant-garde American modernism architectural style residence inside a walled estate compound on acreage in the walnut groves. (The author Ayn Rand later acquired the property, with the modernism evocative of 'The Fountainhead,' and resided there. This landmark was demolished in 1972 for construction of the Teledyne complex.)

Von Sternberg is one of the directors to whom has been attributed the origin of the expression "MOS", a phrase used when a scene is to be filmed without sound^{[citation needed]}.

Later career

Macao (1952) was von Sternberg's last Hollywood film. Anatahan (1953), made in Japan, is the story of a group of Japanese soldiers who refused to believe that the Second World War had ended. The film, which was directed, photographed, narrated, and written by von Sternberg, saw limited release and was a financial failure. It was also Sternberg's final film; although another Hollywood picture he co-directed (Jet Pilot) was released in 1957, it had actually been shot seven years earlier, when he was still under contract to producer Howard Hughes.^[1]

Between 1959 and 1963 von Sternberg taught a course on film aesthetics at the University of California at Los Angeles, based on his own films. His students included Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek, who went on to form the rock group The Doors. References to Sternberg films appear in some songs by the group, and Manzarek describes Sternberg as "perhaps the greatest single influence on The Doors."^[2]

In 1965, von Sternberg wrote an autobiography, Fun in a Chinese Laundry, which took its title from an early film comedy; also, over fifty production stills (from the Purviance family's collection), showing his work on A Woman of the Sea, were published in 2008.

Von Sternberg died from a heart attack in 1969 at age 75. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California near several film studios.

Filmography

Silent films

• The Salvation Hunters (1925)
• Exquisite Sinner (1926, lost)
• A Woman of the Sea (1926, also known as The Sea Gull or Sea Gulls, lost)
• Underworld (1927)
• The Last Command (1928)
• The Dragnet (1928, lost)
• The Docks of New York (1928)
• The Case of Lena Smith (1929, lost)

Sound films

• Thunderbolt (1929)
• The Blue Angel (1930)
• Morocco (1930)
• Dishonored (1931)
• An American Tragedy (1931)
• Shanghai Express (1932)
• Blonde Venus (1932)
• The Scarlet Empress (1934)
• The Devil is a Woman (1935)
• Crime and Punishment (1935)
• The King Steps Out (1936)
• Sergeant Madden (1939)
• The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
• The Town (1943, short film)
• Macao (1952)
• Anatahan (1952–8, also known as The Saga of Anatahan)

Documentaries

• The Fashion Side of Hollywood (1935)

Other projects

• The Masked Bride (1925, directed with Christy Cabanne, uncredited)
• It (1927, directed with Clarence G. Badger, uncredited)
• Children of Divorce (1927, directed with Frank Lloyd, uncredited)
• Street of Sin (1928, directed with Mauritz Stiller, uncredited)
• I, Claudius (1937, unfinished)
• The Great Waltz (1938, directed with Julien Duvivier, uncredited)
• I Take This Woman (1940, directed with W.S. Van Dyke, uncredited)
• Duel in the Sun (1946, directed with King Vidor, uncredited)
• Jet Pilot (1957; Sternberg only directed a small portion of this film, in 1950, while still under contract to Howard Hughes)

Bibliography

• Baxter, John: The Cinema of Josef von Sternberg. London: A. Zwemmer / New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1971.
• Sarris, Andrew: The Films of Josef von Sternberg. New York: Doubleday, 1966.
• Sternberg, Josef von: Fun in a Chinese Laundry. London: Secker and Warburg, 1965.
• Studlar, Gaylyn: In the Realm of Pleasure: Von Sternberg, Dietrich, and the Masochistic Aesthetic. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
• Weinberg, Herman G.: Josef von Sternberg. A Critical Study. New York: Dutton, 1967.

References

External links

Biography portal

• Josef von Sternberg at the Internet Movie Database
• Senses Of Cinema: Josef von Sternberg
• Josef von Sternberg at Find a Grave
• Josef von Sternberg. The Case of Lena Smith Book on Josef von Sternberg's last silent movie - one of the legendary lost masterpieces of the American cinema; Published by the Austrian Film Museum
• Literature on Josef von Sternberg
• For the Icon, The Shadow, and The Glimmer Between: 3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg, Daniel Kasman, MUBI (August 23, 2010)

Persondata
Name	Sternberg, Josef von
Alternative names
Short description	Film director
Date of birth	(29 May 1894
Place of birth	Austria
Date of death	22 December 1969
Place of death	Los Angeles