Von Sternberg

Far Cathay

Far Cathay Bai wen bu ru yi jian. (Seeing it once is better than being told a hundred times.) —Zhou Chongguo, Han Dynasty VON STERNBERG REPUDIATED The King Steps Out. It became the only film he specifically requested be omitted from any retrospective . The Columbia experience, with its contrasts to the prodigality of Paramount, shook him. In an effort to regain his confidence, he developed some projects to be produced independently. Perhaps inspired by Lorre’s use of a classic novel in the public domain, he wrote a treatment of Émile Zola’s Germinal, the story of a coal miners’ strike in northern France that ends in violence. One can hardly imagine a project less likely to attract a Hollywood studio, but he tried anyway, with a conspicuous lack of success. In a last-ditch attempt, he took the script to the talent agency of B-movie producer Edward Small, only to find that its representation of writers was in the hands of an old adversary, Riza Royce’s friend Frederica Sagor. “I could not say which of us was more uncomfortable when Eddie Small left us alone,” recalled Sagor, who relished von Sternberg’s humiliation. “Adversity had had a salutary effect on his personality. I found him chastened, affable. Gone was that air of superiority he affected to diminish others, that air which, in the end, helped topple him. He was almost humble now, eager to please.” Any such humility did nothing to ingratiate him with the Hollywood 201 Von Sternberg 202 establishment. “When I sampled the hostility everywhere at the mere mention of his name,” said Sagor, “I did not push him or his story.”1 Once again, Dietrich tried to throw him a lifeline, in the form of Hotel Imperial. Lajos Biro’s story, already filmed in 1927 with Pola Negri, looked ripe for a remake. Between the lines of some Ruritanian war, the hotel of the title is successively occupied by officers from both sides as the advantage shifts. After a girl jilted by an officer is driven to suicide, her sister takes a job as a maid in the hotel to unmask the guilty man. She doesn’t know his name or even which side he fights for. She knows only the number of his room—and naturally, she falls in love with its current occupant. Henry Hathaway proposed a new version titled I Loved a Soldier, with him as director. Lubitsch concurred, on the condition that he use Charles Boyer and persuade Dietrich to star. She was interested, until Hathaway explained how he intended to film her—plain and unglamorous while she masqueraded as a maid, but becoming progressively prettier once she fell in love. Dietrich balked; no star chooses to look ugly. Hathaway persuaded Lubitsch to let him cast Margaret Sullavan, only to be frustrated again when Sullavan broke her arm. At this point, Dietrich, to the studio’s surprise, expressed renewed interest—on the condition that von Sternberg replace Hathaway as director. Lubitsch refused, and the film was canceled. Had von Sternberg made a romantic comedy like I Loved a Soldier instead of The Devil Is a Woman, his career at Paramount might have been saved, but it was too late. The film would eventually be made in 1939 by Robert Florey, with Isa Miranda and Ray Milland. To add to von Sternberg’s troubles, his brother Fred, in declining health since his gassing at Belleau Wood, was hospitalized with stomach cancer. Conferring with two surgeons in the corridor of the hospital, a distracted von Sternberg forgot his superstition and lit cigarettes for all three from the same match, an action regarded as unlucky (and employed as such in Dishonored). At that moment, Fred died. The King Steps Out opened on May 12, 1936, to good reviews, at least from the better papers. It was even invited to the Venice Film Festival. But the experience had soured von Sternberg on Hollywood. Shortly after , he sailed on the Japanese liner Chichibu Maru, which plied regularly Far Cathay 203 between San Francisco and Yokohama. He intended the voyage as the first leg of a lone westward cruise to Asia and the Far East that would also take him to Britain. He claims that, somewhere in the China Sea, the Chichibu Maru accidentally ran down a Chinese junk. Passengers heard the screams of those on board, but after circling...