Von Sternberg

The Claudius Trap

The Claudius Trap For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings. —William Shakespeare, King Richard II PLENTY OF OLD FRIENDS from Berlin had taken refuge from Hitler in London, and they brought grapes to von Sternberg’s bedside and commiserated. Even Marlene Dietrich was there, juggling lovers while playing a fugitive Russian grand duchess in Knight Without Armour for Alexander Korda. Since von Sternberg had seen Korda off at Union Station in Los Angeles five years before, the devious Hungarian, thanks to substantial funding from Prudential Insurance Company, had become a movie magnate, transforming a mansion at rural Denham into the studios of his London Films. It seethed with cronies and relatives, including his brothers Zoltan and Vincent. There was also a regiment of refugees, among them old associates of von Sternberg’s such as Erich Pommer, Carl Zuckmayer, and Lajos Biro, who was head of its script department. (Jokers suggested that the three flags that flew above the mansion signified the number of its British-born employees.) Although Korda enjoyed a few hits, in particular The Private Life of Henry VIII and Rembrandt, he was never more than one step ahead of disaster. “The art of filmmaking,” he wrote, “is to come to the brink of bankruptcy , and stare it in the face.” When von Sternberg arrived, Korda was doing so again, having gambled on importing Dietrich to star with 205 Von Sternberg 206 Robert Donat in Knight Without Armour. Not only did it incur a huge loss; he still owed Dietrich $100,000 of her $350,000 fee. Korda’s most valuable asset was Charles Laughton. An instinctive actor, he relied on an almost mystical mental equilibrium to create a performance. “Laughton needs a midwife, not a director,” moaned Korda. The Private Life of Henry VIII made £1 million, but clashes during Rembrandt led Korda to keep Laughton on contract at £700 a week for the next two years without making a single film. Now, with that contract ending in April 1937, he risked having to write off every penny. Laughton’s friendship with von Sternberg suggested a solution. Korda arrived at the director’s bedside preceded by a fruit basket from London’s leading emporium, Fortnum and Mason. With it were copies of Robert Graves’s novels I, Claudius and Claudius, the God, about the life of Emperor Tiberius Claudius Drusus, as well as a screen adaptation by Biro and Zuckmayer in which Korda had planned to direct Laughton. After the dramas of Rembrandt, however, he had assigned it to William Cameron Menzies, the gifted production designer who made Things to Come. Now Korda invited von Sternberg to take over. In return, he offered either a partnership in London Films or a reputed (and much exaggerated) fee of £25,000—equal to about £1.25 million today, or US$2 million—at a time when the biggest stars received about $100,000 per film (at the peak of his Hollywood career, von Sternberg earned only $20,000 a week). Whatever sum Korda proposed, von Sternberg, suspecting (rightly) that London Films was teetering, took the cash. The story and character of Claudius immediately appealed. An aging cripple who became emperor by outwitting his contemptuous family and subjects was a character of Shakespearean stature, and his near destruction by his nymphomaniac child-wife Messalina gave the story added spice. But von Sternberg had a larger vision. “My plan,” he wrote, “was not only to bring to life an old empire, but to hold it up as a mirror to our own tottering values, and to investigate the diseased roots of excessive ambition.” Elsa Lanchester, Laughton’s wife, claims the two men wanted “to show the world the fall of the Roman Empire and point up the comparison with the current unsettled times.”1 Von Sternberg may have been thinking of his own “excessive ambition.” Had recent The Claudius Trap 207 failures made him introspective? Did the capricious Caligula, with his mad changes of mood, mirror Hitler? Or was his gibe aimed at the Hollywood executives who had undermined him? In the latter case, the film offered rich material for von Sternberg’s favorite pastime—getting his own back. A contemporary summary of the plot hints at the film’s scope: The story deals with the life of Claudius, Emperor of Rome, born 10 B.C...