Stroheim

6. Foolish Wives

6 Foolish «[futs Bftn the critical and financial success of Blind Husbands and the satisfactory completion of TIle Devil's Pass Key, Stroheim became the close-cropped but fair-haired boy at Universal.The studio announced inJanuary 1920 that Stroheim's next project would be McTeague, starring Gibson Gowland, but this plan must have seemed ofquestionable practicality, for Frank Norris's novel had never been a best seller and was, in fact, one ofthe most depressing books ever written. Temporarily putting aside his dream ofshowing the underbelly of American life, with which fate had made him well acquainted, Stroheim decided to continue depicting Europe with an original story that eventually became Foolish Wives. The now famous director talked Carl Laemmle into a big production, one far bigger than either gentleman ever dreamed.Although Laemmle was leery ofthe giant sets Stroheim was planning-after all, he had made Universal a success by producing inexpensive films-he feared his ace director would be hired by some other studio. A gambler, like all the early moguls, Laemmle was reluctant to break his winning streak and so gave Stroheim the go-ahead. The film was intended to cost about $250,000. Eventually, when expenses approached $1 million, it would cause financial headaches for Laemmle and artistic heartaches for its creator. One reviewer, after the film's release, said:"IfCarl Laemmle were ofa homicidal turn he might either shoot von Stroheim at sunrise or step on him and squash him."l Stroheim had recreated only a small village street and a few build130 Foolish Wives 131 ings for Blind Husbands and some Parisian settings for The Devil's Pass Key, but now he virtually rebuilt the entire central plaza of Monte Carlo.This independent European principality, presided over by Prince Albert I, had been a rest and recreation spot during the war.After the armistice, it drew to its warm climate and gambling casinos an international crowd ofsoldiers, adventurers, rogues, and vacationers. It was an appropriate place for Stroheim to comment on the postwar world. In his own mind, it might also have been a symbol for Hollywood. Not only was the Monte Carlo set faithful architecturally, but the film itselfperceptively depicts the interaction of a number of nationalities , lifestyles, classes, and personalities. Its theme contrasts the counterfeit with the genuine. It provides us with a phony count, phony cousins, phony roulette wheels, phony manners, and phony banknotes. There is lust by the count for every woman, and lust by him and several others for money-in short, greed. It again deals with a neglected American wife bedazzled by a suave European and shows Americans to be without class, polish, or style. But underneath-too late to pacifY many of his viewers-Stroheim shows that Americans are basically good people. There is also love: the counterfeiter for his daughter, the maid for the count, and even-though much hiddenthe American husband for his wife. Stroheim's vision was a broad one-so broad, in fact, that he could not narrow it to an acceptable length. The film would be the first of many truncated efforts issuing from a master who felt, like the naturalist novelists whom he so admired, that reality-and, indeed, art-was the accumulation of detail.The more detail, the greater the accuracy; the greater the accuracy, the greater the art. Stroheim had created his acting career out ofbeing "the man you love to hate," and the advertisements for this film would also use this line.Writing himself a major role in Foolish Wives, he would continue to indulge in villainy. In the film, he plays a lecher, a crook, a coward, and a rapist. He also enjoyed mixing his screen image with that ofthe real Stroheim. All art may be exorcism, and certainly Stroheim revealed his inner psyche, giving it fair (and often unfair) treatment on the screen.The lengths to which he went, ofcourse, were not entirely known to the public. The Russian "count" of Foolish Wives was no more a real member of the nobility than Stroheim himself, with his tales of the military and aristocratic circles ofVienna. Stroheim must 132 STROHEIM have enjoyed his daring private joke: here was a phony count playing a phony count for an audience that believed he was a real count! Stroheim's well-developed sense of irony must have reveled in this risky masquerade, but no one was shrewd enough...