Von Sternberg

Photo Section

Josef von Sternberg at the height of his powers in the mid-1930s. He told Clive Brook, “The only way to succeed is to make people hate you. That way they remember you.” Von Sternberg’s first feature, The Salvation Hunters (1925), stars Georgia Hale and George K. Arthur (above). Arthur and Hale are shown with Bruce Guerin and Otto Matiesen (below). Despite its debt to von Stroheim, the film shows the photographic and decorative flair for which von Sternberg became famous. Von Sternberg appears awkward with Renée Adorée on the set of The Exquisite Sinner (1925), his first disastrous studio film. The cane is already a feature. Von Sternberg demanded total silence on the set. Even watches were forbidden. In the posed shot with cinematographer Max Fabian and members of the cast of The Exquisite Sinner, the director is the only one not enjoying the joke. A prostitute (Betty Compson) and a ship’s stoker (George Bancroft) are improbable lovers in The Docks of New York (1929), the finest of von Sternberg’s silents. Evelyn Brent and Emil Jannings in The Last Command (1928). Jannings’s uniform, and particularly his medal, is an important plot element, showing von Sternberg’s flair for storytelling through objects. George Bancroft is restrained by the guards from attacking Richard Arlen in von Sternberg’s first sound film, Thunderbolt (1929), as the warden (Tully Marshall, right) looks on. William Powell as “Dapper” Frank Trent and Evelyn Brent as “The Magpie,” rival gang bosses in The Drag Net (1928). The feathers of Brent’s cap and the streamers in the background are familiar von Sternberg motifs. Esther Ralston as the servant girl struggling to save her son in The Case of Lena Smith (1929), von Sternberg’s last silent. The story has resonance with his own childhood, as he spent his early life brought up by a doting mother and an often absent father. The chrysalis and the butterfly. Marlene Dietrich (left) in 1925, before von Sternberg , and (right) in Shanghai Express (1932). In The Blue Angel (1930), Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich) introduces her husband (Emil Jannings) to the man who will supplant him, the strongman Mazeppa (Hans Albers). Von Sternberg directs the vehicle of Marlene Dietrich’s transformation, The Blue Angel (1930). Lola-Lola’s last enigmatic stare at the end of The Blue Angel. Art intruded on real life when von Sternberg’s wife, Riza Royce, sued Marlene Dietrich for libel and alienation of affections and demanded a divorce. An exercise in damage control, Los Angeles, 1931. Marlene Dietrich and daughter pose with husband Rudy Sieber next to Dietrich’s director and lover, von Sternberg. (Left) Von Sternberg in costume with a less formally dressed Gary Cooper on the set of Morocco (1930). (Right) Paramount exploited Dietrich’s bisexuality and crossdressing , promoting her as “The Woman All Women Want to See.” She wore a man’s tuxedo to accompany Maurice Chevalier and Gary Cooper to the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross. In Morocco (1930), Dietrich’s burned-out cabaret singer rejects marriage to wealthy Adolphe Menjou, preferring subjugation to embittered Foreign Legionnaire Gary Cooper. Dietrich’s peasant-girl disguise as spy X-27 in Dishonored (1931) references von Sternberg ’s first love. Sylvia Sidney about to be drowned in An American Tragedy. Von Sternberg appears dapper and uninvolved on the set of An American Tragedy (1931), a project he snatched from under the nose of Sergei Eisenstein and then dismissed as “just an assignment.” Nobody carried off headgear like Dietrich. Her plumes in Shanghai Express (1932) (top left) came from the tails of Mexican fighting cocks, and her wig in Blonde Venus (1932) (top right) was dusted with real gold. Nothing, however, equaled her theft of Clive Brook’s cap (below) in Shanghai Express, topped by her comment that, if given the last five years to live over, she would change only one thing—“I wouldn’t have bobbed my hair.” Von Sternberg called The Scarlet Empress (1933) a “relentless excursion into style.” Despite Travis Banton’s astonishing costumes, the swaggering performance of John...