biography
| name: |
Stroheim, Erich von
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| |
originally Erich Oswald Stroheim
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pronunciation:
[strohhiym]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1885–1957)
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| biography:
| Actor and motion-picture director, born in Vienna, Austria. Regarded by later generations of film-makers and critics as an early genius of American film whose abilities were sacrificed to commercialism, in his brief eight-film career he established himself as one of the silent era's most prominent directors. Although he claimed he was a Prussian aristocrat and cavalry officer, he was actually the son of a Jewish hatter for whom he worked before emigrating to the USA (c.1906–9). After arriving in Hollywood (1914), he worked for D W Griffith, and in 1917 played the first of the autocratic Prussian officer roles for which he became known as ‘the Man You Love to Hate’. He directed his first film, Blind Husbands (1919), followed by his 42-reel, seven-hour masterpiece, Greed (1923), and his last Hollywood film, Queen Kelly (1928). Shunned by the studios for his profligate style and resistance to formula, after working as a character actor he moved to France and enjoyed considerable acting success, playing the hateful German officer in Renoir's The Grand Illusion (1937). After his last American role, in Sunset Strip (1950), he returned to France, unsuccessful in securing directing projects, but legendary as the director whose meticulous realism and mature themes anticipated the sound era. |
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