Erich von Stroheim

Erich von Stroheim (1885-1957), Austrian-American film director, actor, and writer, admired for the excellence and realism of his films. Born Erich Oswald in Vienna and educated at the military academy in Wiener Neustadt, von Stroheim had a variety of jobs before he emigrated to the United States around 1909, becoming an American citizen in 1926. He began his film career as an actor. After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, many of his parts involved playing stereotypical “Huns”, drawing on his military experience. In 1916 he appeared in the D. W. Griffith classic Intolerance. Three years later he wrote, directed, and starred in Blind Husbands, his first directing assignment. He also directed the silent films Foolish Wives (1921), The Merry Widow (1925), The Wedding March (1928), and the monumental Greed (1924), based on the novel McTeague (1899) by the American writer Frank Norris. Initially produced as an epic that was over seven hours long (although it was later released by the studio in a two-hour version), Greed was distinguished by von Stroheim's meticulous realism in every detail. After the mid-1930s von Stroheim lived in France. He acted in many sound films, including La Grande Illusion (1937; Grand Illusion), directed by Jean Renoir, and Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and Sunset Boulevard (1950), both made in the United States.