Von Sternberg. John Baxter
few feet showing what knife wounds looked like. Enthusiastic reports reached the War College; the men had stayed awake, not only during the show, but most of the night as well.”1 Fred was less fortunate. Caught in a gas attack at Belleau Wood in June 1918, he was invalided home. Subsequently the French government awarded his unit, the Fourth Brigade of Marines, a collective Croix de Guerre for courage. After the war Fred found work as a film projectionist, but he never fully recovered his health and died in 1936.
In July 1915 von Sternberg was in Chicago when the steamer Eastland capsized while ferrying employees of the Western Electric Company back from a picnic, causing 844 people to die. “I wept while the bodies were carried off in truck after truck,” he wrote. Such emotion wasn’t typical, since he was already formulating a rebarbative personal style. Jesse Lasky Jr., son of the man who cofounded Famous Players–Lasky, remembered “a short, somewhat hunched figure, opinionated, pompous, seemingly unhumorous, introverted and vain, [who] looked like hell.”2 Much calculation went into this image. At a time when fashion favored a clean-shaven face and neatly trimmed hair, gleaming with pomade, von Sternberg wore his hair long, letting it droop over his pale forehead, conferring a poetic melancholy on his deep brown eyes. Describing him in middle age, Sergei Eisenstein wrote, “He was short, greying, with a slightly artistic haircut. He sported a greyish moustache which drooped unevenly on either side.”3 The moustache was a relatively late addition. In 1922, while on location in Wales as assistant director on Alliance’s Love and a Whirlwind, von Sternberg shared a room with actor Clive Brook, who found him staring into the mirror one morning.
“Which is more horrible?” he asked. “With a moustache or without one?”
When Brook queried the need to look horrible, von Sternberg replied, “The only way to succeed is to make people hate you. That way they remember you.”4
This remained his doctrine, accentuated by a studied, often exaggerated choice of clothes and accessories. He favored red or black shirts and jackets in fabrics and colors that most people shunned but that caught the eye—acid green or a bilious beige—accentuated by contrasting white or yellow shoes. Eisenstein noted a “passion for jackets and short square-cut coats.”5 Before he could afford tailoring, von Sternberg bought these secondhand. Though well made, such hand-me-downs were seldom the right size. “He buys his suits to fit the man he’d like to be, about three sizes too large,” jeered Joseph L. Mankiewicz. “He gets in his pants with a step-ladder, and takes three steps before the suit moves.” Allowing for the malice behind it, the comment is apt. Von Sternberg saw himself as physically larger than he was. Once he became wealthy, he continued to wear well-padded suits and heavy coats that sometimes reached his ankles, while the collars rose above his head. He chose the grandest cars, unconcerned that they dwarfed him, and he kept the largest or most aggressive breeds of dog—Great Danes and Dobermans.
More observant people admired the calculation that went into his wardrobe. Like Woody Allen closer to our own time, he expended money and effort on appearing casual. Berlin painter George Grosz remarked, “His outer garments were … always, naturally, made to measure by the very best tailors. The lapels … were cut like a shawl collar and without buttonholes. Moreover, he favoured waistcoats with long sleeves, as did the equally individualistic Bert Brecht. Von Sternberg also wore soft, broad, comfortably-cut shirt-collars with elongated, slightly protruding points…. It all hinted at a ‘closet’ unconventionality, the kind that did not offend too grossly against the rules of gentlemanly dress.”6 He particularly intrigued visitors from Britain, where clothes signified social class. Two English guests on the set of The Docks of New York in 1928 were sufficiently struck to describe a typical von Sternberg costume. “His rough tweed Norfolk jacket was sportive. His fat walking cane betokened a dash of the country squire; his full-bottomed, well-creased flannel trousers, white with a narrow blue line, hinted at the fashionable beach club; while his shoes, white buckskins with black decorations, lent a touch of lawless fantasy.”7
For a model in both his personal style and his work, von Sternberg looked no further than Erich von Stroheim. Both were physically short and self-educated and had been brought up poor in working-class Vienna. But where von Sternberg was retiring, von Stroheim, a born actor, blustered his way to celebrity. Casually accessing a “von” to suggest aristocracy, the actor shaved his head, screwed a monocle into his eye, and adopted a variety of quasi-military uniforms, accentuated by a riding crop or cane. Humorist and scriptwriter S. J. Perelman wrote admiringly of von Stroheim’s screen persona: “his stiff-necked swagger, his cynical contempt for the women he misused, and, above all, his dandyism—the monogrammed cigarettes, the dressing gowns with silk lapels, the musk he sprayed himself with to heighten his allure.” A publicist labeled him “The Man You Love To Hate.”8
Von Stroheim had never been near a film studio before arriving in the United States, but this didn’t prevent him from affecting the white gloves of a director. Von Sternberg was among the admirers who adopted the custom, but gloves were only one element of his costume, which changed from film to film. He might arrive for the first day of shooting in a silk dressing gown. On others, he wore a boilersuit, a solar topee with high riding boots and breeches, a velvet coat and beret, or a robe with a scarf wound round his head like a turban—always with his cane and, in time, a huge megaphone or public-address system. With such accessories, his small stature, low voice, timidity, and lack of education evaporated. No actor cast as an artistic genius could have entered more completely into the part.
One element of his wardrobe gave particular offense. “They’ll tell you he’s arrogant and impudent,” wrote a journalist, “a four-flusher and a faker, and they point with telling effect to his cane. Hollywood, you must understand, doesn’t go in for canes. Plus-fours, puttees and polo shirts, maybe, but no canes.” Von Sternberg responded by sporting even more ostentatious examples. George Grosz was almost alone in realizing that the canes were not just fashion accessories. “In Germany [canes] were still the hallmark of a ‘gentleman,’” he wrote, “and, along with gloves and a leather briefcase, identified the former Corps [fraternity] student, managing director or social climber…. In von Sternberg’s hand, moreover, the simple walking stick was also a sort of fetish or magic wand, something that brought good luck to those who carried it and misfortune to those who mislaid or forgot it.” Initially, von Sternberg insisted to Grosz that he wasn’t superstitious, then conceded that the canes had a ritual significance. “This stick has powers one can’t explain,” said Grosz, “just like a divining rod.”9 (Nicholas von Sternberg confirms, “My father was very superstitious. He particularly hated a black cat crossing his path.”10 Black cats play an ominous role in some of his films, notably Underworld, Thunderbolt—the criminals frequent a bar called The Black Cat—and Dishonored, in which secret agent Dietrich takes her pet on every mission, even in the open cockpit of an aircraft, and is eventually betrayed by it.)
As von Sternberg attained more independence, he widened his personal image into an entire lifestyle. For a time, whenever he ate in a restaurant, he demanded that a plate with six black grapes await him at the table. To maintain an impression of creative dominance, he held script conferences or auditions in secret, locking the doors and permitting no one to enter or leave. On the set, nobody was allowed to make the slightest noise. He even banned watches, claiming that their ticking distracted him. Food and drink were forbidden on the set. These rules were quite common among European directors such as Max Reinhardt; if a visitor didn’t respectfully remove his hat, Reinhardt would snatch it off his head and throw it into the wings. “Everyone in Hollywood has … a ‘gag,’” wrote the New Yorker in 1931, defining this as “some trait or mannerism [or] role which attracts attention.” British actors