Erich von Stroheim with his wife in Venice during the Film Festival. - Vintage Photograph

Erich von Stroheim with his wife in Venice during the Film Festival. Erich von Stroheim (September 22, 1885 – May 12, 1957) was an Austrian-American director, actor and producer, most notable as being a film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work. Stroheim was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1885 as Erich Oswald Stroheim, the son of Benno Stroheim, a middle-class hat-maker, and Johanna Bondy, both of whom were observant Jews.[2] Stroheim emigrated to America at the end of 1909.[3] On arrival at Ellis Island, he claimed to be Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall, the son of Austrian nobility like the characters he played in his films, but both Billy Wilder and Stroheim's agent Paul Kohner claimed that he spoke with a decidedly lower-class Austrian accent. Jean Renoir writes in his memoirs: “Stroheim spoke hardly any German. He had to study his lines like a schoolboy learning a foreign language.”[4] Later, while living in Europe, Stroheim claimed in published remarks to have "forgotten" his native tongue. In Renoir's movie la Grande Illusion, Stroheim speaks German with a strong American accent. However, the fashion photographer Helmut Newton, whose first language was German, used a clip from a Stroheim film on which to base one of his fantasy nube photographs, and he has commented that in the clip Stroheim speaks "a very special kind of Prussian officer lingo - it's very abrupt: it's very, very funny".[5] Stroheim was married three times. He was married to Margaret Knox from 1913 to 1915; His second marriage was to Mae Jones from 1916 to 1919. He was never divorced from his third wife Valerie Germonprez, though he lived with actress Denise Vernac, from 1939 until his death. Vernac also starred with him in several films. Two of Stroheim's sons eventually joined the film business: Erich Jr. (1916–1968) as an assistant director [12] and Josef (1922–2002) as a sound editor.[13] Stroheim spent the last part of his life in France, where his silent film work was much admired by artists in the French film industry. In France he acted in films, wrote several novels that were published in French, and worked on various unrealized film projects. He was awarded the French Légion d'honneur shortly before his death in 1957 in Maurepas, France at the age of 71.

Dimensions: 22.3 x 18.5 cm

IMS SKU: SCAN-NOP-00544819

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