STROHEIM, ERICH VON

born Sept. 22, 1885, Vienna died May 12, 1957, near Paris byname of Hans Erich Maria Stroheim Von Nordenwall, original name Erich Oswald Stroheim one of the most critically respected motion-picture directors of the post-World War I period, best-known for the uncompromising realism and perfection of detail in his films. He also wrote motion pictures and won recognition as an actor and is remembered for portraying sadistic, monocled Prussian officers. Educated in a military academy, Stroheim was an army officer, newspaperman, magazine writer, railroadman, boatman, book agent, vaudeville trouper, and playwright before coming to the United States in 1914. He was an actor and assistant to the leading director D.W. Griffith in such famous early films as The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). Stroheim wrote the script and played the leading role in Blind Husbands (1919), his first independently directed picture. As an early exemplar of the changing postwar morality, it intimated that a woman had the right to seek love outside of an unsatisfying marriage. The aura of reality that made the characters come alive was characteristic of The Devil's Passkey (1920) and Foolish Wives (1922), pictures that enhanced his reputation as a director. Stroheim's masterpiece was Greed (1924), an adaptation of Frank Norris' novel McTeague (1899), dealing with the power of money to corrupt. A landmark in film realism, its grim irony and brutal honesty were untempered by optimism or compassion. It was cut from its original 10-hour length yet retained much of its power, because the meaning of each scene was brought out by carefully constructed detail rather than by the juxtaposition of scenes. It was a film classic and strongly influenced such later directors as King Vidor and Josef von Sternberg. Although The Merry Widow (1925), The Wedding March (1928), and Queen Kelly (1928) were commercially successful, Stroheim's reputation for extravagance, his fanatical insistence on complete artistic freedom regardless of any economic considerations, and his sophisticated treatment of controversial subjects ended his Hollywood directing career. He returned to Europe as an actor and thereafter appeared only occasionally in American picturese.g., Five Graves to Cairo (1943). One of his notable characterizations was the prison-camp commandant in Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937), and he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in Sunset Boulevard (1950).