Erich Von Stroheim's "Greed"
Greed's Missing Hours
My article on "Greed's" missing pieces.
Greed Reconstructed
The six hour reconstructed version.
Background
On various aspects of the story and film.
Greed Picture Book
Stills and photos from "Greed" and Von Stroheim's career.
Links
Silents, Von Stroheim, Pitts, Norris, San Francisco, et al.
 | Erich von Stroheim's 1924 epic motion picture "GREED" |
Von Stroheim's Observations
Extracts of a letter from Erich von Stroheim to writer Peter Noble regarding his film "Greed" and published in "Hollywood Scapegoat" in 1950.In a letter to the author about "Greed" Stroheim writes:
"As you can see I always used the same actors and actresses whenever possible. Gibson Gowland happened to be in Scotland. I sent for him because there was no other man known to me who came as close to the description of McTeague by Frank Norris, both in extra-ordinary appearance and character.
"When I wanted Cesare Gravina I found out that he had gone with his opera-singer wife to the Argentine. I sent for him, and the most heart-breaking story in motion picture history concerns this man in this particularity. For nine months he worked extremely hard, as he had one of the most important parts in "Greed" - in the counter-plot. He contracted double pneumonia while having to be submerged in the cold waters of the San Francisco Bay for two nights in succession during the filming of a scene, but at the end of the production, after June Mathis, and subsequently a cutter, had completely eliminated the counter-plot, there was not one single scene of Gravina's left in the picture!
"Of Dale Fuller who played in all the scenes with him, as well as in many other scenes, only two or three flashes are left. Both the above constituted tragedies in the careers of two extremely fine players.
"At the time when I began my work on 'Greed' the slogan of the Goldwyn Company was 'the author and the play are the thing', and I was given plein pouvoir to make the picture as the author might have wanted it.
"However, when - during the time I was cutting the film - the Goldwyn Company became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as the new General Manager, their new slogan became 'the producer is the thing.' I soon realized that the change boded no good for me, as Thalberg and I had often crossed swords at Universal.
"Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer, the head of M.G.M., did not care a hoop about what the author or I, or the former Goldwyn Company had wanted. Mayer, in fact, made it his business to impress upon me that I was only a small employee in a very large pants factory (pants that, incidentally, have had to fit grandfather, father and child !)
"With 'Greed' I had again set out with the idea of making the film in two parts, ten or twelve reels each, with time for a dinner interval in between - this was still a long time before Eugene O'Neill 'got away' with the idea with 'Strange Interlude'.
"When I was through making the film as written and passed by Goldwyn, I found myself with forty-two reels. Even if I wanted the film to be shown in two parts, it was necessary to cut half of it. This I accomplished myself. When I arrived at twenty-four reels I could not, to save my soul, cut another foot. But Mayer and Thalberg insisted on cutting it down to what they described as a 'commercial length.'
"Unknown to them I sent one print to my friend Rex Ingram, who worked at that time in New York, begging him to cut it, if he could. Ingram returned itin eighteen reels, having eliminated six reels, thus accomplishing what had been to me impossible. He sent me a telegram: 'If you cut one more foot I shall never speak to you again.' I showed the telegram to Mayer who told me that he didn't give a damn about Rex Ingram or me, and that the picture must be cut to ten reels. He added that it would be a total loss to the company anyway!
"Mayer thereupon gave it to a cutter, a man earning thirty dollars a week, a man who had never read the book nor the script, and on whose mind was nothing but a hat. He ruined the whole of my two years' work. During that time I had mortgaged my house, my car and my life insurance to be able to work, as I was neither paid for writing nor for cutting the picture. In fact all I received was a certain sum of money which would have been the same had I taken only two weeks to make 'Greed' instead of nine months.
"At a time when M.G.M. was making slapstick comedies and farces of fourteen reels in length, my picture, a serious work, was arbitrarily cut down to nine or ten reels. The rest of the negative was burned to get the forty-three cents-worth of silver out. Only twelve men saw the picture in its original forty-two reels.
"Two of them, well-known writers, Idwal Jones of the 'San Francisco Call' and author of many books, and Harry Carr of the 'Los Angeles Times,' war correspondent and author, wrote often about the strong impression 'Greed' had made on them. Nevertheless the film, which had cost 470,000 dollars, was a comparative failure at the box office because M.G.M. did not advertise it and having written it off in their books as a total loss - for income tax purposes - did not care to exploit it properly.
"'Greed' was, up to that time, the only film in which not one studio set was used. I had rented a house on Laguna Street in San Francisco, furnished the rooms in the exact way in which the author had described them, and photographed the scenes with only very few lamps, making full use of the daylight which penetrated through the windows. Of course this was not always to the cameraman's liking, but I insisted - and we got some very good photographic results.
"In order to make the actors really feel 'inside' the characters they were to portray I made them live in these rooms (a move which was favourably received at the studio since it saved the company some hotel expenses!)
"When I came to the desert sequences which were laid in Death Valley the company suggested that I take my actors to Oxnard, near Los Angeles, where traditionally all desert scenes were - and still are - shot. But having read the marvellous descriptions of the real Death Valley as Norris had depicted them, I knew that it did not look like Oxnard. I insisted on the real Death Valley in California and Death Valley it was.
"This was in 1923 when there were no roads and no hotels as there are today. We were the only white people (forty-one men and one woman) who had penetrated into the lowest point on earth below sea level) since the days of the pioneers. We worked in 142 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, and no shade.
"I believe the results I achieved through the actual heat and the physical strain were worth the trouble we had all gone to.
"When I meet you I can tell you more if it would interest you, but not knowing how much space you have for such unessential details I have limited myself to the foregoing. If I talked to you, however, for three reeks steadily I could not possibly describe, even to a small degree, the heartache I suffered through the mutilation of my sincere work at the hands of the M.G.M. executives."
