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" |
Greed's Six Missing Hours
by Michael Mills
Entertainment is a business, and art is not, and when the two collide, reality usually wins. Such was the case in Hollywood's silent era, when a legendary director took on two of Hollywood's sharpest businessmen. This is a story of Greed and rebellion, of art and business, creativity and accounting.
It was 1925, and the movies spoke from the heart without words. The director was the rebellious task master Erich von Stroheim, the studio bosses were Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer and the movie was Greed.
Mayer and Thalberg were then busy remaking Hollywood in their own image and likeness. They were Hollywood's shining knights at perhaps its premier picture palace, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. There, Mayer ruled and Thalberg was his right hand man.
Von Stroheim's initial version of Greed was between six and eight hours long, and his final version was about four hours long. He wanted to release it in two parts, but MGM said no. Thalberg and Mayer took the film from Von Stroheim, chopped off two hours, and washed their hands.
The rebel's film had been kidnapped, drawn and quartered, and the dangerous Von Stroheim broken on the rack. Since then, six hours of spectacular cinema have been missing.
Stroheim
Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria Stroheim von Nordenwald was born on 22 September 1885 in Vienna and he came to America in 1909 after nine years in the Austrian army. In the US he earned money wherever he could, singing German folk songs, working as a lifeguard and as a flypaper salesman. His first involvement with film was in D.W. Griffith's Birth of A Nation in 1914.
He crewed on this film, and played several bit parts, most notably that of a soldier who is shot off a roof by Yankee cavalry. Von Stroheim then went on to work on several Griffith Studio productions as an actor, writer, crew member and even assistant director.
After the start of WW I he played the part of German officers in several anti-German war movies then being filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He became the Man You Love To Hate, but while there he suddenly found himself blacklisted. Though a newly-made US citizen, he was deemed too Teutonic and politically incorrect.
Alone, on the skids and holed up in a dismal West Side rooming house in New York City, Von Stroheim read a copy of McTeague that a former tenant had left behind. It was a story of common people and their struggles, and he, like Doc, had suddenly lost his means of employment.
Again fate intervened, and DW Griffith returned to New York from France, loaded down with raw footage for a humanitarian story played out against the backdrop of the Western Front. Griffith hired Von Stroheim, and they left for the coast.
After Grifith's Hearts of the World was released, Von Stroheim found other film work and set his sights on bigger projects.
Next: "Blind Husbands" to "Merry Go Round"
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