Josef von Sternberg Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018
Josef von Sternberg, born Jonas Sternberg (29 May 1894 – 22 December 1969) was an Austrian-American film director. His family emigrated permanently to the United States when he was fourteen, and he grew up in New York City. He started working at World Film Company in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he was mentored by French director Emile Chautard.Sternberg started in Hollywood after making his first film as a director in 1925. Charlie Chaplin became interested in him, and had him direct a film. Von Sternberg worked on late silent films in the late 1920s, by which time he had adopted the use of "von" in his name. After working with the award-winning German star Emil Jannings, he was invited from Hollywood to Berlin in 1930 to make one of Europe's first talkies, Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) with Jannings and an unknown revue-artist, Marlene Dietrich. His flattering soft-focus technique and encouragement of her performances helped to create the Dietrich legend in the six films they made together in Hollywood.
[on Gary Cooper] One of the nicest human beings I have ever met.
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I care nothing about the story, only how it is photographed and presented.
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The only way to succeed is to make people hate you. That way they remember you.
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The finished product is not finished when the actor is. The work is completed by a pair of shears.
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[on the director's role] . . . the determining influence, and the only influence, despotically exercised or not, which accounts for the worth of what is seen on the screen.
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Shadow is mystery and light is clarity. Shadow conceals--light reveals. To know what to reveal and what to conceal and in what degrees to do this is all there is to art.
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Nothing has ever been invented that is more cumbersome to make than the motion picture.
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Fact
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During the 30s the director worked on adaptations of Emile Zola's "Germinal," Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author," and Franz Werfel's "Forty Days of Musta Dag," none of which were filmed.
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Claimed he should get sole writing credit for "The Blue Angel." Although he did find the Mann book on a dusty shelf in a Swiss library, he claimed to have based the film on his own sketchy notes.
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Von Sternberg had a disastrous two picture deal at MGM during the middle 20s. Louis B. Mayer hated his work on "The Exquisite Sinner" and ordered the film reshot by Phil Rosen, and von Sternberg disliked working with Mae Murray so much in "The Masked Bride" that he walked out after shooting a few reels and was replaced by Christy Cabanne.
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Charles Chaplin was so impressed with "The Salvation Hunters" at a preview that he screened a copy for Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who convinced United Artists financial officer Joseph Schench to secure worldwide distribution rights for the company for $20,000.
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Although born in Vienna, von Sternberg was brought to Manhattan for his education.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1041-1051. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
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Was voted the 37th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
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He had an intense creative and sexual relationship with Marlene Dietrich.
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He maintained such a tyrannical, imperious personality when shooting films that Robert Mitchum threatened to throw him off a pier when they were shooting Macao (1952).
$1.6 Million
