Erich von Stroheim (1885-1957)
Von Stroheim is an important but enigmatic figure in the history of movies. Much of his childhood is obscure. He seems to have been born Eric Oswald Stroheim, to a lower middle class Jewish family in Vienna, However, when he arrived in the US in 1909, at age 24 he claimed to be a Catholic Austrian nobleman, Count Erich Oswald Hans, Carl Maria von Stroheim. He got a job as a traveling salesman but by 1914 was working as a Hollywood stunt-man. He claimed (falsely) that he was in Birth of a Nation. However, he definitely did work with Griffith on Intolerance (1916). After World War I, von Stroheim became one of the most famous directors of the immediate post war period with 12 films between 1919 and 1934. He had several major hits as well as the very controversial film Greed (1924), a movie adaptation of the Frank Norris novel McTeague. Von Stroheim's original cut was 462 minutes, almost 8 hours. He eventually cut it to a four hour version but then lost control of the film to M-G-M which cut it to two and a half hours. Most of the cut footage has been lost (another of those great holy grails of film research).
Von Stroheim directed the great silent star Gloria Swanson in 1928 and 1929 in Queen Kelly a film financed by Swanson's lover, Joseph P. Kennedy (yup, that one. father of JFK, etc.). However, Swanson and Kennedy didn't like the early versions of the film. Von Stroheim was fired and the film remained unfinished. In 1931, new material was shot by a different director and the film was eventually released in 1932. All of this is important since it's Gloria Swanson who plays Nora Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. (1950) and Von Stroheim who plays Max von Mayerling. Thus von Stroheim in real life directed Gloria Swanson and this is repeated in the film: the fictional Max von Mayerling has directed the fictional Norma Desmond. Von Stroheim's portrayal of von Mayerling, (along with his role as von Rauffenstein in Grande Illusion) are his most famous.
Von Stroheim was very difficult for studios to work with. He insisted on near total artistic control and was iconoclastic and fanatic about detail. He As a result, he was fired on numerous occasions. Von Stroheim was a dictator to his actors...but was extremely self aware. Jean Hersholt, one of the stars of Greed recalled that, during the filming of the climatic fight scene (which took place on location in Death Valley), von Stroheim yelled at him and co-star Gibson Gowland "Fight, Fight! Try to hate each other as you both hate me!"
By the mid 1930s he returned primarily to acting both in the US and in France. After the war, he lived primarily in France and took numerous roles in movies there. He often played characters that were parodies of himself.
Renoir was an admirer of von Stroheim's directorial work, particularly Greed. Grand Illusion was made while von Stroheim was in France from 1936 to 1939. He returned to the US as war broke out. Interestingly, critics often claim that von Stroheim spoke both German and French with an American accent. Renoir claimed that von Stroheim hardly spoke any German. So, who knows, maybe even the reconstructed tales of his childhood are wrong.
Von Stroheim was married three times between 1913 and 1920. He never divorced his third wife, but their relationship soured and starting in 1939, he lived with the French actress Denise Vernac (1916-1984). von Stroheim and Vernac appeared in numerous films together including The Mask of Diijon (1946), La danse de mort (1948), L'envers du paradis (1953), and others. They are buried together in la Cimetiere du Maurepas, near Paris.
You can read an excellent short article about von Stroheim here. (not required)