Fun in a Chinese
Laundry – Josef von Sternberg
This autobiography, named after an early Edison movie, is
by the director of the 1930 German tragicomedy, The Blue Angel. Also hits but
much less known today were six other movies, also starring Marlene
Dietrich, such as Morocco and Dishonored and The Devil Is A Woman. Audiences liked these films too in spite of – or maybe because of – a beauty, irony, unease, exoticism and eroticism
missing from most Classic Hollywood product, hackneyed dreck brought about by the code of self-censorship, irony-free Tinsel Town executives, and the pressure to churn movies out like sausage.
This acerbic autobiography is well worth reading for fans
into Hollywood during the Twenties and Thirties. He’s reticent about his early
years, as many abused children from hard backgrounds and unstable families tend
to be. In fact, the more Hollywood books one reads, the more one doubts the
Good Old Days ever existed: the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries
were not easy for people who had to scramble for money.
He must have been an
autodidact since he never had time to attend school, but developed his artistic
sense with a popular touch by attending amusement parks, magic show, flea
circuses, cock fights, etc. His descriptions of travel prove him to be a
curious and intrepid traveler eager to see all the low entertainments in
various Asian cultures that he experienced on the eve of WWII.
He also reports, tellingly, that when his copy of Marcus
Aurelius’ Meditations wore out, he
carried around Epictetus’ Handbook
for in the moment reading. His stoic
acceptance must have influenced his worldly realism to take the world as it
comes and control only what was up to him. This responsible attitude was to serve him well
on the chaos of a movie set. Also stoic is his sense that life is a test of self-respect and faith – in his case, the faith that good work is possible even in the crass dream
factory of Hollywood. His sense of duty to do his utmost despite the odds calls
mind Marcus Aurelius’ admirable albeit boy-scoutish injunctions.
Even if Von Sternberg’s work ethic dates him, his honesty is searing – he tells it the way he sees it. He worked with Emil Jannings on The Last Command (1928). Sternberg found Jannings hard to manage” “To direct a child was one thing, but when the youngster weighs close to three hundred pounds it is not easy to laugh at all his pranks.” Sternberg claims this movie made William Powell a star despite the unsympathetic role he played, but humble-brags that Powell later inserted in his contracts the stipulation that he would never be assigned to a Sternberg set again.
Von Sternberg also writes that on the set of The Devil
Is A Woman Joel McCrea “managed to survive meeting me, fled in terror
after his first scene with me, and I had to replace him with another 6-footer.”
He does not mention that he almost killed McCrea by requiring 35 takes of him
ordering a glass of water. McCrea refused to continue, even after Dietrich enlightened
him that there was nothing personal about being subjected to Von’s
perfectionism. “He speaks to me in German and calls me an old cow,” Dietrich
said. “Ignore him.”
Clearly, like Alfred Hitchcock, von Sternberg treated thespians like cattle, also referring to Marlene Dietrich, "No puppet in the history of the world has been submitted to as much manipulation as a leading lady of mine...." Despite his cold manipulative ways and biting sarcasm, he became known as a woman’s director. And like Woody Allen, he doesn't seem to care if his movies will be remembered or not, pleased by the chance to work.
Anyway, lots of good stories - especially about the emotional breakdown of Charles Laughton during the filming of
I, Claudius - in sometimes forbidding prose from the
last director, a la Cecil B. DeMille’s dressing up, who wore high
boots, riding britches, a shooting jacket, and, at times, a silk turban.
