Eric Von Stroheim Resents Hollywood’s Ceaseless Gossip

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 810, 2 November 1929, Page 27

Eric Von Stroheim Resents Hollywood’s Ceaseless Gossip

WITH a reputation for extravagance, temperament and risque ideas for filming, Eric von Stroheim is one of the most talked-of men in Hollywood. In fact his career has been almost ruined by the film colony’s ceaseless gossip.

Yet Von Stroheim’s pictures always made money. There were “Foolish Wives,” “The Merry Go Round,” “The Merry Widow” and “The Wedding March.” Lately the unfinished picture of Gloria Swanson’s, “Queen Kelly,” now lies in neat boxes on the

shelf awaiting the next chapter in the life of this interesting personality, Von Stroheim. When “Foolish Wives” was made it was told that £ 1,200 worth of caviar was used in scenes where Von Stroheim, who was both actor and director, drank ox-

blood for orange juice and ate caviar for breakfast bacon. Faked Caviar “When the shots showing me eating the caviar were made the glass dish holding the caviar in a block of ice was made with a black painted box, which looked like caviar.” he told an interviewer recently. “On top of this was spread a layer of caviar, which I was shown eating.” One way in which Stroheim was supposed to have proved famously extravagant was in shooting scenes too risque to pass the censor. Von Stroheim complains bitterly

about stories of indecent things he was supposed to have filmed. “I am not feeble-minded, and I certainly would not do such blatant things as those with which I am charged.” There have been various stories circulated about why Von Stroheim was called off of the “Queen Kelly” production. Gloria's Objection One was that Von Stroheim had filmed a scene estimated to cost 10,000 to 100,000 dollars, in which the star did not even appear. Another was that Stroheim insisted on La Belle Swanson falling face down in a courtyard in a heap similar to those the A.E.F. used to shovel about. The scene shot at some expense, according to Von Stroheim, was one that Gloria herself asked to be made in order to give the production some of the pomp and circumstance of the “Merry Widow.” "It cost 7,000 dollars and followed the budget agreed upon.” The story about Gloria falling down face foremost was simple gossip, he says. The truth of “Queen Kelly’s "absence from the screen, is traced to Will Hays, film tsar, who raised objections to things in the story such as a coloured Catholic priest, which he felt would affront devout religious followers and Caucasian audiences.