Josef von Sternberg, '12?
5/29/1894 - 12/22/1969
Early Cinimatographer and Director
Once considered one of Hollywood's premier directors, Josef von Sternberg is now remembered chiefly for his seven films with Marlene Dietrich. Actually, his main contribution to cinema is probably his handling of lighting and mise-en-scene.
Sternberg (the "von" was added, as with his fellow Austrian Erich von Stroheim, to lend glamour to his name) was first and foremost a master cinematographer (the only one, in fact, who was able to use the American Society of Cinematographers credit "A.S.C." after his name on a directorial credit).
He only made one color film (the unfortunate "Jet Pilot" 1957), but the rich textures of his cinematic spaces attained a color of their own; if he learned anything from the experiments of early German cinema, it was the establishment, through "expressionist" use of light and dark, of "Stimmung" (atmosphere). Even when the plot line of his film was diffuse, its stunning visuals took on a life of their own. Whether a Sternberg film is set in a small German town or an outpost in Morocco, sunny Spain or a misty Japanese island, the Russian Imperial court or the California coast, it is part of a distinct universe.
Sternberg's first films were made in Hollywood, and his very first, "The Salvation Hunters" (1925), was an immediate success. The great German actor Emil Jannings, whom Sternberg brought to the US to star in "The Last Command" (1928) as a Russian general dispossessed by the Revolution, recommended that he return to Europe to direct the film version of Heinrich Mann's "The Blue Angel" (1930). The film, Germany's first sound production, made an international star not only of Dietrich but of Sternberg himself, and the two were welcomed back to Hollywood with great fanfare, initiating a collaboration that would, in the space of five years, make film history with "Morocco" (1930), "Dishonored" (1931), "Shanghai Express" (1932), "Blonde Venus" (1932), "The Scarlet Empress" (1934) and "The Devil Is a Woman" (1935).
While "The Blue Angel," based on a literary source, employed a certain degree of realism to tell its tale of an authoritarian schoolmaster smitten with a free-spirited cabaret entertainer, the Hollywood films seem to deal with aspects of the Eternal Feminine, as personified by the sometimes glamorous and mysterious, sometimes mischievous and witty, sometimes earthy, always feisty Dietrich, whose very presence gives a decidedly feminist cast to all these films.
Of Sternberg's post-Dietrich films, three are notable: 1937's uncompleted "I, Claudius", which might have been his finest film he had not run into problems with financial backers; "The Shanghai Gesture" (1941), a delightfully dark piece of suspense and exoticism in which Gene Tierney, Ona Munson, and Victor Mature together assume the Dietrich persona; and the director's own favorite project, "The Saga of Anatahan" (1952), a poetic study of Japanese soldiers isolated on an island at the end of WWII. "Anatahan" can be seen as a virtual encyclopedia of the possibilities inherent in black-and-white cinematography.
Also Credited As: Jonas Sternberg
Born: on 05/29/94 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 22-DEC-69.
Job Titles: Director, Writer, Assistant director, Film cutter, Film patcher
Family:
Daughter: Name not shown. (Mother: Jeanne Annette MacBride)
Father: Moses Sternberg. Orthodox Jew; left for US when Von Sternberg was three; sent for family in 1901
Mother: Serafin Sternberg.
Son: Nicholas Von Sternberg. (Mother: Jeanne Annette MacBride)
Significant Others:
Wife: Jeanne Annette MacBride. married in 1943; was 21 at time of marriage; worked as Von Sternberg's secretary; had two children together
Wife: Riza Royce. married in 1926; divorced in 1930
Education: Jamaica High School, Jamaica, New York
Milestones:
1901 Sent for by father who was living in the USA
1904 Returned to Vienna
........ Worked as apprentice at aunt's millinery store and as stock clerk for lace store
1908 Moved back to USA (Long Island)
1911 Changed first name to Josef and left home at 17
1914 Film patcher, then chief assistant to the director general, with World Film Company, Fort Lee, NJ
1917 Joined Army Signal Corps; helped make training films
1919 First credit as assistant director, "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" (dir. Emile Chautard)
1923 Moved to Hollywood; first work as assistant director on "By Divine Right"
1924 Added "von" to name at suggestion of actor Elliot Dexter while working as scenarist and assistant on "By Divine Right"
1925 Directorial debut, "The Salvation Hunters"
1926 Joined Paramount as assistant director
1930 Moved to Germany, directed UFA's first sound film, "The Blue Angel" (first of seven films with Marlene Dietrich)
1937 Went to England to work for Alexander Korda on "I Claudius"
1941 Filmed documentary "The Town" for US Office of War Information
1947 Taught class in film directing at USC
1953 Last film shot in Japan, "The Saga of Anatahan"
........ Semi-retired during mid 1950s
1959 Taught course on the aethetics of film at UCLA
Webwriter's note: The text for this page was copied from Yahoo Movies on 12/17/05.
JAMAICA HIGH SCHOOL NOTEWORTHY ALUMNI : : : : : : : : 12/17/05