All was not for naught, Josef’s next assignment was one of Chaplin’s own films, Woman of the Sea (1926), but the film was shelved after only one showing. His first real commercial breakthrough came the following year with Underworld (1927), a film that, it’s said, Josef used his bold-faced street bully tactics to gain creative control of. Afterwards, he began working with equally bull-headed Emil Jannings, the star of his films The last Command (1928) and Der Blaue Engel (1930), among others.

Jannings influenced producer Erich Pommer in choosing Josef as the director of Der blaue Engel (1930), Germany’s first major sound film, and Josef walked out on a limb in choosing the then obscure actress Marlene Dietrich as the film’s leading lady.  It was a risk worth taking, as Dietrich stole the show and several hearts. Josef directed Dietrich in six more movies and became one among many of her personal admirers, only slightly more smitten than most. The two moved almost permanently to the United States, after the success of Der Blaue Engel and the Dietrich-von Sternberg story became a staple of film history.

Just as Dietrich became known for her cool, understated – almost sarcastic personality, Josef was thought of fondly as a bitter tyrant, who took his role as director very seriously believing that the director is "the determining influence, and the only influence, despotically exercised or not, which accounts for the worth of what is seen on the screen." Today, we tend to value actors more than we value directors and pile the praise on Dietrich, when it was Josef who truly launched her career and kept her performances interesting for audiences through his inventive techniques.

In his personal life, Josef had two failed marriages before marrying Meri Ottis in 1948 and becoming a father. He was a lifelong learner, studied art and culture, painted and sculpted, designed his own homes and tombstone, travelled, read and taught. He was obsessive about directing, but able to let go of control with film, allowing Howard Hughes to re-edit two of his films, and having them reshot by other directors. The process of creating seems to be what most interested in him.

Josef begon the “Chinese Laundry” project at his own expense in 1952, a project that would never earn him very much money, but consumed much of the rest of his life. He went to Japan and made The Saga of Anatahan (1952) in a make-shift studio, borrowing techniques from Kabuki theatre or benshi. It was the story of American sailors, marooned on an island and refusing to believe that the war was over. Partly because he was funding the project himself, Josef had full control of the project and tinkered with it for years. It was a commercial disaster, he changed the name five times, added some nude scenes, but nothing improved the film’s reception in the box office. Consequently, his 1965 autobiography was called Fun in a Chinese Laundry. Four years later, Josef von Sternberg died, survived by his wife and two children.

see also: Marlene Dietrich

See Also

Baxter, John, The Cinema of Josef von Sternberg, A. Zwemmer (1971).
Braver-Mann, B.G. “Josef von Sternberg.” Experimental Cinema 5 (1934).
Cook, David A., A History of Narrative Film, W.W. Norton & Company (1990), pages 319-324.
DelGaudio, Sybil, Dressing the part: Sternberg, Dietrich and Costume, Associated University Presses (1993).
Sarris, Andrew, The Flims of Josef von Sternberg, Museum of Modern Art (1966).
Spoto, Donald, Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich, Doubleday & Co. (1992).
Studlar, Gay Lynn, In the realm of pleasure: Von Sternberg, Dietrich and the masochistic aesthetic, University of Illinois Press (1988).
Von Sternberg, Josef, Fun in a Chinese Laundry, Macmillan & Co. (1965).
Wakeman, John, ed., World Film Directors: Volume 1, 1890-1945, H.W. Wilson Co. (1987).
Zucker, Carole, The Idea of Image: Josef von Sternberg's Dietrich Films, Associated University Presses (1988).

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