Trivia

He maintained such a tyrannical, imperious personality when shooting films that Robert Mitchum threatened to throw him off a pier when they were shooting Macao (1952).

He had an intense creative and sexual relationship with Marlene Dietrich.

Charles Chaplin was so impressed with "The Salvation Hunters" at a preview that he screened a copy for Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who convinced United Artists financial officer Joseph Schench to secure worldwide distribution rights for the company for $20,000.

Von Sternberg had a disastrous two picture deal at MGM during the middle 20s. Louis B. Mayer hated his work on "The Exquisite Sinner" and ordered the film reshot by Phil Rosen, and von Sternberg disliked working with Mae Murray so much in "The Masked Bride" that he walked out after shooting a few reels and was replaced by Christy Cabanne.

Claimed he should get sole writing credit for "The Blue Angel." Although he did find the Mann book on a dusty shelf in a Swiss library, he claimed to have based the film on his own sketchy notes.

Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich's "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh." NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Directed 3 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Emil Jannings, George Bancroft and Marlene Dietrich. Jannings won for his performance in The Last Command (1928).

Josef von Sternberg went to Germany where he worked together with Emil Jannings again. He shot the movie "Der blaue Engel" (1930) for Ufa with Emil Jannings as Prof. Unrat. But despite the superstar Emil Jannings it was a young actress who stole the show from everybody. Marlene Dietrich impersonated the role of Lola Lola so intensely that she became a world star straightaway. The movie itself belongs to the most important German productions of the 30s.

Josef von Sternberg returned to the USA and took Marlene Dietrich with him. They worked together for six more movies which cemented Marlene Dietrich's status as a star.

Was voted the 37th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

He taught Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek while working as a teacher at UCLA film school. The two would later go on to form the psychedelic rock group The Doors and cited Von Sternberg as a major influence on their music.

Because his father was a busy businessman who had connections in the USA the young Josef von Sternberg lived in Vienna and New York City alternately.

Ray Manzarek of The Doors, a student of Von Sternberg at UCLA, would describe him as "perhaps the single biggest influence on The Doors".

Served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps in France during World War I.

Is portrayed by Hans Werner Meyer in Marlene (2000)

In 1925 Josef von Sternberg became a chief director and he realised numerous movies in the 20s like "The Last Command" (1928) - Emil Jannings got for his role as Gen. Dolgorucki the first Oscar in film history, "The Docks of New York" (1928) and "Thunderbolt" (1929).

Many of his movies did not fulfill the expectation at the cinema box office and many of his shootings were very difficult because Josef von Sternberg was an autocrat.

His family moved to the USA in 1908 for good.

In 1924 he also wrote his first screenplay for "By Divine Right" (1924) where he was also engaged as a director assistant. His last movie as an assistant was for the box office hit "It" (1927).

He has directed four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: It (1927) (uncredited), The Last Command (1928), The Docks of New York (1928) and Morocco (1930).

Father of Nicholas Josef von Sternberg

Although born in Vienna, von Sternberg was brought to Manhattan for his education.

In the USA he got in touch with the film business in 1919 and he made first experiences as a director assistant in movies like "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" (1919).

During the 30s the director worked on adaptations of Emile Zola's "Germinal," Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author," and Franz Werfel's "Forty Days of Musta Dag," none of which were filmed.

In 1935, Sternberg commissioned architect Richard Neutra to build a house for him in Northridge, CA. It was a modernist structure of steel and glass, surrounded by a 12-foot moat, with a back patio hidden behind a curved steel wall. The director insisted on bathroom doors without locks, so guests wouldn't try to lock themselves in and threaten suicide. Sternberg sold the property in the mid-1940s; a later owner was writer Ayn Rand. The house was demolished in 1972.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1041-1051. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

The name of the "sardonic autobiography" is Fun In A Chinese Laundry which also contains the amusing story of how Chaplin, Fairbanks and Pickford tracked him down after a showing of Salvation Hunters.