The Sun and Her Stars

by Donna Rifkind

  a holiday week in Venice: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 95; KOS, p. 121.

  sailed from Cuxhaven on the Albert Ballin: KOS, pp. 125–126.

  “mountainous heights” of first class…a stay at a spa: BV 1928, DLAM.

  stowaway, dead soldier, canaries: KOS, p. 127.

  “They were emigrants first of all”: Lion Feuchtwanger, “The Grandeur and the Mystery of Exile,” quoted in Anderson, ed., Hitler’s Exiles, p. 170.

  Salka had never heard of her: KOS, p. 127.

  “the Barnum of world theater”: Bach, Marlene Dietrich, p. 47.

  she’d had major roles on his stages for over a decade: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 37; the author notes that Salka had acted in Reinhardt theaters since 1911.

  The performances the Viertels saw: Salka’s descriptions of New York, the theater productions she saw there, and her encounter with Max Reinhardt appear in KOS, pp. 127–128.

  would continue to bewilder her: ibid., p. 124.

  Murnau’s anxious telephone calls…and the impressionistic mounds of sagebrush: Salka’s descriptions of the train ride west appear in ibid., p. 129.

  roofs shaped like mushrooms, a restaurant shaped like a hat: ibid., p. 130.

  NO ACTORS, NO JEWS, NO KIDS OR PETS: observation by Winfred Kay Thackrey in Cari Beauchamp, ed., My First Time in Hollywood, p. 196.

  Autopia: term coined in Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, p. 213.

  too many Karl May novels: Karl May was an immensely popular German novelist who wrote about cowboys and Indians in the American West. He had never been to America. Among the many who were huge boyhood fans of May’s books were Billy Wilder, Peter Viertel, Fred Zinnemann, and Adolf Hitler.

  “I went to Hollywood…a gigantic traffic jam made the city alive”: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 97.

  her father had been obliged to find a map: KOS, p. 122.

  a fancy way station for visiting film folk: Rosemary Lord, Hollywood Then and Now, p. 88.

  Murnau’s insufferable arrogance: KOS, p. 131.

  a German journalist of their acquaintance: this was Richard A. Bermann, a well-known journalist and travel writer who wrote dispatches from Hollywood for the Berliner Tageblatt under the name Arnold Hollriegel.

  as if it were a vast sheet of mother-of-pearl: KOS, p. 132.

  the yellow hippodrome and the merry-go-round inside it: from Fred E. Basten, Santa Monica Bay: A Pictorial History, p. 83.

  telling fortunes out of a shack: KOS, p. 132.

  Salka had been raised near a river…that she sometimes heard: Salka’s memories of the Dniester River are from ibid., p. 1.

  She pleaded with Berthold to let them find a house in Santa Monica: ibid., p. 132.

  Those people…had thrived on it for more than seven thousand years: Information about the Tongva is from the website of the Gabrielino/Tongva tribe: www.gabrielinotribe.org/historical-sites-1.

  that extended north toward the canyon: from Ernest Marquez, Santa Monica Beach: A Collector’s Pictorial History, p. 51.

  gates and garages fronted the street: see www.la.curbed.com, “How Old Hollywood and Starchitecture Built Santa Monica’s Gold Coast,” July 22, 2014.

  In six weeks…at a cost to Mayer of $28,000: Details about the construction of Louis B. Mayer’s beach house are from Scott Eyman, Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer, p. 134.

  recurring bronchitis and gout: KOS, p. 132.

  climate-controlled, double-windowed, and sound-proofed: see www.la.curbed.com above, and also Milwaukee Journal, September 18, 1939, “Cinema’s Big Salaried Stars Fill Homes with Expensive Playthings”: “Norma Shearer’s beach house is soundproof to shut out the rumble of breakers, air conditioned to shut out the heat and shutter equipped to shut out the light.”

  the mad rush her husband would have to endure: KOS, p. 132.

  a pleasant mock-Tudor…the foothills of Laurel Canyon”: Airgram, BV to SV, September 13, 1928, DLAM.

  The interiors shone with onyx…mahogany”: allanellenberger.com, “Hollywoodland,” October 27, 2012.

  among the swanky parlors of film folk: KOS, p. 133.

  “a warning to European directors”: ibid.

  “sheer blasphemy”: ibid. pp. 128–129.

  a welcome jolt…glum expatriates: ibid., p. 133.

  Calamities at “the Jinx Mansion”: “Hollywood’s Peyton Hall Had Drama, Glamour,” Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2006.

  Jannings would be dismissed from his contract with Paramount: Scott Eyman, The Speed of Sound, p. 260.

  with rococo displays of his vanity: Karen Wieland, Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives, p. 164.

  traveling from one dangerous war zone to another to entertain the troops”: ibid., pp. 171, 380.

  Jannings as “artist of the state”: www.imdb.com, biography of Emil Jannings.

  for his foreign intellect and originality: KOS, p. 135.

  the globetrotter of his world…the American driver of their luck: BV to SV, May 16, 1928, DLAM.

  and coaxed her into a grudging politeness: KOS, p. 134.

  She was glad to be able to send fifty dollars here or five dollars there: Auguste Steuermann to SV, May 1, 1928, call # 80.1.322/12; and May 30, 1928, call # 80.1.322/30, DLAM.

  “Are there snakes on the beach?”…“Are the film stars interesting?”: Auguste Steuermann to SV, May 1, 1928, call # 80.1.322/12, DLAM.

  to be able to buy things she didn’t need: KOS, p. 134.

  “and to survive in Hollywood we had to work”: ibid., p. 135.

  There were disagreements about the story: ibid.

  “a tale about wheat”: quoted in Janet Bergstrom, “Murnau in America: Chronicle of Lost Films,” Film History 14: 450.

  Berthold wrote three drafts in all: This is according to Janet Bergstrom; others have said he wrote two drafts.

  including Murnau’s hospitalization for appendicitis in early July: Bergstrom, “Murnau in America,” p. 443.

  during the summertime miseries of his army duty: BV to SV, August 30, 1928, DLAM.

  once the harvest was in and the picture was done: Bergstrom, “Murnau in America,” p. 443.

  “the illusion of my existence as a prisoner is perfect”: BV to SV from Hotel Pendleton, date unknown, DLAM.

  “and I understand every word she says”: KOS, pp. 135–136.

  back pain that had emerged from an operation she’d had several years ago: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 102, for mention of back pain; and various letters between SV and BV to and from Oregon in September 1928, DLAM.

  Berthold tried to deny that he’d written such a thing: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 102.

  “too late, my dear!”: BV to SV, September 1, 1928, DLAM.

  “where we represent home to each other”: BV to SV, September 9, 1928, DLAM.

  “while you are able to create with writing”: SV to BV, September 10, 1928, DLAM.

  “I’m not one iota more in a foreign country here…California is not a bit more alien to me than Germany”: SV to BV, September 1928, call # 78.907-4, DLAM.

  at the time he was married to somebody else: KOS, p. 74.

  the looting and burning it had sustained during the Great War: ibid., p. 71.

  3: A GREAT HOUSE FULL OF ROOMS

  the suave screen idol Rod La Rocque: Mordaunt Hall, “A Romantic Fantasy,” New York Times, June 10, 1929.

  and doubled his salary: KOS, p. 138.

  as long as they rented it only for the summer: ibid., p. 137.

  she drove straight to Santa Monica: ibid., p. 137.

  in the popular “English style,” painted white with a pitched green roof: Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind, p. 155.

  $900 for the three summer months: KOS, p. 138.

>   as a leading lady on the world’s stages: ibid., p. 3.

  “moving swiftly like a figure in a puppet show”: ibid., p. 10.

  during her parents’ frequent and sometimes violent quarrels: ibid., p. 12.

  including a dread of Friday the thirteenth: Tagebuch, September 14, 1957, DLAM.

  gathered to light the Sabbath candles: KOS, pp. 2–3.

  and sent out meals around the clock: ibid., p. 5.

  skating and sleigh rides in the winter: ibid., p. 24.

  “A woman from Lemberg…and will not disturb us too much”: Auguste Steuermann to SV, May 21, 1929, call # 80.1.322/33, DLAM.

  three hundred dollars to pay the coal bill: Auguste Steuermann to SV, December 31, 1929, call # 80.1.322/49, DLAM.

  all soldiers, not just officers, would be fed: KOS, p. 64.

  a bowl of cabbage and potato soup that Niania had cooked for them: ibid., p. 72.

  on any day they pleased: ibid., p. 13.

  “They were a nightmarish procession of misery…whom they cursed and beat with sticks”: ibid., p. 13.

  but she did not specify what kind of God she had in mind: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 19. Also: “Mother believes in God,” P. Viertel, Bicycle on the Beach, p. 187; “May God whom you believe in bless and protect you,” BV to SV, April 30, 1927, DLAM; “She [Salka] says she has always believed in God and prayed to him. She can’t even imagine what it would be like, not to have faith…And she said, ‘Doubt is just fear—that’s all it is.’ ”: Christopher Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One, 1939–1960, p. 290.

  “I have no ties…when they wanted to talk to the world”: Tagebuch, July 16, 1957, DLAM.

  the only arenas in which they exercised any power: Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun, Jewish Women and Their Salons: The Power of Conversation.

  a professor from the university in Lemberg: KOS, p. 22; “an eccentric…Kissingen”: KOS, pp. 26–27.

  lieder by Schumann and Brahms: ibid., p. 20.

  to apply for immigration visas: ibid., pp. 138–139.

  “counting the days till [her] return to Europe”: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 53, quoting a letter from SV to Camil Hoffman; KOS, pp. 139, 143.

  all their books that had been sent from Berlin: KOS, p. 139.

  they still had a bit of savings for a return trip to Germany: ibid., p. 130.

  They renegotiated their rent…and resolutely began again: ibid., pp. 139–140.

  an “all-talker” called Seven Faces: Mordaunt Hall, “The Screen,” New York Times, November 16, 1929, and “Short Subjects,” Film Daily, November 17, 1929.

  born in Lemberg, not far from Salka’s hometown: Lemberg changed names many times as it became variously occupied: it was Lwów in interwar Poland, Lvov in the Soviet Union, and Lviv in Ukraine today.

  continuingly unhappy about the interruption of her acting career: KOS, p. 140.

  “My face, my neck, my whole upper body”: Salka Viertel, Das unbelehrbare Herz: Ein Leben in der Welt des Theaters, der Literatur und des films. (This is the 1970 German edition of Salka’s memoirs, which she had published in English as The Kindness of Strangers in 1969. There are some differences in the texts.) 73 “Salka Stenermann”: Hall, “Short Subjects,” Film Daily, November 17, 1929.

  “Salka Stensrmann”: Hall, “The Screen,” New York Times, November 16, 1929. See above.

  “like drinking from an eyedropper when you are parched”: KOS, p. 140.

  She hated her makeup and her costumes: ibid., p. 151.

  “I got excellent reviews and fan mail from Germany”: S. Viertel, Das unbelehrbare Herz, p. xx.

  “It made me miserable”: KOS, p. 152.

  “She greeted newcomers warmly…that she had been a great actress”: Christopher Isherwood, Lost Years: A Memoir, 1945–1951, pp. 70–71.

  as feminist scholars have noted: Bilski and Braun, Jewish Women and Their Salons, p. 145.

  Some film scholars believe it took place in the spring: Karen Swenson, Greta Garbo: A Life Apart, p. 206.

  or around Christmas: Barry Paris, Garbo, p. 186.

  Berthold agreed, saying it was a high price to pay: KOS, pp. 142–143.

  “a kind of deus ex machina…and kept me in America”: SV to S. N. Behrman, October 5, 1966, Behrman Archives, NYPL.

  from the time of her arrival there on March 31, 1930: Wieland, Dietrich and Riefenstahl, p. 226.

  “Mary Dietrich”: KOS, pp. 55–56; Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 54.

  Dietrich frequently showed up: Wieland, Dietrich and Riefenstahl, p. 233; also see P. Viertel, Dangerous Friends, p. 10.

  “my mother thought [Dietrich] something of a poseuse”: P. Viertel, Dangerous Friends, p. 10.

  the newcomers who were flocking to Hollywood: KOS, p. 150.

  who’d been summoned from New York to the West Coast: ibid., p. 139.

  William Dieterle…Charles Boyer: ibid., pp. 139–140.

  had accepted a six-month contract with Paramount: Marie Seton, Sergei M. Eisenstein: A Biography, p. 157.

  “a colorful film symphony”: Scenes from Eisenstein’s film are available on www.youtube.com, as Que Viva México!, via Gregori Alexandrov, 1979.

  a gift of two pounds of Malossol caviar: KOS, p. 139.

  she proceeded to offer advice: Prager, “Ich bin,” pp. 115–116.

  to help pay an advance to the film’s composer: KOS, p. 146. The composer was Hugo Riesenfeld.

  sandwiches for his motoring trip up the coast: Lotte Eisner, F. W. Murnau, p. 222.

  It fell to Salka: Prager, “Ich bin,” p. 116; letter from Ottilie Plumpe to SV, March 15, 1931, DLAM.

  The boy allegedly lost control of the car: Swenson, Greta Garbo, p. 243; and Eisner, Murnau, p. 222.

  with an indelible stylistic legacy: Seton, Eisenstein, pp. 117–118.

  Its enormous sets were used again and again: Scott Eyman, Print the Legend, pp. 107, 111.

  and Werner Herzog: Gerd Gemünden, German Exile Cinema, 1933–1951, p. 190.

  “I am never at home anywhere”: quoted in Milestone Film & Video Press Kit for “F.W. Murnau’s Last Masterpiece: Tabu: A Story of the South Seas,” www.shopify.com.

  and their group of Pasadena investors on November 24, 1930: Seton, Eisenstein, p. 188.

  “they would have been horrified had they ever seen one of his films”: KOS, p. 146.

  In December 1930…as they departed for Mexico: Seton, Eisenstein, p. 190.

  “decadence and blight wrote a last chapter to history”: ibid., p. 191, quoting Theatre Guild Magazine, February 1931.

  in an attempt to justify what they saw as his needless extravagance: KOS, p. 154.

  “Use your Medea flame”: ibid., p. 157.

  “a mutilated stump with the heart ripped out”: ibid., p. 159.

  As his friend Léon Moussinac remarked: Seton, Eisenstein, p. 155.

  a right-wing agitator named Major Frank Pease: ibid., p. 167.

  Eisenstein’s father’s family…his mother was not Jewish: ibid., pp. 17–18.

  hate speech that greeted Charlie Chaplin…“Jewish film clown”: J. Hoberman and Jeffrey Shandler, Entertaining America, p. 37; other Internet sources for “Jewish film clown” as well. The year was 1931.

  decided the Russian director was more trouble than he was worth: Seton, Eisenstein, p. 186.

  Upon his farewell…the only films he had managed to make in America: KOS, p. 144.

  his idiosyncratic views of art and film…of Stalin’s regime: Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, p. 320 fn.

  “You have helped me in the most difficult years of my life”: KOS, pp. 159–160.

  These men were cruelly derided for being homosexual: Eisenstein identified as heterosexual. Some historians have concluded that his sexuality was inchoate but probably homosexual. He w
as nevertheless demonized for consorting with homosexuals. Upton Sinclair told Marie Seton that Eisenstein “was simply staying in Mexico at our expense in order to avoid having to go back to Russia. All his associates were Trotskyites, and all homos…” Seton, Eisenstein, p. 231, from a letter from Sinclair to Seton of April 5, 1950, in Appendix 6 of Seton’s book.

  by its “others”—that is, by Jews and immigrants: Cari Beauchamp in the documentary The Story of Film, PBS, 2011.

  Salka’s sister Rose wrote from Dresden to report: Rose Steuermann Gielen to SV, call # 80.1.146-12, DLAM.

  the New York Times was still dismissing him as a buffoon: New York Times, October 20, 1930: “Germany has no idea of delivering herself over to a madcap Austrian.”

  “I became aware that we were constantly explaining ourselves to our American friends”: KOS, p. 143.

  Budd and Sonya: Salka does not mention the youngest Schulberg child, Stuart, who was born in 1922.

  “WE HAVE A NEW DOG NAMED DUKE”: Tom Viertel to BV, 1930, DLAM.

  whose families had once owned all the land in the canyon: P. Viertel, The Canyon, p. 21.

  to swim and ride their bikes and go fishing in mud ponds: ibid., pp. 18–19.

  to stage Western scenes from their favorite Karl May and Fenimore Cooper tales: P. Viertel, Bicycle on the Beach, p. 349.

  She sprinkled lavender in the linen closet and pine oil in the bath: memories of Vicky Schulberg, as are the details of what Salka cooked and baked.

  During the Halloween evenings of those years…the Mexican boys from the neighborhood: Tagebuch, November 1, 1957, DLAM.

  Christmas Day gift exchanges: KOS, p. 165.

  “My life with Berthold was always predominant”: ibid., p. 193.

  All the important New York journalists: ibid., p. 161.

  “part of that ancient, baffling continent…an unappeased longing”: ibid., p. 161.

  educated her in his left-leaning belief in democracy: ibid., p. 193.

  “I don’t feel guilty about…Oliver…”: Tagebuch, June 17, 1959, DLAM.

  “in love with [X] or [Y]”: In her diary, Salka names these women only as “Toni D.” and “Ehmi.”

  “You would bear Hollywood much better if you worked”: KOS, p. 143.

  She began to think about adapting it as a picture for Garbo: According to Salka’s papers at the Margaret Herrick Library, the biography was Sibyl of the North by Faith Compton Mackenzie (MGM reader report by Jessie Burns, July 29, 1932; 2346.f-Q-7); but in KOS, p. 152, Salka says it was a biography that had appeared in Germany. Several biographies of Christina were published around this time.