Holmes, the famous ‘villain,’ had an evening to spare and played a part for us,” recalled von Sternberg. “It cost [$100], and he insisted on being paid beforehand, but his name was worth it.”
Following this disappointing encounter, The Man offers to take everyone on a drive. Their destination is a tract of the then-deserted San Fernando Valley, where the only mark of settlement is a real estate agent’s sign announcing, “Here Your Dreams Come True.” When The Man tries to seduce The Girl, there’s a fistfight in which The Boy triumphs. After this, the three derelicts march down the road to the optimistic intertitle, “It isn’t conditions, nor is it environment—our faith controls our lives!” As a synopsis of the time suggested, “This is where you cheer.”
Even though it was shot almost entirely outdoors, The Salvation Hunters has the look of a studio film. The dockside exteriors display a backlot evenness of tone. As a photographer, von Sternberg understood how Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen distilled beauty from urban squalor. According to critic Peter Wollen, all his films occur in “het-erocosms”—fantasy cities where the real and imaginary intersect, as in dreams. Though the Atlantic separates the waterfront of The Docks of New York and the streets of Lubeck in The Blue Angel, von Sternberg’s vision integrates them. Decorative elements from The Salvation Hunters turn up in all his later films, suggesting that, rather than reflecting actual locations, they make up part of his mental furniture. The “Here Your Dreams Come True” billboard foreshadows similar signs in Underworld and Blonde Venus. The newspaper pinups and chalked words that decorate walls, as well as a dockside announcement in Chinese, reappear in Dishonored and Shanghai Express. Stuart Holmes’s Gentleman, a reserved figure with a moustache, a three-piece suit and a cane, provides the model for von Sternberg’s own appearance and style and represents a recurring character in his films. Equally, Georgia Hale, though lacking the intensity of Marlene Dietrich or Evelyn Brent, is the prototypical von Sternberg heroine—brooding, self-destructive, a focus and motivation for the humiliating actions of the men she fascinates.
In its simplicity and reticence, not to mention its acceptance of poverty and prostitution, The Salvation Hunters was ahead of its time. It anticipated the end of stage melodrama as the model for film narrative and acting. But prophets are always without honor, and von Sternberg was no exception. The premiere in a tiny Sunset Boulevard theater ended in chaos. “The members of the cast were in the audience which greeted my work with laughter and jeers,” he wrote, “and finally rioted.” Not by nature inclined to philosophical resignation, he took the reaction as a personal affront. “[The film] started as a promotion idea for myself, but it became a Cause. I became ill with neuritis. Then, at the preview, the audience laughed for an hour. My neuritis left me.”3 In his eyes, the rejection of The Salvation Hunters proved the Nietzschean dictum: “That which does not kill you makes you strong.”
In desperation, Arthur, who had already sold his car, took extreme measures to get the film launched.
I tried to get Charlie Chaplin to see it, as I know him pretty well. Some time passed, and one Sunday evening at eleven o’clock Charlie rang me. He seemed frantically excited about our picture, asked me to go to see him at once, and said he thought the whole industry would go mad about it. Charlie telephoned Douglas Fairbanks and asked him to come and see The Salvation Hunters but he was out. The next morning Charlie told me he thought we had the greatest picture ever seen. Douglas Fairbanks promised me he would see the picture, but I knew that was a matter of time. Every evening he was seeing films at his house after dinner, and I persuaded his butler, who also projects the films for him, to squeeze The Salvation Hunters in. [Chaplin] told me afterwards he was “bewildered at the success of this unknown director.” Within a quarter of an hour of my going to see him at his request, Douglas Fairbanks had bought a quarter share in the picture for a sum exceeding many times its cost [von Sternberg says $20,000] and had promised to put The Salvation Hunters on the market for us.4
Since Arthur had sold his car, they hired one so they could arrive at United Artists in style. Confused by the unfamiliar controls, they couldn’t find the brakes and came to a stop only by crashing into the gate.
Those who knew Chaplin’s sensitivity about his lack of education were unsurprised by his support of The Salvation Hunters. To extol such an “arty” production bolstered his intellectual credentials. Was he genuinely impressed? Probably not. He invested no money himself, and after the film went on general release in February 1925, he distanced himself, leaving his partners in United Artists, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, holding the bag. In 1929 he would similarly exploit the Dali/Buñuel surrealist short Un Chien Andalou, screening it a number of times at his home and declaring it a masterpiece, only to dismiss it in private as “a stupid film.” When May Reeves, his girlfriend at the time, asked why, he told her, “Oh, one has to keep people amused, and look up-to-date.”5
A Genuine Genius
I don’t think Josef von Sternberg is working anywhere. I think he’s a genuine genius again.
—Walter Winchell, 1926
WITH UNITED ARTISTS BACKING it, The Salvation Hunters looked like the salvation of everyone involved. Georgia Hale became Chaplin’s mistress, then his leading lady in The Gold Rush. George Arthur won some acting roles, including in a couple of von Sternberg films, and he later became a successful producer of short features, but von Sternberg never mentioned him in interviews. As he would do with increasing frequency, he wrote a collaborator out of his life.
The director himself was feted. The New Yorker took pleasure in writing up his exploits as a case of a smart East Coast Jew putting one over on dumb West Coast goyim. “Joseph Sternberg drifted from the East Side, via Broadway, to Hollywood, a well-frayed shoestring pinned carefully in an inner pocket. He returns Josef von Sternberg, the ‘von’ having blossomed under the beneficence of the Californian sun. Out of experiences with butterfly movie companies, he wrought The Salvation Hunters, one of the most discussed of the current reticent dramas. Forty-seven hundred dollars was Mr. von Sternberg’s producing capital, garnered in reluctant fives, tens and twenties by a native salesmanship which would see nothing incongruous in attempting to peddle grand pianos from a pushcart.”1
Not to be outdone by Chaplin, Pickford signed von Sternberg to a two-film contract. As part of the publicity buildup, he was photographed chatting with baseball star “Babe” Ruth (one struggles to imagine on what topic) and strolling on the lawns of “Pickfair” with Doug and Mary. “I believe him to have those qualities of freshness and originality for which we have long been seeking,” trilled Pickford. “He is a master technician and has a sense of drama possessed by few.”2 But her offer was a poisoned chalice. Habitually, she vacillated between aspiring to be considered a serious actress and clinging to her position as “America’s Sweetheart.” Von Sternberg, after a research visit to Pennsylvania, submitted the outline of another von Stroheim–influenced melodrama called Backwash, in which Pickford would play a blind girl living in the squalor of industrial Pittsburgh. Most of the film would be subjective camera, with the action, including a cameo for Chaplin, taking place in her mind. As in The Salvation Hunters, he foresaw images of poverty, dirt, and urban ugliness.
After reading it, Pickford hurriedly backpedaled, according to von Sternberg. “My star-to-be,” he wrote acidly, “asked me to wait ten weeks, to accustom herself to the idea while she made a ‘normal’ film with a ‘normal’ director”—in this case, Marshall Neilan. After that, their contract lapsed by mutual consent. Subsequently, Pickford professed to find him ridiculous. “He proved to be a complete boiled egg,” she scoffed. “The business of ‘von’ Sternberg, and carrying a cane, and that little moustache! I’m so glad I didn’t do the film.” Her rejection, however, is suspect. Playing a blind girl would have been nothing