The Man Who Made the Movies

by Vanda Krefft

  Sheehan also turned down Murnau’s idea for a movie about the Holy Land. The official reason was the likelihood of trouble with American censors, and that probably wasn’t far from the truth. Only four years before, in late 1921, Fox had had to abandon philanthropic plans to make a movie of the Oberammergau Passion Play after religious conservatives assailed him for “monstrous” hypocrisy and “crass commercialism.” Besides, who could forget Fox Film’s previous movie filmed in that part of the world, J. Gordon Edwards’s turbid and soporific The Shepherd King (1923)? Another project considered and rejected for Murnau was an adaptation of the novel Down to Earth, by Viennese writer Julius Perutz.

  Finally, Murnau asked Carl Mayer, who had written the original stories for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Last Laugh, to help find material. Mayer came up with German naturalist writer Hermann Sudermann’s short story, “The Trip to Tilsit,” which had been published in a collection of short stories in Germany in 1917 and told of a farmer who plans to kill his wife so he can run off with a wicked city vamp. The plot was close enough to that of Frozen Justice—except that here it was the husband who was unfaithful, and the setting was rural northern Germany instead of the Alaskan snowdrifts—to allow Murnau to explore the subject of marital infidelity.

  No, Sheehan said once more. “Theme entirely unsuitable to American audiences, story too heavy, strictly European picture,” Sheehan cabled Aussenberg. “We require from Murnau dramatic story of lighter material and necessarily entertaining to American audiences. Anxious to avoid any possible chance of failure. Please continue search for story.”

  The situation must have exasperated Murnau. Why in the world had Fox Film hired him if it didn’t trust his story judgment? Possibly he appealed to Fox. This would explain why, only one week after his refusal, Sheehan sent another telegram, this time authorizing Aussenberg to pay about $15,000 for film rights to Sudermann’s “Trip to Tilsit” and for a script by Carl Mayer. Although Sheehan blustered that the film, later renamed Sunrise, would have to present a “strictly modern story eliminating morbid unpleasant scenes” and be “made in modern dress with plenty of comedy,” when the agreement was drawn, only Murnau’s approval of the script was required. Murnau and Mayer were bound only to “consider” changes that Fox Film wanted.

  Fox ascribed no significance to the tug-of-war over the story selection. He saw in Murnau what he wanted to see: “Europe’s greatest director . . . The flower of directorial genius.” Surely talent would overcome all.

  When Murnau arrived in New York on Thursday, July 1, 1926, on the SS Columbus, Fox gave him a royal welcome. He put Murnau up at the Plaza Hotel, arranged a press luncheon on board the Columbus on July 2, and on July 7 held a dinner honoring Murnau in the Crystal Room of New York’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. An estimated one hundred guests, seated at tables arranged in a square around a sunken garden, included not only leaders in the arts but also U.S. senator Royal S. Copeland (NY–D), the German consul general, several judges, an army general, and a navy admiral.

  In a rare public appearance, Fox himself spoke at the event. After praising Murnau for achieving cinematic “perfection” with The Last Laugh, he gave the director his commission: “Dr. Murnau, I charge you with the responsibility of making only the very best and finest—the idealistic and the beautiful—and of making for us motion pictures which will win the approval of all classes, everywhere, and bring new friends to the motion picture.”

  Murnau, the final speaker of the evening, was visibly moved. Leaning forward, with his hands on the table and “his voice low with earnest emotion,” the director promised to make distinctly American movies that reflected the nation’s speed, energy, and initiative. “I love my Fatherland, but when I come here I feel the wonderful youth and freshness of your country. I hope through my work, to appeal to that youth—to reach the heart of America,” he said. “I hope to create something here that will be worthy of all the wonderful kindness that has been heaped upon me.”

  The following day, July 8, 1926, although Murnau hadn’t yet shot a single frame of film for the studio, a starry-eyed Fox signed him to a four-year contract that would begin on August 21, 1927, after the expiration of their current agreement. By the first contract, Murnau would receive $40,000 to provide a script and direct one movie; the new agreement bumped him up to $125,000 in the first year, escalated to $200,000 in the fourth year, and required him to make only one movie per year.

  Another grand fête awaited in Los Angeles, where, on August 4, the studio sponsored a welcoming dinner at the Biltmore Hotel, hosted by a Chamber of Commerce executive and University of Southern California president Rufus von KleinSmid. Again, Murnau seemed overwhelmed by the effusive plaudits and vowed to work toward the screen’s “endless possibilities” with “an open mind and an understanding heart.”

  If, in the spotlight, Murnau seemed the embodiment of Fox’s idealized vision of him, offstage the thirty-seven-year-old German was pricklier. He still hadn’t forgotten Frozen Justice, although he had forgotten the exact name of the project. “Something like Frozen Nights or Frozen Lights,” he told a reporter in New York. “It has wonderful possibilities. Wonderful. Wonderful.” At times he came across as haughty and condescending. For all that the studio had done to assure his comfort in New York, he complained that he hadn’t been given the luxury American car he had in Berlin, even though evidently that model wasn’t available in the United States. Before a visit to Coney Island, he commented, “It must be barbarous there.”

  For all his extraordinary artistic talent, Murnau was, unnoticed by Fox, a fallible human being.

  After the welcoming celebrations ended, Fox handed Murnau over to Sheehan and Wurtzel on the West Coast. That was a mistake. Neither Sheehan nor Wurtzel had any direct authority over Murnau, who had negotiated his contract directly with Fox and had been guaranteed creative control as well as an unlimited budget. Without authority, Sheehan and Wurtzel had no responsibility—and thus, there would be nothing to gain by interfering, but a lot to lose should Murnau run to Fox with a complaint. Sheehan, who had disliked Murnau from the beginning, had to protect his own position. He was still acting head of production and would not be formally appointed to the position until October 1926. Wurtzel, who knew that Fox perceived him as culturally uncouth, also could not risk a black mark from the boss by presuming to tell the genius director what to do. Wurtzel had more than his job at stake. Five years earlier, he had suffered nervous collapse as a result of Fox’s constant castigation. For both Sheehan and Wurtzel, it was safer to stand back and let Murnau stand or fall on his own.

  Murnau wanted very much to succeed. He was enchanted by America. “Thoroughly exciting,” he said. “I am like a child about it. There are wonderful types here, wonderful faces. Tremendous energy. The whole tradition here suggests speed, lightness, wild rhythms. Everything is novel. Sensational.” And he loved California, which he deemed “Nature’s own perfect location for the consummation of motion picture ideals.” He did not want to get sent home. “Contrary to the impression prevailing here, very few good pictures are being made in Germany. There are few good directors or actors; there are few people who know anything about the cinema. The big companies are loaded with deadwood, sheep.”

  Murnau, however, knew very little about American film production culture. He didn’t understand—and Sheehan and Wurtzel weren’t going to tell him—the basic rule of life at the major studios, especially at Fox Film: that every dollar spent during production would have to come back and bring a few friends with it to the box-office cash register. Heedlessly, Murnau took Fox’s instructions at face value. All he had to do, he believed, was to make an extraordinary work of art, regardless of expense.

  Spend Murnau did. To find the ideal location for the country scenes with the farmer and his wife at home, Murnau traveled up and down the West Coast, visiting Puget Sound and the Siskiyou Mountains near Mount Shasta in California and venturing into Alberta, Canada, to Lake Louise and Jasper National Pa
rk. Fortunately for Fox Film, he settled on the Lake Arrowhead area, in the San Bernardino National Forest, which was relatively near Los Angeles and which had recently been developed as a resort community. Murnau had the studio build him a complete village across the lake from the real Lake Arrowhead village. Production began there on September 25, 1926.

  After about six weeks, the Sunrise company came to Los Angeles for studio work. At the new Fox Hills lot, completed in the summer of 1926 as a vast collection of outdoor locales, Murnau had the studio build him a $200,000 set, reportedly the largest ever created for a movie, representing the busy modern city where the farmer and his wife go for a day’s holiday. Six- and seven-story buildings flanked a broad mile-long street, and down the middle, real trolley cars ran on tracks toward an elevated railway structure. Murnau also got an entire amusement park and 1,500 rented cars. To supply the necessary energy, Fox Film built a special power plant.

  Perfection, that’s what Fox had asked for, and that was what Murnau—usually outfitted in mechanic’s overalls—intended to deliver. Although Fox Film had provided two of its best actors, Iron Horse star George O’Brien to play the husband and Johnstown Flood ingénue Janet Gaynor for the part of the wife, Murnau often shot their scenes over and over, up to fifty times. “Very often this was not because of the actors,” said Gaynor. For a scene amid the bulrushes, “because the sun would hit a certain bulrush and reflect, we’d have to do a whole scene over.” Sometimes Murnau didn’t know what he wanted until he saw what he didn’t want. Assistant art director Edgar G. Ulmer told Murnau biographer Lotte Eisner, “Afterwards, when we were looking at the rushes, he would explain what was wrong, what we ought to do differently, and above all how to set about it. We might have to start all over again.”

  To ensure a wide range of choices, Murnau had most outdoor scenes shot with two cameras side by side, one using more sensitive panchromatic film, with different filters to produce more shades of gray, and the other with regular, orthochromatic film, for higher-contrast images. To get just the right kind of fog for a scene of the husband walking through an open field, Murnau, O’Brien, and Fox Film’s special effects expert spent every Sunday for at least six weeks testing various chemicals. O’Brien recalled, “Everybody at the studio was a little perturbed.”

  Murnau didn’t seem to care how much money he spent. He had no reason to care. Fox had given him carte blanche.

  Above all, the director’s vision had to remain pure. During filming at Lake Arrowhead, Murnau wanted a large tree cut down from a nearby forest, floated to a location on the set, and straightened up again by a crane. The trauma caused the tree to shed all its leaves, but Murnau really wanted that particular tree, so he had thousands of artificial leaves trucked in from Los Angeles and hired laborers to glue them on. After the scaffolding came down, Murnau prepared to begin filming—but noticed that the artificial leaves had withered in the sun. The workers returned, the scaffolding went up again, and the bad leaves were replaced one by one with new ones that were more heat resistant. The whole operation took nearly two weeks, during which time the extras who were needed for the scene with the tree remained idle at full pay.

  At one point, Sol Wurtzel, as the studio’s West Coast superintendent, tried to suggest thriftiness. Preparations for filming a storm scene had gone awry. A huge whirl of dust was supposed to herald a downpour, but the rain machine started before the wind machine and drenched the set. Do without the dust, Wurtzel urged Murnau, because three thousand extras were standing by, at great expense. No, Murnau replied, “Let them go home and come back in three days, when the sets and stands are dry.” Wurtzel had no power to overrule Murnau. Consequently, everyone waited the three days, the money was spent, and Murnau got his dust storm.

  Murnau also didn’t understand Hollywood’s culture of camaraderie, the necessity of paying homage to those in power. He might have done so without too much trouble. Up close, people liked him. He was more shy than standoffish, gave instructions in a near whisper, and had a generous, courtly charm. Gaynor “adored” Murnau. Although she had been all but foisted on him by Sheehan, who was rumored to have a personal interest in her, Murnau accepted her graciously and gave her “gentle and kindly direction.” After particularly demanding days, “Murnau would thank me simply, and when I arrived home there would be a great bunch of red roses, expressing his appreciation.” His direction transformed Gaynor as an actress. “I learned so much,” she said. “Working with him was the equivalent to a year of dramatic school.”

  O’Brien also greatly admired Murnau. Although the actor had initially viewed his profession merely as a good way to make money, in Murnau he saw passionate dedication to art: “He had the ability, that I always said Jack Ford had, of putting everything away and just having that one life, the film business.” Reportedly, even the grips, property men, and electricians working on Sunrise idolized the director.

  Murnau, however, remained aloof from Fox Film’s executives and, at a distance, tended to come across as a chilly, imperious aristocrat. He guarded his work jealously. Only Gaynor, O’Brien, and the film editor were allowed to view the rushes. According to Gaynor, “He even wouldn’t allow the film to be processed in the laboratory of the studio. It was taken outside, so that no one ever saw it.” Although he may have been motivated largely by insecurity, Murnau’s behavior suggested that he regarded the studio’s business staff as philistines. His choice of associates didn’t warm up the atmosphere. To serve as the movie’s art director, Murnau had brought with him from Germany young Rochus Gliese, whom Sunrise cinematographer Karl Struss described as “a real Prussian. Boy, he would grit his teeth and he would say, ‘It must be so.’ ”

  By early 1927, Murnau had finished filming Sunrise. It was a phenomenal work, one that would transcend time and the limitations of silent film. The film immediately immerses the viewer in the psychological anguish of the husband (George O’Brien). It offers no preamble about his previous life or how he became involved with the dark-haired, cigarette-smoking, heavily made up city vamp (Margaret Livingston) who has come to the country for a vacation and who lolls around her rented room in lingerie. He has been trapped, much like John Schuyler in Theda Bara’s A Fool There Was (1915), trapped by sex and the lure of freedom from respectability, responsibility, and routine. However, unlike John Schuyler, this husband never seems to enjoy his sin. At most, he gives in to it like an illness that he is too weak to resist. Also unlike Schuyler, he constantly judges himself. As he listens to the vamp suggest that he stage an accident to drown his wife, as he takes a packet of bulrushes from her to use to save himself, he looks horrified. And well he should. Murnau portrays the wife (Janet Gaynor) as saintly: a devoted mother who delights in their baby, keeps a tidy house, and never confronts him about the affair she knows he is having. Only after she delightedly agrees to go with him for a day’s outing to the big city across the lake, only as he advances toward her in their small rowboat with hunched shoulders and murderous intent in his eyes, only then does she realize who he has become.

  When they reach the shore on the other side, the wife runs away and jumps onto a streetcar toward the city. The husband follows, and miraculously, the city, which has given rise to the hedonistic character of the vamp, is the force that heals the marriage. The husband buys the wife some cake at a café; she tries to eat it, but breaks down in tears. Later, when they take refuge in a church and watch a wedding, the words of the vows break the evil stronghold in the husband’s heart. He begs for forgiveness. They go through all the rituals of renewal: walking down the church steps arm in arm, having a formal photograph taken, drinking a toast with wine at a fancy restaurant, dancing together to a song played specially for them by the orchestra. At the evening’s end, they travel back across the lake in their boat under moonlight.

  The return trip is a journey toward a new beginning. It is also a time when the couple must deal with what the husband meant to do on the way over. So, the heavens unleash a furious storm. Brie
fly, the movie cuts back—it isn’t necessary, and it disrupts the story’s momentum, but for all the money spent on filming the storm, those shots had to be there—to show swarms of dust enveloping the city. After the waves capsize the couple’s boat and separate them, he washes up on shore, but she is lost. He is distraught, until an old man who knows the way the tides work finds the wife alive. A brilliant sun rises. The dejected vamp leaves town. The husband and wife kiss. All is well again.

  Murnau told the story almost entirely visually. The first ten-reel version of Sunrise used only eighteen intertitle cards—the smallest number of any Hollywood feature to date. That was a little skimpy, Sheehan decided; he added five more after a San Francisco–area preview. Still, it’s the images that speak most eloquently, with their captivating beauty and their artistry yet unsurpassed.

  After two more Northern California previews, Sheehan cabled back to the New York headquarters with the news that everyone wanted to hear: “Tremendous hit,” he enthused. “Sensational artistic popular [knockout] success.” According to Sheehan, Sunrise was going to be another What Price Glory, another 7th Heaven. Did he really believe that, or did he simply not want to be the person to stick a pin in the balloon?

  Amid those euphoric expectations, en route from California to Germany to fulfill his remaining obligations at the UFA studios, Murnau arrived in New York on March 22, 1927. The following day, at a celebratory luncheon at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, he was ecstatic about his experience at Fox Film. Sunrise was his best picture and he had been treated “so wonderfully,” he said. Everybody “stood at my side, always willing to give his best, always willing to help me. In this way they all created an atmosphere of harmony in which even the hardest work became a pleasure.” He couldn’t wait to return.