What were Gloria Swanson and her financial backers, namely Joseph Kennedy (yes, the father of the future president), thinking when they selected Erich von Stroheim to direct her latest film? After all, nearly every production he helmed was over budget and overdue. The filming was just one-third finished to her 1929 "Queen Kelly" production when it moved to its next phase, the African setting. Swanson had submitted her script to the Will Hay's Office of Censorship detailing this particular locale as a nightclub. To spice things up, Stroheim transformed the studio stage to a bordello setting. To top off Swanson's disgust with her director, she became aware of his directive to actor Tully Marshall when Stroheim privately instructed him to dribble tobacco juice on the actress during the wedding scene. Swanson had enough. She ran to the nearest phone, dialed up Kennedy, the producer for the "Queen Kelly," and went into detail everything that was going wrong with Stroheim's direction.
"The experience of working with him was unlike any I had had in more than 50 pictures," Swanson remembered. "He was so painstaking and slow that I would lose all sense of time, hypnotized by the man's relentless perfectionism." Right after the call, the "Queen Kelly" production was stopped dead in its tracks. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, miles of shot film were processed, and an exhausted crew of actors and technicians were at its breaking point when "Queen Kelly" was placed on hiatus. Stroheim was given his walking papers. It became the last movie he ever directed by himself.
Two years later, Swanson and Kennedy came up with the idea to salvage the film. Hiring Richard Boleslawski and cameraman Gregg Toland, "Queen Kelly" was finished in what has been called the 'Swanson Ending.' This version was shown in Europe and South American, but never released in the United States. Distributors for American theaters didn't want to touch "Queen Kelly" because it was a silent movie whereas at least oversees theaters were still in the midst of converting over to sound. That fact as well as Stroheim had a clause in his contract that withheld the movie from United States distribution unless he signed off on it, which he never did, prevented the movie to be shown up to the late 1950s.
"Queen Kelly" pretty much was considered lost when a clip from the movie was shown in the 1950 Billy Wilder film "Sunset Boulevard." Swanson played the eccentric Norma Desmond, an aging silent movie star who is seen showing William Holden a clip from one of her old films. Her butler, Max, is played by Stroheim. In a 1970 Dick Cavett interview (with Janis Joplin), Swanson revealed she met with Stroheim twice since the "Queen Kelly" fiasco, one at a function and the second time on the movie set. Neither had hard feelings for one another while making the Wilder movie. In fact, Stroheim recommended to Billy Wilder to use a clip from "Queen Kelly." The scene rekindled interest in the 1929 incomplete move. When Stroheim died in 1957, the public was interested in seeing the pair's silent film, and it was released in the United States that year. The American Film Institute had nominated it as one of 400 films considered for the Top 100 Most Passionate Movies of All-Time.
"The experience of working with him was unlike any I had had in more than 50 pictures," Swanson remembered. "He was so painstaking and slow that I would lose all sense of time, hypnotized by the man's relentless perfectionism." Right after the call, the "Queen Kelly" production was stopped dead in its tracks. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, miles of shot film were processed, and an exhausted crew of actors and technicians were at its breaking point when "Queen Kelly" was placed on hiatus. Stroheim was given his walking papers. It became the last movie he ever directed by himself.
Two years later, Swanson and Kennedy came up with the idea to salvage the film. Hiring Richard Boleslawski and cameraman Gregg Toland, "Queen Kelly" was finished in what has been called the 'Swanson Ending.' This version was shown in Europe and South American, but never released in the United States. Distributors for American theaters didn't want to touch "Queen Kelly" because it was a silent movie whereas at least oversees theaters were still in the midst of converting over to sound. That fact as well as Stroheim had a clause in his contract that withheld the movie from United States distribution unless he signed off on it, which he never did, prevented the movie to be shown up to the late 1950s.
"Queen Kelly" pretty much was considered lost when a clip from the movie was shown in the 1950 Billy Wilder film "Sunset Boulevard." Swanson played the eccentric Norma Desmond, an aging silent movie star who is seen showing William Holden a clip from one of her old films. Her butler, Max, is played by Stroheim. In a 1970 Dick Cavett interview (with Janis Joplin), Swanson revealed she met with Stroheim twice since the "Queen Kelly" fiasco, one at a function and the second time on the movie set. Neither had hard feelings for one another while making the Wilder movie. In fact, Stroheim recommended to Billy Wilder to use a clip from "Queen Kelly." The scene rekindled interest in the 1929 incomplete move. When Stroheim died in 1957, the public was interested in seeing the pair's silent film, and it was released in the United States that year. The American Film Institute had nominated it as one of 400 films considered for the Top 100 Most Passionate Movies of All-Time.