Billy Wilder on Assignment Billy Wilder on Assignment DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR BERLIN AND INTERWAR VIENNA Edited by Noah Isenberg Translated by Shelley Frisch Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2021 by Noah Isenberg English translation of Billy Wilder articles copyright © 2021 by Princeton University Press Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to [email protected] Published by Princeton University Press 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following previously published material: Figures 8, 9, 12, and 13, from Deutsche Kinemathek. Figure 14, from Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. Figures 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 11, from Filmarchiv Austria. All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wilder, Billy, 1906–2002, author. | Isenberg, Noah William, editor. | Frisch, Shelley Laura, translator. Title: Billy Wilder on assignment : dispatches from Weimar Berlin and interwar Vienna / edited by Noah Isenberg ; translated by Shelley Frisch. Other titles: Articles. Selections. English. Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2021] | Includes index. | In English, translated from the original German. Identifiers: LCCN 2020021170 (print) | LCCN 2020021171 (ebook) | ISBN 9780691194943 (hardback) | ISBN 9780691214559 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Journalism—Germany—Berlin—History—20th century. | Journalism—Austria—Vienna—History—20th century. | Theater—Reviews. | Motion pictures—Reviews. | Berlin (Germany)—Social life and customs. | Vienna (Austria)—Social life and customs. | Berlin (Germany)—History—1918–1945. | Vienna (Austria)—History—1918- Classification: LCC PN4725 .W54 2021 (print) | LCC PN4725 (ebook) | DDC 073–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021170 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020021171 Version 1.0 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Jacket art: (1) Portrait: Filmarchiv Austria; (2) background image: Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, ca. 1930, INTERFOTO / Alamy Contents Editor’s Introduction: A Roving Reporter, a Tale of Two Cities, and the Making of Billy Wilder 1 I. Extra! Extra! Reportage, Opinion Pieces, and Features from Real Life 19 “Waiter, A Dancer, Please!” 23 Promenaden-Café 42 That’s Some Cold Weather—in Venice! 43 This Is Where Christopher Columbus Came into the Old World 47 The Art of Little Ruses 50 Naphthalene 52 Anything but Objectivity! 54 When It’s Eighty-four Degrees 56 Day of Destiny 58 Wanted: Perfect Optimist 60 Renovation: An Ode to the Coffeehouse 63 Why Don’t Matches Smell That Way Anymore? 65 The Rose of Jericho 68 Little Economics Lesson 69 Film Terror: On the Threat of Being Photographed 72 Berlin Rendezvous 74 Night Ride over Berlin 76 The Business of Thirst: What People Are Drinking Nowadays 78 Here We Are at Film Studio 1929 80 How We Shot Our Studio Film 83 Getting Books to Readers 87 How I Pumped Zaharoff for Money 90 II. Portraits of Extraordinary and Ordinary People 95 Asta Nielsen’s Theatrical Mission 97 My “Prince of Wales” 100 Lubitsch Discovers: A Casting by America’s Great Director 103 The Tiller Girls Are Here! 105 The Tiller Girls’ Boarding School at the Prater 107 Girardi’s Son Plays Jazz at the Mary Bar 110 Paul Whiteman, His Mustache, the Cobenzl, and the Taverns 111 Whiteman Triumphs in Berlin 115 I Interview Mr. Vanderbilt 118 The Prince of Wales Goes on Holiday 121 Chaplin II and the Others at the Scala 124 The Lookalike Man: Tale of a Chameleon Named Erwin 126 A Minister on Foot 129 Interview with a Witch: Women’s Newest Profession 131 Grock, the Man Who Makes the World Laugh 134 Ten Minutes with Chaliapin 137 Claude Anet in Berlin 139 At the Home of the Oldest Woman in Berlin 140 Felix Holländer 141 The Elder Statesman of Berlin Theater Critics 143 The B. Z. Lady and the German Crown Prince 145 Stroheim, the Man We Love to Hate 148 A Poker Artist: The Magic of Fritz Herrmann 152 “Hello, Mr. Menjou?” 157 Klabund Died a Year Ago 161 III. Film and Theater Reviews 165 Broken Barriers (1924) 167 Marital Conflicts (1927) 168 Eichberg Shoots a Film 169 The Beggar from Cologne Cathedral (1927) 170 Ole and Axel at the North Sea Shore (1927) 171 Radio Magic (1927) 172 Frost in the Studio: A Bath at Twenty Degrees Fahrenheit 173 Ole and Axel at Beba Palace 173 His Wife’s Lover (1928) 174 From the Studios 175 Greed (1924) 176 A Blonde for a Night (1928) 176 The Valley of the Giants (1927) 177 The Last Night (1928) 177 In the Name of the Law (1922) 178 Sounds Are Recorded: The Studio Shots 179 The Threepenny Opera, for the Fiftieth Time 181 Springtime in Palestine (1928) 181 First Silhouette Sound Film 182 What a Woman Dreams in Spring (1929) 183 “Youth Stage”? 184 Stroll through the Studios—They’re Shooting Silent Films 185 The Missing Will (1929) 188 The Winged Horseman (1929) 188 Men without Work (1929) 189 The Merry Musicians (1930) 190 Susie Cleans Up (1930) 190 Translator’s Note 193 Index 197 Billy Wilder on Assignment Editor’s Introduction A ROVING REPORTER, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, AND THE MAKING OF BILLY WILDER Long before the award-winning Hollywood screenwriter and director Billy Wilder spelled his first name with a y, in faithful adherence to the ways of his adopted homeland, he was known—and widely published—in Berlin and Vienna as Billie Wilder. At birth, on June 22, 1906, in a small Galician town called Sucha, less than twenty miles northwest of Kraków, he was given the name Samuel in memory of his maternal grandfather. His mother, Eugenia, however, preferred the name Billie. She had already taken to calling her first son, Wilhelm, two years Billie’s senior, Willie. As a young girl, Eugenia had crossed the Atlantic and lived in New York City for several years with a jeweler uncle in his Madison Avenue apartment. At some point during that formative stay, she caught a performance of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West touring show, and her affection for the exotic name stuck, even without the y, as did her intense, infectious love for all things American. “Billie was her American boy,” insists Ed Sikov in On Sunset Boulevard, his definitive biography of the internationally acclaimed writer-director. Wilder spent the first years of his life in Kraków, where his father, the Galician-born Max (né Hersch Mendel), had started his career in the restaurant world as a waiter and then, after Billie’s birth, as the manager of a small chain of railway cafés along the Vienna-to-Lemberg line. When this gambit lost steam, Max opened a hotel and restaurant known as Hotel City in the heart of Kraków, not far from the Wawel Castle. A hyperactive child, known for flitting about with bursts of speed and energy, Billie was prone to troublemaking: he developed an early habit of swiping tips left on the tables at his father’s hotel restaurant and of snookering unsuspecting guests at the pool table. After all, he was the rightful bearer of a last name that conjures up, in both German and English, a devilish assortment of idiomatic expressions suggestive of a feral beast, a wild man, even a lunatic. “Long before Billy Wilder was Billy Wilder,” his second wife, Audrey, once remarked, “he behaved like Billy Wilder.” The Wilder family soon moved to Vienna, where assimilated Jews of their ilk could
