Despite the fact that Erich von Stroheim plays a butler/chauffeur in "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), he could not drive in real life.
During the scenes in which he drove, the car was towed by another car. In the scene in which he drives Norma to Paramount Pictures at the studio gates, the car was pulled with a rope by off-camera grips; despite that, von Stroheim "still managed to hit the gates, he had no co-ordination", said Billy Wilder in an interview for the book "Sunset Boulevard: From Movie to Musical". According to the DVD commentary by Wilder biographer Ed Sikov, this story was most likely invented/exaggerated by Wilder.
In the scene where Norma and Joe watch one of her old films, the film being screened, "Queen Kelly" (1932), was in fact directed by von Stroheim. In addition to starring in "Queen Kelly", Swanson also produced it, and fired von Stroheim when he had already gone over the budget by more than double, land with no end to filming in sight. She then had to spend a further $200,000 putting the footage into releasable state.
Von Stroheim fabricated an elaborate backstory for himself as an Austrian aristocrat and imperial officer, while in real life he was from a Jewish family, the son of a lower-middle-class hat maker, and never served in any military. On the set of his films, while shooting sometimes continued for twenty hours without pauses on the locked stages. Stroheim treated the participants to squab and caviar and served real champagne in spite of Prohibition.
"If you live in France and you have written one good book, or painted one good picture, or directed one outstanding film, 50 years ago, and nothing ever since, you are still recognized as an artist and honored accordingly ... In Hollywood - in Hollywood, you're as good as your last picture. If you didn't have one in production in the last three months, you're forgotten, no matter what you have achieved ere this. It is that terrific, unfortunately necessary, egotism in the makeup of the people who make the cinema, it is the continuous endeavor for recognition, that continuous struggle for survival and supremacy, among the newcomers, that relegates the old-timers to the ashcan." (IMDb)
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