Erich von Stroheim
Austrian actor and director (1885–1957)
Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim (born Erich Oswald Stroheim, Austrian German: [ˈʃtroːhaɪm]; September 22, 1885 – May 12, 1957) was an Austrian-American director, screenwriter, actor and producer, most noted as a film star and avant-garde, visionary director of the silent era. His 1924 film Greed (an adaptation of Frank Norris's 1899 novel McTeague), originally over nine hours long, was edited against his wishes to about two-and-a-half hours; despite initial negative reception, the theatrical release is considered one of the greatest films ever made. After clashes with Hollywood studio bosses over budget and workers' rights problems, Stroheim found it difficult to find work as a director and subsequently became a well-respected character actor, particularly in French cinema. As an actor, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Max von Mayerling in Sunset Boulevard (1950).
For his early innovations, Stroheim is still celebrated as one of the first of the auteur directors. He helped introduce more sophisticated plots and noirish sexual and psychological undercurrents into cinema. He died of prostate cancer in France in 1957, at the age of 71. Beloved by Parisian neo-Surrealists known as Lettrists, he was honored by Lettrist Maurice Lemaître with a 70-minute 1979 film titled Erich von Stroheim.
Background and personal life
Stroheim was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1885 as Erich Oswald Stroheim (some sources give Hans Erich Maria Stroheim von Nordenwall, but this seems to have been an assumed name, see below), the son of Benno Stroheim, a middle-class hatmaker, and Johanna Bondy, both of whom were observant Jews.
Stroheim deserted his military service and emigrated to America aboard the SS Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm on November 26, 1909.
“Erich von Stroheim” enters the record as austrian actor and director (1885–1957). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Erich, Stroheim and Austrian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q78508. VIAF identifies the subject as 76365463. The Library of Congress control number is n80010238. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1885, 1957, 1924 and 1899.
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This entry incorporates text from “Erich von Stroheim” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.