Manhattan Rare Book Company

“It is our purpose to draw a parallel between our characters, with all their human qualities, good and bad, great and small, their subsequent passing through the white hot fires of suffering and sacrifice, their ultimate fulfillment of their destiny, and the three corresponding stages in the actual process of making steel.” -Erich von Stroheim, The Crucible

THE ORIGINAL TREATMENT FOR AN UNPRODUCED ERICH VON STROHEIM FILM, REGISTERED IN HIS NAME WITH THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN MAY 1925, IN THE MONTHS BETWEEN GREED AND THE MERRY WIDOW.

In the spring of 1925 Erich von Stroheim was under contract at MGM, and his standing there was uneasy. Greed, shot to a length of more than eight hours, had been released in December 1924 after the studio cut it to a fraction of that. He was now at work on The Merry Widow, an operetta adaptation the studio had assigned him and which he was busily reshaping into something of his own. On May 13, 1925, in the middle of all this, he registered a motion picture scenario with the California Department of State under the title The Crucible.

The film was never made. Fanny Lignon’s study of Stroheim’s writings, L’Œuvre écrit d’Erich von Stroheim, identifies The Crucible as a treatment submitted to MGM and turned down. The project is known to specialists, but the original papers have not surfaced before, and we trace no other primary material relating to it in auction records.

THE STORY:

The 22-page typescript opens with a statement of theme. The war, which Stroheim calls “the Great Struggle,” brings the good and evil in his characters to the surface. Those who pass through the fire come out “stronger and finer than ever before,” while the weak are “thrown out like slag.” The governing image, from which the title comes, is the making of steel: crude ore carried to the smelter, heated to white heat in the crucible, and finally separated into pure metal and alloy.

A cast page sets the story in “A Town in Belgium” between 1913 and 1918. At its center is Dr. Mortimer, an American physician who trained in X-ray work at Heidelberg, settled in Belgium after marrying a local girl, and has since sunk into drink and failure. His family includes twin daughters, Lucienne, who has studied medicine in Brussels against his wishes, and Angela, a musician, along with a son, Raoul, a painter. Around them Stroheim places a Heidelberg professor of surgery, officers of a German dragoon regiment and their commanding general, a Mother Superior, two American officers of the A.E.F., and “A Lieut. of Dragoons in charge of firing squad.” The plot turns on a woman who marries the German military doctor responsible for her sister’s death, only to learn that he acted under a military law he could not escape.

The material has a particular edge coming from Stroheim. He had first made his name in 1918 playing brutal German officers in American wartime films, and the studios sold him as “The Man You Love to Hate.” Seven years after the Armistice, he returned to occupied Belgium and wrote a German doctor whose guilt is bound up with obedience, a figure far more ambiguous than the villains he had played. The opening pages show the dense psychological detail and moral bleakness of Greed, applied here to a family coming apart under occupation.

THE REGISTRATION PAPERS:

The treatment is accompanied by the official record of its registration. The certificate, issued by the California Department of State and signed by Secretary of State Frank C. Jordan and his deputy, with the original gold seal, certifies that Stroheim filed the scenario on May 13, 1925, together with his affidavit “that he is the author thereof and entitled to all the rights and benefits accruing therefrom.” The carbon filing receipt, with the title written in by hand, is stamped “PAID.”

PROVENANCE:

The blue wrapper carries Stroheim’s typed name and city at upper left and, at upper right, a contemporary pencil inscription: “FROM BEN WESTLAND / 1827 GARFIELD PLACE / HE 4236.” Westland, a former newspaperman, worked on the business side of the film industry in the 1920s, appearing in trade sources first in Universal’s publicity and exchange operations and by 1927 as a production manager. The inscription places the treatment in his hands, most likely as an intermediary handling it during submission. A notepad leaf with the name, address, and telephone number of the critic William H. Mooring was kept with the papers.

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Typescript treatment, 22 pages, legal size, staple-bound in original light-blue wrappers. With: State of California Department of State registration certificate, May 13, 1925, signed by Frank C. Jordan and deputy, with gold seal; carbon filing receipt stamped “PAID”; manuscript notepad leaf. Los Angeles, 1925. All housed in custom box.

Price: $9,500 .