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<yLn Open J^etter to
rich Von Stroheim
By Myron Xohel
Dear Erich :
HEN I heard that Greed was having its premiere I cancelled my rickets for the Ziegfeld Follies, broke an engagement to go
dancing with some friends, telephoned home to have an early supper and rushed with my wife to the Cosmopolitan theatre to see your feature picture. I guess you will believe me after that when I say that you are the only film director that can upset my home that much. I'm newly married.
Well, Erich, I guess we all fall down some time. Only why rub it in. Two years and then — a series of sewer-pipe love scenes and a lot of daubs of yellow on the film to look like gold !
I realize that all these touches, except the yellow, — even the Pluto water bottles — may all be good art. What I know, however, is that they are certainly not good taste. I do not object to your little ironies in a picture of high life. What turns my stomach is vour malicious vulgarity in a picture of low life.
Greed, in my estimation, as a picture was not as good as the book. The film lacked contrasts. It lacked high spots and low spots. It was all low spots.
Erich, I think I know the reason that your picture was not convincing. You hit your public too near home. You got away from the continental sort of thing in which you are supreme. You know the foreign run of mind. You don't know ours. We don't think and we don't act the same way over here that they do abroad. You were trying to tell us about something that we know better than you do. No hard feeling, Erich. Better luck next time.