Von Sternberg provides details from his childhood in Vienna and youth in America, as well every stage of his film career. The memoir provides numerous character sketches and critiques of film personnel, especially the actors he worked with, among them Marlene Dietrich.[2][3]
The eponymous title of the autobiography is a reference to a 1894 Kinetoscope film by American inventor and film pioneer Thomas Edison[4][5]
Background
Portions of von Sternberg's autobiography were penned as early as 1960 while he was traveling in Europe.[6] Literary critic Ruairi McCann writes:
“Fun in a Chinese Laundry was published 12 years after Sternberg last embarked on a feature, and despite floating the possibility of working again, in the midst of all the bridges burning, it never came to be, as he passed four years later.”[7]
Significance of the book’s title
Fun in a Chinese Laundry is a metaphor for the medium that would dominate von Sternberg's artistic and professional endeavors. The movie appeared when both von Sternberg and the film technology were in their infancy. The title for the autobiography is that of a 1894 Kinetoscope burlesque by Thomas Edison. Released shortly before von Sternberg's birth, he offers no explicit remark as to its significance or its influence on his filmmaking.[8][9]
The reference to the film in his autobiography follows a sustained reminiscence of the famous amusement park and the childhood in Vienna that von Sternberg recalls idyllically as “paradise.”[10]
Everything was orderly, there was nothing to confuse me, there were no comic strips, no radio, no motion pictures or moronic succession of television images, though unbeknownst to me, one Thomas Edison had already made a film entitled Fun in a Chinese Laundry.[11][12]
Reception
Kirkus Reviews, in its March 8, 1965 edition described the memoir as “corrosively witty, frank and rather outrageous memoir…His story is one of dirty deals, awesome neglect and a few triumphs. It should become a little classic in its field.”[13]
Author and editor Norman Kaplan in the Fall issue of Science and Society wrote: “That this is so can be corroborated by a reading of Joseph Von Sternberg's new book Fun in a Chinese Laundry—an unabashed and brash boast of a lifetime spent as a purveyor to the most prurient appetites of audiences by a man who prates of his triumph side by side with his expression of contempt for the medium and its audiences.”[14]
Retrospective assessment
Film critic Jean-Paul Chaillet considers Fun in a Chinese Laundry of particular interest for its insights into von Sternberg's long personal and professional relationship with German-American film star Marlene Dietrich:
The first meeting of those two titans of cinema and their ensuing complex relationship has been dissected, reinvented, manipulated, embellished so many times through the years, that it is fascinating to read the carefully worded first-hand recollection of von Sternberg himself.[15]
Chaillet adds that von Sternberg, “at times sounding quite pompous and arrogant, rants about Dietrich’s self-serving public acknowledgments of his greatness over the years.”[16]
Writer and filmworker Ruairi McCann notes that the autobiography “is rife with the characteristics of von Sternberg’s personality and cinema; an unflappability, a searing, sardonic wit and a love for spectacle that comes, part and parcel, with a gift for its creation and dissection” and structurally, the memoir “does not move to the letter of a strict and straight chronology, nor is its language crystalline. Instead, the details of his life and career are often presented allusively, rather than as a procession of stated facts…”[17]
McCann adds that “The book is often very funny...Moments or recurring events that in other biographies would be singled out and analyzed as sources of future pain or strength, he undercuts with a stone dry sense of humor.”[18]
Shanghai Express is a 1932 American pre-Code film about a group of train passengers held hostage by a warlord during the Chinese Civil War. It was directed by Josef von Sternberg and stars Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong and Warner Oland. The screenplay was written by Jules Furthman based on a 1931 short story by Harry Hervey. Shanghai Express was the fourth of seven films that Sternberg and Dietrich created together.
The Docks of New York is a 1928 American silent drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring George Bancroft, Betty Compson, and Olga Baclanova. The movie was adapted by Jules Furthman from the John Monk Saunders story The Dock Walloper.
Morocco is a 1930 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Adolphe Menjou. Based on the 1927 novel Amy Jolly by Benno Vigny and adapted by Jules Furthman, the film is about a cabaret singer and a Legionnaire who fall in love during the Rif War, and whose relationship is complicated by his womanizing and the appearance of a rich man who is also in love with her. The film is famous for a scene in which Dietrich performs a song dressed in a man's tailcoat and kisses another woman, both of which were considered scandalous for the period.
Thunderbolt is a 1929 American pre-Code proto-noir film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring George Bancroft, Fay Wray, Richard Arlen, Tully Marshall and Eugenie Besserer. It tells the story of a criminal, facing execution, who wants to kill the man in the next cell for being in love with his former girlfriend.
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich was a German-born actress and singer whose career spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s.
The following is an overview of the events of 1894 in film, including a list of films released and notable births.
Josef von Sternberg was an Austrian-born filmmaker whose career successfully spanned the transition from the silent to the sound era, during which he worked with most of the major Hollywood studios. He is best known for his film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s, including the highly regarded Paramount/UFA production The Blue Angel (1930).
The Black Maria was Thomas Edison's film production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. It was the world's first film studio.
The Shanghai Gesture is a 1941 American film noir directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Victor Mature, and Ona Munson. It is based on a Broadway play of the same name by John Colton, which was adapted for the screen by Sternberg and produced by Arnold Pressburger for United Artists.
The Blue Angel is a 1930 German musical comedy-drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jannings and Kurt Gerron. Written by Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Vollmöller and Robert Liebmann, with uncredited contributions by Sternberg, it is based on Heinrich Mann's 1905 novel Professor Unrat and set in an unspecified northern German port city. The Blue Angel presents the tragic transformation of a respectable professor into a cabaret clown and his descent into madness. The film was the first feature-length German sound film and brought Dietrich international fame. It also introduced her signature song, Friedrich Hollaender and Robert Liebmann's "Falling in Love Again ". The film is considered a classic of German cinema.
Underworld is a 1927 American silent crime film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent and George Bancroft. The film launched Sternberg's eight-year collaboration with Paramount Pictures, with whom he would produce his seven films with actress Marlene Dietrich. Journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht won an Academy Award for Best Original Story.
Macao is a 1952 American adventure film noir directed by Josef von Sternberg and Nicholas Ray and starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, William Bendix, and Gloria Grahame. Shot in black-and-white, it was distributed by RKO Pictures.
Georgia Theodora Hale was an actress of the silent movie era.
The Scarlet Empress is a 1934 American historical drama film starring Marlene Dietrich and John Lodge about the life of Catherine the Great. It was directed and produced by Josef von Sternberg from a screenplay by Eleanor McGeary, loosely based on the diary of Catherine arranged by Manuel Komroff.
Children of Divorce is a 1927 American silent romantic drama film directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Clara Bow, Esther Ralston, and Gary Cooper. Adapted from the 1927 novel of the same name by Owen Johnson, and written by Louis D. Lighton, Hope Loring, Alfred Hustwick, and Adela Rogers St. Johns, the film is about a young flapper who tricks her wealthy friend into marrying her during a night of drunken revelry. Even though she knows that he is in love with another woman, she refuses to grant him a divorce and repeat the mistake of her divorced parents. Produced by Jesse L. Lasky, E. Lloyd Sheldon, and Adolph Zukor for the Famous Players–Lasky, the film was released on April 25, 1927 by Paramount Pictures.
Dishonored is a 1931 American pre-Code romantic spy film directed and edited by Josef von Sternberg, who also co-wrote the film with Daniel N. Rubin. It was produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film stars Marlene Dietrich, Victor McLaglen, Gustav von Seyffertitz, and Warner Oland, and follows a female spy (Dietrich) for Austria-Hungary during World War I. Costume design was provided by Travis Banton, in one of his several collaborations with Dietrich.
I, Claudius is an unfinished 1937 film adaptation of the novels I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935) by Robert Graves. Produced by Alexander Korda, the film was directed by Josef von Sternberg, with Charles Laughton in the title role. The production was dogged by adverse circumstances, culminating in a car accident involving co-star Merle Oberon that caused filming to be ended before completion. Footage from the production was incorporated into a 1965 documentary on the making of the film The Epic That Never Was.
Marlene Dietrich was a German and American actress and singer.
Vanity's Price is a lost 1924 American silent drama film directed by Roy William Neill and starring Anna Q. Nilsson. It was produced by the Gothic Productions company and released by FBO.
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