[3] Von Stroheim entered the Hollywood film industry in 1914 as an extra and horse handler on the greatest cinematic spectacle of the period, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915).

[9][10] With the United States’ entry into the First World War in 1917 against Germany, the Hollywood studios and distributors became anxious about presenting audiences with “Teutonic” figures.

When the studios turned to pro-American, pro-war, and anti-German propaganda films, opportunities arose for actors who could convincingly portray Prussian military villains.

[12] When von Stroheim was hired by Universal Studios to star in The Heart of Humanity (1918) opposite Dorothy Phillips, he came prepared to contribute his “eagerness and proficiency” to every aspect of the production.

[13][14] At the peak of the Spanish Influenza in late 1918, von Stroheim attempted to interest film studios in his script-in-progress entitled The Pinnacle, concerning an American couple and an Austrian Lieutenant in a ménage à trois.

Laemmle, of German birth and ethnicity, was known to hire German-speaking countrymen, an important consideration for von Stroheim when post-war “anti-German hysteria” briefly persisted in the United States.

[15] Unlike other established studios such as Paramount and First National Pictures that often produced elaborate and expensive features with top-rank stars, Laemmle’s vast Universal operation churned out relatively low-budget movies and offered parsimonious contracts for its actors and technicians, ensuring a high turnover.

[17] Like Griffith, von Stroheim was averse to hiring theater-trained actors and established screen “stars”, preferring to assemble a stock company from “untrained talent” whom he would mentor to achieve his cinematic goals.

British actor Gibson Gowland would play the mountain guide, Silent Sepp Innerkofler, and later star as McTeague in von Stroheim’s Greed (1924).

[19] An indication of Laemmle’s determination to ensure a commercially impressive production, he provided von Stroheim with their top cinematographer Ben Reynolds, and assistant William Daniels, both of whom would serve with the director until he moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924.

[22] By mid-summer studio executives, wishing to expedite its release, submitted the partially edited footage to Grant Whytock, who prepared the final cut for distribution.

[27] Universal’s productions, which usually exhibited in less exalted venues, arranged for Blind Husbands to run at New York’s “palatial” Capitol Theater though this required a months-long delay.

[28] Blind Husbands inspired fulsome responses from American film critics and “almost without exception” both the director and his cinematic creation were hailed as an advance for the art form.

[29] Agnes Smith of the New York Telegraph wrote: “If we are not very much mistaken, Blind Husbands will introduce to the industry a new ‘super director’- Erich von Stroheim.

The interiors of the Alpine inns, the wayside shrines, and the peasant types were all the work of a man who knew very much what he was doing.”[29]Blind Husbands, set amidst a tourist resort in the Austrian Dolomites, opens with the arrival of an upper-middle American couple, Dr. Robert Armstrong and his wife Margaret.

This is the same social stratum that the young von Stroheim had serviced as an expert equestrian and a resort guide in Northern California during the years before World War I and before his arrival in Hollywood, a venue where “he seems to have had particular success with the ladies.”[32] Whereas von Stroheim’s scenario for Blind Husbands required that his “alter ego” suffer a spectacular death, his subsequent autobiographical representations avoid similar fates.

Informed by von Stroheim’s recent conversion to Catholicism, Blind Husbands’ romantic triangle unfolds during a local celebration of the Gala Peter and the reenactment of Christ’s transfiguration on Mt.

[34] The most striking element in von Stroheim’s thematic scheme is the presentation of a young married woman who seriously contemplates engaging in an extramarital affair, which constitutes “a daring break with tradition” in cinematic treatments of the topic.