Billy Wilder on Assignment Noah Isenberg (little bear else holmelund minarik TXT) 📖

But the film has to be finished within ten weeks, or else the additional shooting comes at Stroheim’s expense. And finished it was, one day before the deadline. Swanson played a madam at a brothel; the film is said to be magnificent. (Incidentally, there was a falling-out later on: Stroheim refused to reshoot a sound film insert, because he took a dim view of Movietone. Trial with Swanson. Edmund Goulding, from Anna Karenina, makes the sound film scene.)

Stroheim is a poor man. DeMille, Griffith, Lubitsch don’t know what to do with their money. Murnau bought himself a yacht and wants to spend a year cruising between Japan and California. Stroheim and his family live in a simple little house, and he drives a four-cylinder car. The pure fool of Hollywood.

People who come from Hollywood report that Stroheim wants to go home, but he lacks the courage: how will he be received in Germany?

Der Querschnitt, issue 4, April 1929

A Poker Artist

THE MAGIC OF FRITZ HERRMANN

There ought to be a corporation designed to give this odd man the opportunity to play poker one single time in Palm Beach with Ford, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt: after this evening the corporation would wind up owning the Detroit Automobile Company and the largest fortune in the world. In response to your objection that this corporation would be financing a card shark, I must state that the man—the poker genius—would have no objections to twenty detectives observing the game in slow motion. Nothing would be pinned on him, even if he had four of a kind or flushes each and every time. The eyes of the wary observers would not keep up with the tempo at which he wields his sleight-of-hand techniques. And he is quicker and better at wielding them than anyone in the whole world. Even though at the age of seventy—a milestone he reached back in March—a person’s fingers do tremble a bit.

His name is Fritz Herrmann, Herrmann with two r’s and two n’s, and he is the owner of a delicatessen on the north side of Berlin. Skinny children from the Wedding neighborhood press their freckled noses against the display window, where raspberry sweets are lined up, glistening like a mirage, far out of reach. There is also laundry detergent for sale, along with vinegar and gherkins pickled with mustard seeds; in the corner there is a dusty pyramid of bouillon cubes, all neat and tidy. The shop is managed by Frau Herrmann; it doesn’t interest him at all. But he is lovingly devoted to the wine cellar under the shop, a superb collection of the rarest labels, which Herrmann, like someone collecting stamps, has acquired using the proceeds from his sorcery. The most esteemed households in Berlin buy their supplies here, Uncle Herrmann carries the fanciest labels, and he is especially proud of the Austrian wines: Vöslauer, Gumpoldskirchner, vintages now available only in bottles.

The Monte Castello isn’t bad either, a red “border wine,” says Uncle Herrmann, “it doesn’t have the dryness of Bordeaux or the sweetness of Spanish wine.” We’re sitting in a room facing out onto the courtyard, behind the shop, and whenever someone comes into the store and wants to buy something, the bell rings, though it rarely does so. (Any sympathy with the shop owner must be rejected out of hand at this point: Herrmann is a filthy-rich man, who couldn’t care less whether he sells any laundry detergent; he keeps the shop for the sake of amusement.) It is eleven o’clock in the morning. We’re playing poker. What better thing could one do at this hour? I have picked up a new game and shuffle the cards thoroughly. The room smells a bit musty, but the Monte Castello is extraordinary. I give the shuffled cards to my partner, who holds them between two fingers for half a second, then hands them back to me: “You deal!” I deal, one to him, one to me, each gets five cards. He doesn’t even look at his hand, pours himself more red wine, and says in passing, “I lead!” I’ve placed my cards in a pile and slowly and niftily fan them out, another king, so in any case at least three of a kind, not a bad hand. I keep on spreading out my cards: a fourth king!, and the nine of diamonds. So I have an excellent hand, four kings. The only thing that could beat me would be four aces or a royal flush, that is, five of one suit in sequence. “How many do you want?” I ask Herrmann, who keeps on drinking and hasn’t even examined his hand yet. “None!” Heavens, what could he have? Full house? Flush? Straight? That’s all too little. Perhaps he has a royal flush? I can’t imagine he’d have that much luck. I exchange one card for show, examine it with interest, as though I could still come by a fifth king. I’m actually sorry that we’re not playing for money, I would raise him—outbid him—until he folds. But since we’re not even playing for peanuts, I reveal my hand with a laugh. As of this moment, he still hasn’t seen his hand. He looks at my four kings and calmly announces: “Too little!” Slowly he turns over his cards: four aces. While holding the shuffled cards between his fingers for that half-second, he carried out the crucial sleight of hand. The major poker games in Berlin, the ones whose players have yet to meet Herrmann, ought to be warned about him: you can lose your shirt to him. Luckily Herrmann doesn’t play cards; he only plays with them.

In the class of 1874 at Görlitz High School, there was no student less gifted than Fritz Herrmann. He didn’t bring his report card home but instead took it across the border to Austria, to a tiny traveling circus, where he found a job as a poster painter. The boy learned how to do gymnastics on the ground and in the