Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-g7rbq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-31T08:16:14.147Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - New Movies and Neue Menschen: From Red Vienna to “Anatol on the Missouri”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2021

Get access

Summary

IN SPITE OF RESISTANCE from her family and others, Ann Tizia Leitich chose to stay in New York City and continued to live, as she explained it to them, “nach meinem eigenen Schädel” (on my own stubborn terms). After working her way through various office jobs as a stenographer and a secretary, and after launching her intercontinental journalistic career, Leitich landed a job in the New York-based scenario department of Metro-Goldwyn film studios. Leitich's new job with Metro-Goldwyn not only gave her rare insight into the intricate workings of the American film industry but also into the relationship between Americans and the films that they consumed with such voracity. Between 1924 and 1932, Leitich wrote twenty-two film reviews and mentioned several others films in her discussions of America. She wrote about many American films that would be exported and shown in Europe (including Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command and the now-lost 1928 version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, directed by Mal St. Clair), as well as German films that were shown in America such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis. In her very first film review in the Neue Freie Presse titled “Die Affären des Anatol am Missouri” (The Affairs of Anatol on the Missouri), Leitich harks back to her first months in Iowa when she went to see Cecil B. DeMille's American film adaptation of Anatol, Arthur Schnitzler's mannered Viennese drama. In her review, she tells her reader how she bought a ticket, walked into the theater, and hoped to be taken back to the ballrooms and literary circles of her youth:

Anatol! Unser Wiener Anatol, hier in der Farmerstadt am Missouri, denn hier steht es in schreienden Lettern: Cecil de Milles neueste und großartigste Produktion nach einem Stück von Schnitzler. Man glaubt den Augen kaum und man kauft ein Ticket um 35 Cent und segnet die Kinematographie, die einem den Altvertrauten aus der Heimat, den man von Sophiensaalbällen und den Jours der Frau Hofrat so gut kannte, hier in die Prärie herzaubert. Man hat sich natürlich getäuscht. Es ist gar nicht Anatol.

[Anatol! Our Viennese Anatol, here in a farm town on the Missouri River. There it is in garish letters: Cecil DeMille's newest and greatest production, based on the play by Schnitzler.

Type
Chapter
Information
Red Vienna, White Socialism, and the Blues
Ann Tizia Leitich's America
, pp. 42 - 59
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×