Stroheim's unreleased sound film - anyone seen it? - "Walking Down Broadway" / "Hello, Sister

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Anyone seen it? Is it available to buy anywhere?

[Harvey Chartrand]

This was Erich von Stroheim's AMBERSONS, much more so than GREED, as most of WALKING DOWN BROADWAY was cut and reshot, with only traces of von Stroheim's genius interspersed throughout this early talkie. Curtis Harrington told me he saw some of the original footage (which he'd found in a studio vault many years ago) and that the mutilation of WALKING DOWN BROADWAY was one of the great tragedies of the cinema. In its bowdlerized form, it was released as HELLO, SISTER, with Alfred Werker credited as director. As a result of this fiasco, the eccentric perfectionist von Stroheim was finished as a director after 1932. He went on to appear in 2 classics by other directors (Sunset Boulevard, La Grande Illusion), mad ventriloquist & monster movies, poverty row productions, and French série noire. His humiliation was utter and complete, worse than Welles'.

[Sir Bygber Brown]

That it was, Harvey, that it was. But like Welles, somehow that makes him all the more appealing. A love a good tragic figure.