Hello, Sister!

Hello, Sister! (1933)

LONELY IN THE MIDST OF MILLIONS

While Peggy deeply falls in love with Jimmy, her best friend Millie becomes increasingly frustrated with men and very jealous with Peggy, so she tries everything to destroy the new love.

Date of release
1933-04-14
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (15)
Runtime
1h 2m
Genres
Drama, Romance
Director
Erich von Stroheim, Raoul Walsh, Alfred L. Werker

Casting

Interesting facts

Hello, Sister! is a 1933 American pre-Code drama-romance film produced by Fox Film Corporation. It was directed by Erich von Stroheim, Raoul Walsh, Alfred L. Werker, and Edwin Burke, although none of those directors are credited. The film is a re-edited version of von Stroheim's now-lost film Walking Down Broadway.

Production history

Erich von Stroheim was hired by Fox Films to write and direct a film under the working title of Walking Down Broadway. On September 2, 1931, Fox executive Winfield Sheehan approved the project on several conditions. One was that von Stroheim, who was known for filming excessive footage, would be limited to shooting 85,000 feet of film, or 95 minutes of screen time.

The script was based on the unproduced play Walking Down Broadway by Dawn Powell. According to Fox staff writer Leonard Spigelgass, who assisted von Stroheim with the screenplay, the director "was chiefly interested in the neuroses" of the film's characters, who had been changed from "simple American characters into far more complicated ones, Viennese-oriented". Producer Sol M.

ZaSu Pitts, the star of von Stroheim's silent films Greed (1924) and The Wedding March (1928), was chosen by the director to play the part of Millie. Von Stroheim once called Pitts "the greatest psycho-pathological actress in the American cinema"; in this film, he envisioned her as the centerpiece of the story, the "romantic martyr". Von Stroheim originally wanted George Raft to play Mac; the part was ultimately filled by Terrance Ray.

Von Stroheim completed the filming of Walking Down Broadway in 48 days from August to October 1932, on a budget of $300,000. Fox executives were pleased with von Stroheim's timeliness and planned to hire him to direct another film. But upon viewing the footage, they balked at the "sexual obsessions, neuroses, and other grim aspects of the film".

To protect the studio's reputation, false reports were sent out to industry trade journals blaming the need to cut the film on von Stroheim's penchant for filming excessive footage. A November 1932 article in Variety reported:

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