After the struggles Universal Pictures had with director/actor/screenwriter Erich von Stroheim in making the budget-busting 1922 'Foolish Wives,' its president Carl Laemmle surprisingly gave the Austrian another chance. This time, though, during the production of September 1923's "Merry-Go-Round," he was closely overseen by Universal's young but talented primary producer, Irving Thalberg.
Stroheim agreed to formulate a script based on his memory of his native country to illustrate how The Great War changed it. He illustrated that change by focusing on an Austrian count, Franz Maxmillian (Norman Kerry), who occasionally goes about dressed as a commoner. Aimlessly walking around a Vienna amusement park, he comes upon a pretty organ-grinder, Agnes (Mary Philbin), toiling away providing the music for a merry-go-round. Falling in love at first sight, he tells a white lie to her he's a tie salesman, all the while he's preparing for a forced marriage because of his royal heritage. The war intercedes the relationship between the count and Agnes. When he returns stripped of his rank, privilege and the loss of his unloved wife, things turn interesting between the two when she discovers who he really is.
Thalberg loved the outline, and stipulated Stroheim could continue with completing the script and working on the details in pre-production, with the caveat he could only direct the picture and not act in it. That way if things went south the talented but undependable eccentric could be replaced without having to reshoot his parts. Predictably, Stroheim submitted an overblown script filled with unnecessary scenes, which Thalberg took a scalpel to.
Filming took place under Stroheim's direction. Shooting in sequence, he was ultimately compromised by his excessive demands for authenticity. He demanded a real Viennese streetcar for a simple street scene. He arranged the actual carriage the real-life Austrian Emperor used before the war to be shipped to the states, seen in the movie's opening sequences. And Stroheim delayed filming as his scouts looked for his ideal orangutan, not just any orangutan, to be part of a murder scene.
After six weeks into the plodding production where a streetcar derailed, an overloaded studio electrical circuit blew and a rebellion by scores of extras, Thalberg had seen enough and fired his director. He was replaced by Rupert Julian, who delivered "Merry-Go-Round" on time and more importantly for Universal on budget. But is it the same film that Stroheim was forming in that six weeks before he got canned? Film critic Evan Kindley argues it is not. The first 15 minutes of the movie bear Stroheim's imprint, where he sets a relaxed but lively pace showing the count beginning the day mistreating his attendant. A bit of an Ernst Lubitsch touch can be gleaned in these opening sequences as well as a Stroheim-directed scene showing a rowdy banquet with the count and his pals.
Once Julian was hired, the newly-arrived director rewrote Stroheim's script and reshot several of his scenes. "Where von Stroheim, even in the brief and relatively uneventful scenes that open the movie, manages to pace things perfectly," wrote critic Kindly, "Julian's version merely plods along."
Movie goers, well aware of the studio intrigue, went to the theater to see for themselves how much influence Stroheim had on the final cut. Because of the controversy, "Merry-Go-Round" was the eighth highest box office attraction for 1923. Director Julian and actress Philbin, the organ grinder and love interest of the count, went on to become instrumental in the production of Lon Chaney's 1925 'The Phantom of the Opera.'
