Editing Greed (1924 film) (section)

==Myths and misconceptions==
Von Stroheim was known to exaggerate events from his life and create myths about himself, such as his fictitious aristocratic origins and spurious military record in [[Austria]].{{sfn|Lennig|2000|p=xii}} He claimed that shortly after having moved to the US in the early 1910s, he had found a copy of ''McTeague'' in a motel in New York and had read it in one sitting. He also said that wanting to adapt the book inspired him to make a career in filmmaking.{{sfn|Finler|1972|p=14}} [[Georges Sadoul]] later stated that von Stroheim had first read the novel in 1914, while living in poverty in Los Angeles.{{sfn|Rosenbaum|1993|p=20}}

Claims that von Stroheim's original cut was a completely unabridged version of ''McTeague'' are not accurate. Von Stroheim's 300-page script was almost as long as the original novel, but he rethought the entire story and invented new scenes, as well as extensively elaborating existing ones.{{sfn|Lennig|2000|p=191}} In the Norris novel, McTeague's back story in Placer County and relationships with his father, mother and Potter were remembered as a flashback and took two paragraphs. In von Stroheim's original ''Greed'', this sequence took up the first hour of the film and was not a flashback.{{sfn|Lennig|2000|p=192}} Von Stroheim also modernized the novel's time span to between 1908 and 1923, a quarter-century later than the novel.{{sfn|Lennig|2000|p=191}}

''Greed'' has sometimes been said to be over 100 reels long. Von Stroheim said that his initial edit was 42 reels, although several of the people who saw this cut remembered it as being anywhere from 42 to 47 reels.{{sfn|Rosenbaum|1993|p=24}} Grant Whytock remembered the edited version that von Stroheim initially sent to him as between 26 and 28 reels.{{sfn|Koszarski|1983|p=143}} MGM's official studio files list the original cut of the film at 22 reels.{{sfn|Rosenbaum|1993|p=25}} As recently as 1992, former MGM Story Editor [[Samuel Marx]] erroneously claimed that the original version of ''Greed'' was 70 reels.{{sfn|Rosenbaum|1993|p=10}}

June Mathis is credited with co-writing the script due to her work on the 10-reel version. Mathis was the head of the Story Department at MGM and her contract stipulated that she would receive writing credit for all MGM films. She did not actually write any part of the screenplay.{{sfn|Finler|1972|p=16}} Mathis is said to have changed the film's title from ''McTeague'' to ''Greed'' during post-production;{{sfn|Weinberg|1972|p=41}} however, a publicity still of the cast and crew taken during production clearly indicates that the film was titled ''Greed'' before the MGM merger even took place.{{sfn|Weinberg|1972|p=30}} The film's working title was "''Greedy Wives''", a nod towards von Stroheim's previous film ''Foolish Wives''; this working title never was considered as the film's actual title.{{sfn|Koszarski|1983|p=116}}

The original, uncut version of ''Greed'' has been called the "holy grail" for film archivists.{{sfn|Wakeman|1987|p=1074}} Over the years, various reports of the original version being uncovered have proved to be unfounded. Among them is a claim that a copy existed in a vault in South America that was screened once a year for invited guests on New Year's Eve. Another claim was that a copy in the possession of a Texan millionaire was sold to Henri Langlois of ''[[Cinémathèque Française]]''. A film society in Boston supposedly held a private screening of a print discovered by a World War II veteran in Berlin. Other stories held that [[David Shepard (film preservationist)|David Shepherd]] of the [[American Film Institute]] had found a copy at a garage sale, and that the head of a film society in [[Redwood City, California]], owned "the longest existing version of ''Greed'' (purchased in Europe)." Von Stroheim himself once stated that [[Benito Mussolini]] owned a personal copy of the film.{{sfn|Weinberg|1972|p=9}} His son, Joseph von Stroheim, once claimed that when he was in the Army during World War II, he saw a version of the film that took two nights to fully screen, although he could not remember exactly how long it was.{{sfn|Koszarski|1983|p=149}}

There were several reports that MGM had retained a copy of the original version. Iris Barry of the Museum of Modern Art claimed that a copy was locked in the MGM vaults, although Thalberg denied it. It was also reported that [[John Houseman]] had a private screening at MGM and that the studio owned two copies stored in a vault in a Utah salt mine.{{sfn|Weinberg|1972|p=9}} Lotte Eisner once claimed that sometime during the 1950s and 1960s, several film cans labeled "McTeague" were found in MGM's vaults and destroyed by executives who did not know that it was footage from ''Greed''.{{sfn|Rosenbaum|1993|pp=38–39}} MGM executive [[Albert Lewin|Al Lewin]] said that several years after the film's release, von Stroheim asked him for the cut footage; Lewin and editor [[Margaret Booth]] supposedly searched MGM's vault but could not find any missing footage.{{sfn|Flamini|1994|p=56}}