Filming "Greed," Lone Pine to Death Valley, Summer of 1923

When silent-film director Erich Von Stroheim took his cast and crew into Death Valley in August and September of 1923, as reported at the time by the Inyo Independent, “[t]he temperature was 130 degrees by a properly shaded thermometer, and the heat radiation from the scorching, sun-baked sand of the desert made the trousers of the men so hot as far up as their knees that many were compelled to wrap bandages around their calves to keep the cloth from touching the skin.”

The resulting film, in its original version — 42-45 reels based on the classic Frank Norris novel, McTeague, is generally considered to have been one of the greatest ever made. "Von Stroheim showed it at least once at that length and probably more times in January of 1924," writes Chris Langley of the Lone Pine Film History Museum. "Stories of the few people who saw the entire movie reported it a masterpiece. They also told of going into the theatre at 10 in the morning and not coming out until 7 or later."

Thanks to studio politics, the film was eventually edited down to ten reels, "and the original negative was destroyed to retrieve what little silver could be gotten from the stock." Portions of the original film can still be viewed onsite at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Here is a 1923 newsreel about the filming: