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Why did The Devil Is a Woman end Josef von Sternberg's Paramount career?
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Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg editing a film.
The 1935 film The Devil Is a Woman ended Josef von Sternberg’s career at Paramount primarily because it was a commercial failure.1
Following the box-office disappointment of his previous film, The Scarlet Empress (1934), the poor financial performance of The Devil Is a Woman led Paramount production head Ernst Lubitsch to fire the director. This decision effectively concluded von Sternberg's tenure as a first-string Hollywood filmmaker.1