month before, and he formally signed with them in late November. Von Stroheim chose his new studio because of the level of artistic freedom he was offered, which he had been denied at Universal under Thalberg. Since March of that year, Goldwyn had been run by Abe Lehr, who publicly promised that "each director will have his own staff and will be given every facility in putting into production his own individuality and personality." Von Stroheim signed a one-year, three-feature deal with Goldwyn on November 20, 1922. The deal stipulated that each feature would be between long, cost no more than $175,000 and be completed in fourteen weeks. It also promised von Stroheim $30,000 for each completed film. Lehr initially hired von Stroheim in order to film a big-budget version of the operetta The Merry Widow, which the producer saw as a guaranteed hit; von Stroheim, however, convinced Lehr to let him make Greed first, promising low costs. A press release of February 1923 said that although von Stroheim had "run rather freely to large sets in the past, [he] seems to have reformed—or surrendered—for it is announced that he will not build any sets at all." Von Stroheim wrote a highly detailed 300-page script that contained camera movements, composition and tint cues. Among the changes that he made to Norris's novel was giving McTeague the first name of John and omitting Norris's anti-Semitism. McTeague had been filmed once before as Life's Whirlpool, a five-reel short by William A. Brady's World Pictures, starring Broadway star Holbrook Blinn as McTeague, which had been released in 1916. Film critics disliked this version and von Stroheim later criticized Blinn's performance. According to film historian Kevin Brownlow, Life's Whirlpool was also shot on location in Death Valley. Von Stroheim was known for his meticulous perfectionism and attention to detail, as well as his insolence towards studio executives. Working on Greed, von Stroheim set out to make a realistic film about everyday people and rejected the Hollywood tropes of glamor, happy endings and upper-class characters. Before shooting began, von Stroheim told a reporter: In early January 1923, von Stroheim arrived in San Francisco, where he scouted locations and finished writing the shooting script. While researching for Greed, he attended society functions in town and met many friends of Frank Norris, including his brother Charles and his sister-in-law Kathleen. To capture the authentic spirit of the