By
Ed Garea
“Glamour
is what I sell, it its my stock in trade.”
There
are some actors in the history of film who have transcended their
occupation to become cultural icons. Marlene Dietrich stands out as a
prime example.
From
her beginnings in German cinema, she came to America and quickly
established herself in the Hollywood of the ‘30s. Despite
encountering career slumps, such as being named “box-office poison”
by theater exhibitors in May 1938, Dietrich made a comeback and
continued to survive in the movie business by constantly reinventing
herself. Her legacy was such that although her last film was in 1978
(as Baroness von Semering in Just a Gigolo, starring
David Bowie), film clips and soundtracks of her songs continue to be
used in documentaries, movies and television shows through the
current day.
Dietrich
was smart in that she didn’t just rely on films for her livelihood.
Seeing that older actresses had difficulty finding work, she turned
to her voice for support, becoming a cabaret and stage star beginning
in the ‘50s and lasting through the ‘70s. It’s been said that a
Dietrich show was more than a mere performance; it was an experience,
as she would perform the first half of her act in slinky, almost
see-through gowns and change to top hat and tails for the
second half of the performance. She knew what her audience wanted and
often closed her show with what was considered her signature song,
“Falling in Love Again,” which she sang in the 1930 German
film, The
Blue Angel.
She
was also noted for her humanitarian efforts during the war, housing
German and French exiles, providing financial support and even
advocating their US citizenship. For her work on improving morale on
the front lines during the war, she received several honors from the
United States, France, Belgium, and Israel.
On
the personal side she was noted for her bisexuality, which was kept
out of public view so as not to interfere with her carefully crafted
professional celebrity. She quietly enjoyed the thriving gay scene
and drag balls of 1920s Berlin and also
boxed at Turkish trainer and prizefighter Sabri Mahir’s boxing
studio in Berlin, which opened to women in the late 1920s.
Dietrich’s
sex life was described as “voracious,” and she took full
advantage of the opportunities Hollywood offered to pursue it. She
was said to have had affairs with Gary Cooper, John Gilbert, Douglas
Fairbanks, Jr., John Wayne, James Stewart, writer Erich Maria
Remarque, Errol Flynn, Jean Gabin, Yul Brenner, John F.
Kennedy, Ann Warner (the wife of Jack L. Warner), Lili Damita,
Claudette Colbert, Dolores Del Rio, and some say, Greta Garbo.
If
there was one word that could be used to describe Dietrich’s
career, it is “persistence.” She entered the world as Marie
Magdalene Dietrich on December 27, 1901, born to Wilhelmina Elisabeth
Josephine (née Felsing) and Louis Erich Otto Dietrich in
Schoenberg, now a part of the city of Berlin. Her mother was from was
from an affluent Berlin family who owned a jewelry and clock-making
firm, while her father was a police lieutenant. She had sister,
Elisabeth, who was one year older. Her father died in 1907 and her
mother remarried in 1916 to family friend Eduard von Losch, who died
the next year in the war. Combining her first two names to form the
name “Marlene.” Dietrich she graduated from the
Victoria-Luise-Schule in 1918, where she studied the violin and
became interested in theater and poetry. A wrist injury curtailed her
dreams of becoming a concert violinist, but by 1922 she had her first
job, playing violin in an orchestra pit for silent films at a Berlin
cinema.
In
1922 she unsuccessfully auditioned for theatrical director and
impresario Max Reinhardt’s drama academy, bur soon found employment
as a chorus girl in his theatres. In addition she played small roles
in dramas and made her film debut as a bit player in The Little
Napoleon (1923). It was while working on the set of Tragodie
der Liebe (Love Tragedy) in 1923 that she met future
husband, producer Rudolph Sieber. That married in a civil ceremony in
Berlin one May 17, 1923. The union produced a daughter, Maria Sieber,
who was born on December 13, 1924.
Dietrich
continued to work on stage and in film throughout the 1920s. By the
late 1920s, she was cast in increasingly important roles on the
screen, but it was in 1929 that she received her big break, being
cast as Lola Lola, a cabaret singer who caused the downfall of a
hitherto respectable schoolmaster (Emil Jannings) in the
UFA-Paramount co-production of The Blue Angel (1930).
The film was directed by Josef von Sternberg, who thereafter took
credit as the person who “discovered” Marlene Dietrich. On
the strength of her performance and with the encouragement of von
Sternberg, who was established in Hollywood, she followed him to
America and signed with Paramount, where she was marketed as the
studio’s answer to MGM’s Greta Garbo. Dietrich starred in six
films directed by von Sternberg at Paramount Between 1930 and 1935
she starred in six films for the director, who worked closely with
her to create the image of a glamorous and mysterious femme fatale.
He encouraged her to lose weight and coached her intensively as an
actress. It paid off with memorable performances in such films
as Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai
Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), The Scarlet
Empress (1934), and The Devil is a Woman (1935).
But
extravagant box office bombs such as The Garden of
Allah (1936) and Knight Without Armor (1937)
caused Dietrich’s popularity to plummet and in May 1938 she was
labeled “box office poison in an article titled “Dead Cats” by
Harry Brandt on behalf of the Independent Theatre Owners of America
in the Independent Film Journal. She wasn’t alone, as
Greta Garbo, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Kay Francis, Norma Shearer,
Luise Reiner, John Barrymore, Dolores Del Rio, Katharine Hepburn,
Edward Arnold, and Fred Astaire were named alongside her.
While
in London filming Knight Without Armor, Dietrich was
approached by officials of the Nazi Party who offered her a lucrative
contract if she would return to Germany. She declined the offer and
applied for US citizenship. Returning to Hollywood she filmed the
romantic comedy Angel (1937) for Paramount and
director Ernst Lubitsch, but the film’s reception was so poor the
studio bought out her contract.
She
was down, but not out. In 1939 she accepted an offer from producer
Joe Pasternak to play against type in the role of cowboy saloon
girl Frenchie in the Western comedy Destry Rides Again,
opposite James Stewart and Brian Donlevy. Though paid significantly
less than she had been accustomed to receiving, the role revived her
career and the song she introduced “See What the Boys in the Back
Room Will Have,” became a hit when she later recorded it. The
popularity of Destry Rides Again led to playing
similar types in Seven Sinners (1940) and The
Spoilers (1942, alongside John Wayne).
It
took World War II and her participation on the Allied side to
establish Dietrich as a cultural icon. She always had strong
political opinions, especially concerning Germany, and was not afraid
to express them. In the late ‘30s, Dietrich, Billy Wilder and
several other Germans created a fund to help Jews and dissidents
escape from Germany. In 1937, she placed her salary of $450,000
forKnight Without Armor into escrow to help the refugees.
In 1939, she became an American citizen, renouncing her German
citizenship. In December 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II,
Dietrich became one of the first celebrities to help sell war bonds,
and toured the US from January 1942 to September 1943 (appearing
before 250,000 troops on the Pacific Coast leg of her tour alone).
Reportedly, she sold more war bonds than any other star.
During
two extended tours for the USO in 1944 and 1945 she performed for
Allied troops in North Africa, Italy, England, and France before
accompanying General George Patton into Germany. Her revue opened
with Danny Thomas and included songs from her films, performances on
a musical saw (a skill she had acquired for stage appearances in
Berlin in the 1920s) and a “mindreading" act that had been
taught to her by good friend Orson Welles. During the course of the
act Dietrich would inform the audience that she could read minds and
ask them to concentrate on whatever came into their minds. Then she
would walk over to a soldier and earnestly tell him, "Oh, think
of something else. I can't possibly talk about that!”
She also recorded songs in German for the Muzak project, a creation
of the OSS designed to demoralize enemy soldiers. Among the songs she
recorded was “Lili Marleen,” a favorite of soldiers on both sides
of the war.
She
returned to Hollywood, and though she never regained the status she
had before the war, she nevertheless appeared in a number of
well-known films, including Golden Earrings (1947), A
Foreign Affair (1948), Stage Fright (1950), Rancho
Notorious (1952), Witness for the
Prosecution (1957), Touch of Evil (1958),
and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961).
As
mentioned before, she also embarked on a very successful career as a
cabaret singer. In 1953 the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas paid her
$30,000 per week to appear live. The show was short, consisting only
of a few songs associated with her while she was costumed in a sheer
"nude dress,” a heavily beaded evening gown of silk soufflé,
which gave the illusion of transparency. The dress, designed by Jean
Louis, attracted a lot of publicity and made the show a must-see. The
engagement was so successful that she was signed to appear at the
Cafe de Paris in London the following year, while her her Las Vegas
contracts were renewed.
She
returned to West Germany in 1960 for a concert tour that was met with
mixed reception. Despite consistently negative press coverage,
vehement protests by those who saw her as a traitor, and two bomb
threats, her performance nonetheless attracted huge crowds. East
Germany, however, received her well. She also toured Israel around
the same time, becoming the first woman and German to receive the
Israeli Medallion of Valor in 1965, "in recognition for her
courageous adherence to principle and consistent record of friendship
for the Jewish people.”
Dietrich
performed on twice on Broadway and won a special Tony Award in 1968.
Though plagued by a series of ailments (she survived cervical cancer
in 1965) and accidents on stage she continued to perform until she
fell off the stage and broke her thigh during a performance in
Sydney, Australia in 1975. The fall ended her career and she went
into retirement, with her final on-camera film appearance a cameo
role in Just a Gigolo.
Alcoholic
and dependent on painkillers, Dietrich withdrew to her apartment in
Paris, where she spent the final 11 years of her life mostly
bedridden and allowing only a select few – including family and
employees – to enter the apartment. (Her husband, Rudolph Siebert,
died from cancer in 1976.) During this time, she was a prolific
letter-writer and phone-caller. Her published her
autobiography, Nehmt nur mein Leben (Take Just My
Life) in 1979.
On
6 May 1992, Dietrich died of renal failure at her flat in
Paris at age 90. Her funeral ceremony was conducted at La
Madeleine in
Paris, a Roman Catholic church on 14 May 1992. The funeral service
was attended by approximately 1,500 mourners in the church itself –
including several ambassadors from Germany, Russia, the US, the UK
and other countries – with thousands more outside. Her closed
coffin rested beneath the altar draped in the French flag and adorned
with a simple bouquet of white wildflowers and roses from French
President Francois Mitterrand. After the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Dietrich instructed in her will that she was to be buried in her
birthplace, Berlin, near her family and on May 16 her body was flown
there to fulfill her wish. She was interred at the Stadtischer
Friedhof III, Berlin-Schoneberg next to the grave of her
mother, Josefine
von Losch,
and near the house where she was born.
In
1996, after some debate, it was decided not to name a street after
her in her birthplace of Berlin-Schöneberg, but on November 8, 1997,
the central Marlene-Dietrich-Platz was unveiled in
Berlin to honor her.
The
Films on TCM
May
10: Lots to choose from here, starting with The
Blue Angel (8 pm), followed by The Scarlett
Empress (10 pm), Shanghai
Express (Midnight), Morocco (1:45
am), and Blonde Venus (3:30 am). However, if we
had to recommend one, we would go with The Scarlett
Empress, as it’s not shown all that often.
May
17: A mixed bag. Our choices are the wonderful Destry
Rides Again (8 pm) and The Devil is a
Woman (11:45 pm). We chose this because Dietrich said it
was the most beautiful she ever looked in a film, and that’s good
enough for us.
May
24: Another mixed bag. Our recommendations are Billy
Wilder’s A Foreign Affair (8 pm) with
Marlene wonderful as she’s up against prim and proper Congresswoman
Jean Arthur, who is in Berlin investigating the goings-on,
and Manpower (2 am), from Warner Bros. with
Marlene caught between co-workers George Raft and Edward G. Robinson.
It’s no classic, but is an entertaining B movie.
May
31: Another evening of entertaining Dietrich films, leading
off with the superb and underrated Touch of Evil at
8 pm, followed by the utterly sublime Witness for the
Prosecution at 10 pm. Directed by Billy Wilder from the
Agatha Christie novel, it’s a great way to spend two hours and
Dietrich practically steals the show from Charles Laughton, with
Tyrone Power providing an excellent performance. At 12:15 it’s Stage
Fright from Alfred Hitchcock, another good choice, and
at 2:15 am, Fritz Lang’s offbeat Western, Rancho
Notorious.
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