Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Marlene Dietrich

Stardust – TCM’s Star of the Month

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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