Marlene Dietrich...another facet of her legend



Marlene Dietrich is one of very few film stars whose career not only spanned 60+ years but who also enjoyed icon status for most of those years. Her life in film began in the early 1920s with silent pictures. It came to a close with Maximillian Schell's 1984 Oscar-nominated documentary, Marlene, in which she speaks but does not appear on camera.

Marlene in the '30s

Dietrich shot to fame as Lola Lola in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930). Shortly after the film premiered, she left Germany for the U.S. where she and von Sternberg collaborated on six more films during the 1930s. The first, Morocco (1930), was nominated for four Oscars, including a Best Actress nod for Dietrich. By the end of the decade her career had cooled but was reignited when she co-starred, at von Sternberg’s urging, with James Stewart in the 1939 hit, Destry Rides Again. Although Dietrich continued making films in the 1940s, most were shot before the U.S. entered the war or made after the war ended. Though she appeared in only nine films from 1950 - 1978, several are classics: Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950), Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious (1952), Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Orson Welles's Touch of Evil (1958) and Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Her final film role was in Just a Gigolo (1978) starring David Bowie; while the movie is forgettable, her brief appearance is not.


chanteuse

In 1953, the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas offered Dietrich the unheard of sum of $30,000 a week to perform on stage. Her run was so successful that she was quickly signed for a similar engagement in London. The London show was also a smash and she followed it with a return engagement at the Sahara. This was the beginning of Dietrich's celebrated career (and reinvention) as a high-ticket chanteuse that lasted through the mid-1970s. In 1972 she performed her concert act as a TV special and earned an impressive-for-the-era $250,000 for it.

Marlene Dietrich is remembered for her several classic films, her concert career, her breathtaking glamour and her many amorous adventures. But there was another side to the actress that is less well known today...

World War II on the ground

While she was in England in 1937 working on a film, von Ribbentrop, Hitler's ambassador to Great Britain at the time, approached and pressured her to return to Germany. She refused and became a U.S. citizen in 1939. When America entered World War II, Dietrich was one of the first stars to sell war bonds. She entertained troops on front lines all over Europe and in North Africa, appeared at sevicemen's canteens and made anti-Nazi broadcasts in Germany. In addition, Dietrich and other successful Eastern European émigrés in Hollywood provided both financial assistance and moral support to refugees from the European film community who fled the Nazi onslaught. 


World War II with Allied troops

The OSS (the CIA of the time) had a Morale Operations (MO) branch that began producing 'black' (propaganda) radio programs in 1943. These programs reached listeners throughout Europe and the Mediterranean and were intended to create discord in the Axis countries. In 1944, the MO began to recruit Hollywood talent to boost the quality of programming on its stations. The MO’s most popular station was Soldatensender (Soldiers' Radio), and one of the most popular songs it played was Dietrich's "Lili Marlene" with 'black' lyrics created especially for the German version. The Nazi government banned the broadcast of the song, but the ban was lifted in the face of a backlash among Axis soldiers. "Lili Marlene" soon became the song played at the end of every Soldantensender broadcast.

In 1945, the U.S. government awarded Marlene Dietrich the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the first presented. Similarly, France made her a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

But Dietrich's largesse did not begin with World War II…


John Gilbert and Marlene Dietrich

 In 1934 Dietrich became romantically involved with one of the great stars of the silent era, John Gilbert. Gilbert's young daughter Leatrice came to know Dietrich through her father. In her 1985 biography of him, Dark Star, Leatrice Gilbert Fountain wrote of Dietrich's kindness to her, particularly after John Gilbert's death in early 1936.

According to Leatrice, during Dietrich's romance with John Gilbert the actress tried to help revitalize his career as well as his health. She arranged for Gilbert to test for the role of her jewel-thief partner in Desire (1936). Gilbert got the part but unfortunately, shortly after filming began, he suffered a heart attack and was replaced in the role.

Leatrice recalled visiting her father's house on December 24,1935 and being dazzled by the beautiful Christmas tree, decorated in the German tradition by Dietrich herself. She noted that Dietrich had thoughtfully slipped away that day so she could spend time alone with her father. Just over two weeks later John Gilbert was dead of a heart attack.

Following his funeral, Dietrich contacted Leatrice's mother with information and advice about Gilbert's will that could benefit his daughter. Though her mother was unable to successfully pursue the information Dietrich provided, more important to young Leatrice was the relationship she developed with the actress.

with Cary Grant in Blonde Venus

Days after John Gilbert's funeral, Leatrice received an enormous bouquet from Dietrich with a card in her handwriting, "I adored your father. Let me adore you."

Leatrice Gilbert Fountain wrote in Dark Star that for many years thereafter Dietrich made a point of spending time with her. She remembered Dietrich as a "fairy godmother" and told how the star took her to theater openings, on long walks and talks, baked cookies and cakes for her and generally made her feel like "a princess." All this was at a time when Dietrich was very busy with her film career.

Fountain reflected, "I wonder if Marlene Dietrich realized what a difference her presence made to me." She also recounted stories of Dietrich's early days in Hollywood when word began to circulate that she paid the overdue rent of a studio secretary who'd lost her job, that she picked up the hospital bill for the child of a studio electrician and other such acts of generosity. Fountain emphasized that Dietrich did not take credit for these deeds nor would she talk to Fountain about her efforts to help John Gilbert; Leatrice had to go to other sources to learn the details.

Marlene Dietrich died at age 90 in Paris on May 6, 1992. Her celebrity remains legendary, but her goodwill deserves a place in the Dietrich legend as well.

Marlene Dietrich in Just a Gigolo, 1978

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Light, Shadow and Synergy ~ von Sternberg and Dietrich, Part II

1931 began spectacularly for director Josef von Sternberg and actress Marlene Dietrich. Their first two films together, Morocco and the English language version of The Blue Angel, had both just opened in the U.S., creating a sensation...and big box office.

The 36-year-old von Sternberg, who during the silent era had been called "the young Austrian with a streak of genius," came into his own. Dietrich, at 29, finally achieved the fame that had eluded her during long years of lukewarm success in German films and cabarets. The two rushed into their next Paramount collaboration only weeks after Morocco wrapped.

Dishonored (1931) is a variation on the story of Mata Hari, a courtesan/spy of the World War I era. The film demonstrated von Sternberg's many talents; he directed and edited, wrote the story and composed original music for the film. More obvious to audiences gazing up from their theater seats, it showcased Dietrich's dazzling starpower.

As her screen persona assumed more irony and nuance, Dietrich the actress continued to evolve. Incredibly, she also seemed to grow ever more beautiful. The "painterly" von Sternberg, master of mise en scene, offers two particularly fine renderings in Dishonored: a Viennese streamer-and-balloon festooned masked ball and the film's final moments when Dietrich makes her way from a prison cell to a firing squad (see sidebar at right to watch).

By the time their fourth film was in production, Dietrich was becoming what Paramount had hoped for and MGM had feared, a formidable alternative to Garbo. Shanghai Express (1932), would become the most successful of the seven von Sternberg/Dietrich films.

Shanghai Express has been called "a vertible Grand Hotel on rails," the story of a group of passengers traveling through dangerous, war-torn China. Within this tale, the film is a fatalistic meditation on love, illusion and betrayal, and is one of von Sternberg's finest. The director overlooks no detail in the expression of his cinematic vision, with every shadow, texture, gesture and sound meshing precisely. The focal point of this deeply atmospheric excursion is, of course, Dietrich...in veils, feathers, ruffles, silk, chiffon and fur...mocking, sensual and other-worldly at the same time.



Shanghai Express, on the set


Thirty years later the director looked back and reflected that he didn't visit China until after he had made Shanghai Express. He mused, "The actual Shanghai Express, which I...took out of Peking, was thoroughly unlike the train I had invented, except that it, too, carried a protecting complement of armed military. I was more than pleased that I had delineated a China before being confronted with its vast and variegated reality. There is quite a difference between fact and fancy." He added, "I became more and more partial to fancy as I proceeded to make a fifth film with my fair lady..."

That film was Blonde Venus (1932). Though it has been called "a picaresque potboiler," it is, like all the films of the auteur and the legend, visually intoxicating. Among its charms are Dietrich in a fantastical and iconic musical number, "Hot Voodoo," and a young Cary Grant in one of his early major roles (months before She Done Him Wrong was released). Grant was well-matched with Dietrich, closer to Gary Cooper in Morocco than Victor McLaglen (Dishonored) or Clive Brook (Shanghai Express).

By 1932 the Great Depression had deepened, Paramount was in bankruptcy and von Sternberg's champion, studio head B.P. Schulberg, was no longer in power. The director, with his and Dietrich's studio contracts ending, announced that he would retire - to paint and read and build a house designed by architect Richard Neutra. But...he was also meeting privately with Jesse Lasky, who had moved from Paramount to Fox, and Charles Chaplin of United Artists.

For her part, Dietrich stated that she would never make pictures in the U.S. with anyone but Jo. If he retired she intended to return to Europe and the stage, she said, but she scoffed at charges that von Sternberg was her Svengali..."People have said he casts a spell over me. That is ridiculous...Can you think of anyone casting a spell over me?"

Part III to follow...scroll down for Part I...

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Light, Shadow and Synergy - von Sternberg and Dietrich, Part I

Josef von Sternberg is recalled first and foremost as the filmmaker who, 80 years ago, introduced the cinematic persona adopted by Marlene Dietrich as her own, on screen and off, for most of the rest of her life. It is less well known that before their fabled association von Sternberg had already earned a name for himself as an accomplished, if temperamental, director. His artistic reputation peaked during the years 1930 - 1935, when he directed seven films starring Dietrich.

Born in Vienna in 1894, he spent his childhood shuttling back and forth between Vienna and New York City as family fortunes mostly waned. By the time he was in his late teens he was in New York and apprenticed to a man who patched, cleaned and coated motion picture stock. At 20 he received his first film credit while rising through the ranks at World Film Corporation in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Von Sternberg made his debut as a director in 1925 with The Salvation Hunters, a picture that attracted attention. Underworld (1927), a "sleeper" that became a pioneering film of the gangster genre, made his reputation (for his contribution, Ben Hecht won the first Oscar given for Best Original Story). In 1928, he directed The Last Command starring Emil Jannings, who won the first Best Actor Academy Award for for his performance as well for his performance in The Way of All Flesh.

Just over a year later Jannings was slated to star in Germany's first full-length sound feature, Der Blaeu Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), and von Sternberg was tapped to direct. Against opposition, he insisted on casting Dietrich, then an actress/entertainer in Berlin, as the cheap cabaret singer who becomes the object of Jannings' obsession.



This was the beginning of a collaboration that made Dietrich an international star and forever entwined their two names. The Blue Angel caused a sensation in Europe and, before its release, von Sternberg was on his way back to Hollywood - such was industry word-of-mouth on the picture. His leading lady followed him immediately after the film premiered in Berlin (to rave reviews). Both signed with Paramount, though Universal and MGM also vied for Dietrich, and made six American movies together over the next five years.

When von Sternberg sailed for the U.S., Dietrich gave him a book to read on his voyage, Amy Jolly: Woman of Marrakesh. Not long after, and despite Dietrich's opinion that it was "weak lemonade," the story was adapted to the screen as Morocco (1930).

It was with Morocco that the evolution of the iconic Dietrich character truly began. Lola-Lola of The Blue Angel had been a tawdry temptress, raw and coarse. And though Dietrich's performance as the ammoral tart was electrifying, Josef von Sternberg had a different archetype in mind when he developed Morocco, the film that would introduce her to the United States, where The Blue Angel was not yet in release.

In her autobiography, Dietrich recalled, "I had terrible difficulties since I had to speak correct English and appear mysterious at the same time. An aura of mysteriousness has never been my forte. I knew what was expected of me, but I wasn't in a position to create this atmosphere. The Blue Angel had been something altogether different, the role of an ordinary, brazen, sexy and impetuous floozie, the very opposite of the 'mysterious woman' that von Sternberg wanted me to play in Morocco."

In his 1965 autobiography, Fun in a Chinese Laundry, von Sternberg remembered, "I had deliberately selected a theme that was visual and owed no allegiance to a cascade of words..."

Once Dietrich arrived on the West Coast she underwent the full Hollywood treatment. Her makeup was entirely redone (under von Sternberg's close supervision), she was assigned a voice coach and put on a diet and exercise regimen to slim down. Then Paramount photographers took portrait stills and Dietrich, awed, thought them, "the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life." The studio, soon realizing it had a potential superstar on its hands, rolled out a massive publicity blitz for its latest discovery...Voila! Dietrich was famous before either Morocco or The Blue Angel were released in America.

In his 1966 book, The Films of Josef von Sternberg, critic Andrew Sarris observed that the director had "...entered the cinema through the camera rather than the cutting room and thus became a lyricist of light and shadow..." In Morocco, this lyricism is revealed to full effect. With Dietrich its fabulous centerpiece, the film wraps itself around her like a long, sensuous caress...in von Sternberg's painstaking hands she is stunning, enigmatic, worldly, intriguing. The landscape of the film is a dream world...an atmospheric fantasy of escape into the exotic and the romantic. Gary Cooper and Adolphe Menjou add just the right accents as rivals of opposing types.

It was in Morocco that Dietrich created a commotion when she famously cross-dressed in a cabaret scene. About the sequence von Sternberg wrote that his intention was, in part, "to demonstrate that her sensual appeal was not entirely due to the classic formation of her legs." And he did.

Upon its release at the Rivoli Theatre in New York, Morocco broke box-office records; both the picture and its star received an avalanche of press coverage.

Much was made of the way von Sternberg showcased Dietrich in the film. One magazine article aptly observed that von Sternberg "not only gave the picture to Marlene; she took it."

Part II...coming soon...

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