Marlene Dietrich: The Last Goddess

Is 2012 the Year of the Costume?

2012-01-30T14:10:00.000-08:00

On the FIDM Museum blog, there's an announcement about the 20th Annual Art of Motion Picture Costume Design exhibition, which will run from February 14 through April 28, 2012. Naturally, at least one costume worn by Dietrich will be on display. Which one(s)? I don't know. Previously, the FIDM Museum blog has featured two items worn by Dietrich, one designed by Travis Banton and the other by Irene. If I understand this interview correctly, FIDM Museum has many items worn by Dietrich (the second-largest collection, in fact, after the MDCB) on long-term loan from a bureaucratic unit called the Department of Recreation and Parks, City of Los Angeles, Historic Hollywood Collection. Catchy name, no? Another FIDM Museum blog describes a cream dress and cape from Desire that was on display at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art in 2010. Whatever we get to see, we should be grateful. The exhibition's free!

Polskie Radio Gold

2012-01-28T09:13:00.000-08:00

Terry Sanderson pointed me to a recently-posted Polskie Radio interview that Marlene Dietrich gave during her first Warsaw concert appearance in 1964, which you can hear here. Typically, introductions and commentary are rife with well-known biographical facts, but hosts Anna Piwowarska and Peter Gentle share Poland-related Dietrichiana that make the entire program--not just the 1964 interview--worth hearing.

With anecdotes from Angelika Kuźniak's Polish-language biography on Dietrich, Marlene, the hosts blend the personal with the professional. Gentle calls Dietrich "eccentric" for bringing 35 suitcases, claiming to have thin eyelids, and cleaning her hotel bathroom with chloroform. Piwowarska speculates that Dietrich banned photography at her concert because the flash cameras would have exposed her mythical foundation. Imagine what Dietrich would do if faced with the TSA's full-body scanners!

Piwowarska and Gentle relate many more stories, but I do want to highlight a professional and Poland-related one: Czesław Niemen led Dietrich's warm-up band and performed "Czy mnie jeszcze pamiętasz?"--a song that Dietrich later recorded with self-penned German lyrics as "Mutter, hast Du mir vergeben?" EMI has already had this Dietrich track removed from YouTube, as far as I can tell, but you can purchase or preview it on Amazon.

Regarding the interview, Dietrich mentioned that she enjoyed the vodka and Russian champagne, that she took a trip to the Warsaw ghetto, and that she and Polish audiences shared a mutual love for sad songs--which would explain why she took to Nieman's song. While listening to the program, I also realized that the archived footage audio was used in Schell's documentary. I never knew that Dietrich was speaking to a Warsaw audience in that clip! By the way, Piwowarska stated that Dietrich conducted interviews in French and German, so Polskie Radio's likely got more in their archives worth exploring.

So much is said, so do take a listen! Oh, and if you want to see a photo of Dietrich from her 1964 Warsaw trip, see this Flickr link. For another clip, watch this.

Taking Shots at Lady Lush

2012-01-25T09:09:00.000-08:00

Tallulah Bankhead was an intoxicating character whose words you couldn't properly transcribe without italizing and CAPITALIZING, and--for years--I thought her surname was DARLING. Hopefully, we haven't already posted a clip from her 1950s NBC radio program, The Big Show, because I wouldn't want to commit the sin of repetition. On YouTube, many have already shared an excerpt from the January 7, 1951 show in which Dietrich guest starred, but the entire episode deserves a listen (even more than this lot legend about gold dust deserves a read). Available from Internet Archive, here it is:

When the guest stars introduce themselves, you may recognize some names associated with Dietrich: Fred Allen (whose Texaco Star Theater radio show featured Dietrich, readily available on TallulahDarling's YouTube page), Edward G. Robinson (Dietrich's Manpower co-star), and Danny Thomas (who went on that famous European USO tour with Dietrich).

During the show, Dietrich's appearance is hyped up, with Bankhead playfully demanding equal footing, as you'll hear in her exchange with singer Fran Warren.

WARREN: Oh, I'm very excited, Tallulah, what with Marlene Dietrich on the show. She's so glamorous!
BANKHEAD: Uh, I've heard that said about me, darling.
WARREN: And she's such an international celebrity.
BANKHEAD: I've heard THAT said about me, darling, TOO.
WARREN: I remember she was my ideal when I was a child!
BANKHEAD: And I've heard THAT said abou--UH! [laughs] OH, DARLING!

Once Dietrich makes her "appearance" 45 minutes into the show, it's one punchline after another. Dietrich then sings "Falling in Love Again" but not just the way she sang it--as Bankhead says--"35 years ago." This rendition features some over-the-top yet ethereal "ah-ah-ah"-ing choir, like in Mario Lanza's "Be My Love." Enjoy!

No Sky in the Eye's Way

2012-01-23T18:40:00.000-08:00

See the real "painted photograph" here

How cruel of magazine and newspaper editors to exclude Marlene Dietrich's trunk from all the fun. In the spirit of trash art, I've remixed an already-edited production still (on the right), dismissing Dietrich's face in favor of her apparently discarded torso, an exquisite physical feature carefully constructed by a solid foundation and almost as deserving of idol worship as her legs, whose beauty required no effort. Oh, you probably wanted to see the authentic edited picture. Well, click here and scroll down, where you'll find the No Highway in the Sky promotional shot that misleadingly blurs Dietrich's middle finger.

If you prefer to view the non-digital rendering of the analog-edited image, visit the Painted Photographs exhibit, which will run until March 18, 2012 at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. On display from photographer Martin Parr's private collection are the so-called "painted photographs" of celebrities such as Dietrich. Museum goers will see how the press used to crop photographs before the preeminence of digital editing tools such as Photoshop. What they'll think, I don't know, but Sean O'Hagan of The Observer aptly called these hand-edited images "a kind of found art."

Although Andre Breton comes to mind at the mention of found art, I wouldn't compare his work to this exhibit. Maybe Parr initially discovered a press-edited image by chance, but these photos eventually became objects that he consciously sought, given that they represent a collection that took years and trips to the United States to assemble. Instead, this exhibit reminds me of Marcel Duchamp's readymade works, such as the "Fountain" that I remember reading about years ago in some introductory art history course. It raises questions about authorship (Is it the work of the photographer, the pencil-wielding editor, Parr, blah, blah, blah?), artistic merits (Are these press images, which were originally produced for commercial purposes, art? The Open Eye Gallery's "About Us" page would have us believe they are.), and also defacement (Did press staff vandalize these images by scribbling on them?).

That Parr could put his flea market finds in a space devoted to displaying art answers the "Is it art?" question in the affirmative, as far as I'm concerned. As for the issue of vandalism, I wouldn't bother considering it. These images were made to be modified by publications; in fact, Phaidon upholds the practice by cropping the Dietrich image for their online article. Now, who's the author? That I can't answer. Dietrich might raise her hand from the grave, as it was, of course, her face that made the photo (and, obviously, that work of art was all the editors wanted from the shot).

Rapid Round-Up

2012-01-20T14:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, the 1930 Rolls-Royce Phantom that had appeared in Morocco sold for $524,000 at the Scottsdale, Arizona Bonhams auction.

The Guardian reported that the Banton-designed Angel gown will glitter at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London much later this year. The museum website, however, mentions Morocco?

Julian Casablancas of The Strokes interviewed Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek of The Doors, and Manzarek discussed being a student at UCLA, where he learned about butterfly lighting from Josef von Sternberg.

Add more in the comments section if I missed something recent.

The Story of His Life

2012-01-19T11:28:00.000-08:00

Photo found on MySpace. Click for (not much) more information.

The Associated Press has reported that Burt Bacharach will pen his memoirs, to be published by HarperCollins this November, and--no--it won't be called The Story of My Life. Because it's in the works, I'll post a wish-list of topics that Bacharach and his co-writer Robert Greenfield could address.

Did Burt ever compose any songs for Dietrich? If so, did she ever perform or record them? With that in mind, someone remind me whether Dietrich ever performed any Bacharach songs.

Well, that was brief, but it's been on my mind for a while. If Cher and Cilla Black got carte blanche to butcher Burt's tunes, Dietrich could have taken a stab at them as well. Bacharach appeared in that Dietrich hagiography attributed to Charlotte Chandler as well as in J. David Riva's documentary, Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song, but I hope to read some new tidbit in Burt's own book. What would you like to know?

Rapid Round-Up

2012-01-17T16:39:00.000-08:00

Dietrich, Garland, and Taylor all recognized Phil Silvers' appeal.

Who knew Dietrich was the queen of chavs?

Nevertheless, she still inspires scholars.

Oh, and you can still see Weegee!

Maria Riva on the Chinchilla Syndrome ... and a duet with Carol Channing!

2012-01-17T15:01:00.001-08:00

(Maria's comments on the "chinchilla syndrome" start at 2:47)

Maria's duet with Carol Channing on the Buick Berle Show is posted at the Internet Archive. (Her duet with Carol Channing is at 44:00)

See her cooking frankfurters at this link.

The Bump

2012-01-15T02:01:00.000-08:00

Steven Bach and Maria Riva described Marlene Dietrich's upturned nose as a flaw, but I never shared that view. If you want to see Dietrich in both her stylized and natural states, take a gander at A Certain Cinema, one of my favorite online collections of Dietrich photos. Among these images, I observe no duck, pug, pig or other animal nose. If Dietrich had any facial blemish, it would be the one that has become the object of my obsession whenever I watch her films on DVD, the one that I never notice in studio portraits--likely thanks to judicious retouching. By no means would I regard it as a blot, but I've fixated on it ever since I saw The Scarlet Empress at the Egyptian Theater, where--in the silver screen's magnified proportions--it first became apparent to me. I'm talking about the bump near her lower lip. Has anyone else ever pointed it out? Was it a wart, a scar, a concealed mole? I've never read anything of it. For those of you who may be rolling your eyes or scratching your heads, I've compiled a gallery of screenshots featuring THE BUMP.

EXHIBIT A: I'm ready for my close-up, Herr Lang.

What? You don't see it? How about now?

Of course, Alter had a few tricks up her sleeve--and in her makeup bag.

Frenchy, however, wasn't so keen with cosmetics.
You painted the wrong spot, you hussy!

Fortunately, soft focus and lighting were on her side to hide it?

But not on Lydia's, who missed the mark, too.

At least this old slapper got it right!

Otherwise, the bump would have given Christine away.

This screen capture features two bumps,
and one is lacking a cherry on top.

What a pity the lady and the judge hit a bump in their relationship--
they had such great onscreen chemistry.

The barely-there bump was even less discernible during Dietrich's youth and under
Sternberg's direction. Watch the Blonde Venus scene in which Helen reveals to Ned
what she did during his absence. Her face remains at a distance as you see above.

While his gets closer . . .

and closer . . .

AND CLOSER!

Only when custody comes up do Helen and the bump try to match Ned's snarl.

I think it's the pout that brings it out.

Lucy and Desi, how'd you two get here?!

Peekaboo! I still see you, bump!

Screen caps come from the following films: Rancho Notorious (1,2,3), Destry Rides Again (4,5), Golden Earrings (6), Witness for the Prosecution (7,8), The Spoilers (9), Judgment at Nuremberg (10), Blonde Venus (11,12,13,14,15), The Scarlet Empress (16,17), The Devil Is a Woman (18).

Mark Your Calendars!

2012-01-14T14:05:00.000-08:00

Dietrich looking godless in her final
Judgment at Nuremberg scene

On Tuesday, February 28th at 7:30pm, Terry Sanderson will once again present his Marlene Dietrich tribute, which will take place at Conway Hall in London. Tickets cost £10. At that reasonable price, not only will you see a popular show previously mentioned on this blog, you will also help fund Britain's National Secular Society. Read more about Sanderson's tribute here. Coincidentally, missladiva's recent post about Dietrich's phone conversations with Dick Cavett ties into this theme because Cavett noted that war had killed Dietrich's Protestant faith, and he cited her disillusionment with politicized clergymen who had vied for divine favor.

Aside from this announcement, I'd also like to express my appreciation to all of you who read this blog and comment on its posts. It appears that we've had a flurry of visitors today--496 page views as of this posting. Wherever all of you are finding us, I hope you take a moment to share your opinions. I started this blog to discuss Dietrich with others and am always happy to engage in conversations with you. In fact, a missladiva post that quoted Maria Riva has been this blog's top entry with over 150 page views today (1,253 overall), and--surprisingly--only two people have commented on it--missladiva and yours truly.

Schiaparelli for the Boys.

2012-01-14T07:54:00.000-08:00

Generating heat in the European winter, November 1944.

Streets of Paris

2012-01-14T06:02:00.000-08:00

Dietrich filming her cameo for "Paris When It Sizzles" (1962)

In Paris c. 1973, around the time of her performances at Espace Cardin.

Dick Cavett, Phone Flirt

2012-01-14T05:50:00.001-08:00

Dick Cavett writes an interesting column over at the New York Times about his telephonic friendship with Marlene during the 80s.

Banton. Dietrich. Angel.

2012-01-12T07:22:00.000-08:00

The MDCB reported in their latest newsletter about the sale (by Christie's) of a collection of Travis Banton costume designs for Marlene.

The sketch for Marlene's famous "million grains of golden caviar" dress from Angel fetched $ 10 000. The other sketches offered in the auction included Banton's design for the "Hot Voodoo" number from Blonde Venus.

In 2011 we reported about an earlier sale, which included Banton's designs for The Scarlet Empress. One of these is now housed in the AMPAS' Margaret Herrick Library Production Art collection.

At their website, they have an interesting interview with Adele Balkan, from their Oral History Program. Balkan worked as sketch artist for Paramount in the 30s; it was she who designed the beading pattern for Marlene's Angel gown.

The Academy is currently presenting an exhibition (which will run until 5 February) celebrating Paramount Pictures' centenary . Further information is available at their website.

Standing in the Corner

2012-01-07T08:23:00.001-08:00

Last year, a relatively unknown December 1948 portrait (below), of Marlene by Irving Penn, surfaced -- probably taken in Vogue's New York studios, it is one of his "corner studies".

Other subjects photographed in this fashion included the Duchess of Windsor, Noel Coward, Truman Capote and Spencer Tracy (the Tracy shot is used on the cover of James Curtis' new biography on the actor).

To Penn, this set-up was "a means of closing people in. Some people felt secure in this spot, some felt trapped. Their reaction made them quickly available to the camera," according to photo-seminars.com.

Whatever Penn's motivations may have been, Dietrich was not pleased with the result and refused the release of photos from this session -- although "Mutti" privately gave a print to her husband as a Christmas gift that year.

Christie's also auctioned some alternate shots from this shoot in April 2011 (right).

Shots from an previous shoot by Penn (also in 1948), have been widely published:

Leo Lerman Redux

2012-01-06T14:57:00.000-08:00

Some Leo Lerman journal entries about Marlene Dietrich have filled the pages of a new book, New York Diaries: 1609-2009. Its editor, Teresa Carpenter, included Dietrich-related highlights from Lerman's writings that had been published in 2007 under the title, The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman. Instead of sighing at the accounts of Dietrich's love-sickness, financial woes, and alcoholism that pervaded the Lerman book, you'll laugh again about Greta Garbo's unsanitary austerity, Dietrich's animated wig, Prince Philip's flirtations, and Andy Warhol's inability to distinguish Dietrich from Josephine Baker. Below are both books for you to compare:

New York Diaries: 1609-2009

The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman

Eve Arnold: Dietrich's "White-Haired Girl"

2012-01-05T18:08:00.000-08:00

Dietrich photographed by Arnold
during a 1952 Columbia recording session

I just read that Eve Arnold died on Wednesday. As you may know, Arnold photographed Dietrich at a Columbia recording session in 1952, the New York City Museum of Modern Art's (MOMA's) "An Evening with Marlene Dietrich" retrospective in 1959, and rehearsals at the Paris Olympia in 1962. My favorite Arnold photos were the high-contrast ones in which a grimacing and sometimes almost gurning Dietrich unintentionally mimicked the Cheshire Cat, so thoroughly absorbed in her work that her body parts vanished into the background--be it stage or studio.

In 2007, Jer wrote a post about Arnold's Dietrich portfolio at Magnum Photos, which I have deleted because he used a photo featuring the site's watermarks. Jer, if you're reading this, my apologies! For those of you interested in seeing what the site has to offer, try this link. If that fails, follow these instructions:

Go to www.magnumphotos.com
Click "Advanced Search"
Type "Marlene Dietrich" in the "Include Keywords" box
Select "Arnold, Eve" from the "Include Photographer" dropbox.
Click "Search"

Be aware that Magnum Photos has other Dietrich photos, which you can view by skipping step 4. As you may notice, the Arnold photo of Dietrich in this post will not appear in your search results, and I have seen several other Dietrich photos taken by Arnold not on that site (outtakes?), which you can find provided that you're willing to scour Google. If you want to know about Arnold's experiences working with Dietrich, read a chapter from her autobiographical work, Film Journal:

Marlene Dietrich, The Love Doctor

2012-01-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

Dietrich recording her Monitor segments
(Note: The earliest date stamp is Oct. 24, 1958--
NOT May 1964 as stated on the Wikipedia page)

Happy New Year, all! For my own amusement, I'm going to change the tone of my blog entries from time to time. If that rubs you the wrong way, go read Proust with Maximilian Schell. Or--better yet--join us in blogging about Dietrich! In particular, I'd like to see a woman blogger in our crew. If you're interested, email us at lastgoddessblog@gmail.com or comment on this post. Now, I'll return you to our irregularly scheduled entry. . . .

Back in the 1950s, Marlene Dietrich dispensed relationship advice on the NBC radio program, Monitor. Then, the public didn't know that they were tuning in to the wisdom of a grandmother who pined for the married Yul Brynner, but Dietrich's private adolescent woes could have made her public views all the more insightful. It's like having a shrink who plays with the dolls before she doles them out.

Of course, I jest. It just so happened that folks had been soliciting Dear Dietrich's guidance since World War II, and Dietrich aptly employed her approachability when less movie roles were coming her way.

Many of you may be asking where you can find recordings of Dietrich's segments. Well, I have the same question! All that Steven Bach told us was that Dietrich "purred," but he may have been at a loss for words because that's how he described most of Dietrich's radio contributions. If you know where we can hear Dietrich's love doctor routine, don't keep them to yourself! In the meantime, I'll just have to settle for the notion that Dietrich responded to every query by purring the words: "Use Heinz vinegar."

At the very least, I can direct you to audio on The Monitor Tribute Pages. Click here and listen to the clip called "John Bartholomew Tucker hosts Monitor '75 -- Saturday, January 25, 10-11 a.m. ET," which features a brief interview with Dietrich at about 11:15. What do you think about Dietrich's views regarding television? I respectfully disagree because I could never imagine anything as ethereal as the creatures that I've recently seen on T.V.:

Get More: TV Shows, Full Episode Video, Reality TV Shows

Maria Riva's Blind Items Pt. 4

2011-12-31T00:56:00.000-08:00

Click photo to visit Library of Congress site
for more information

One more post from me before the new year! I figured I may as well revive this series of blog entries, especially after discovering a photograph on the Library of Congress (LC) site--Marlene Dietrich, Rouben Mamoulian, and Amelia Earhart on the set of The Song of Songs. Purdue has a photo from the same shoot of just Dietrich and Earhart (although their metadata doesn't specify the film's name, it's clearly from The Song of Songs), as does Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin (MDCB). A copy of the photo that MDCB shared in the newsletter is also available for purchase at Ebay.

About the LC photo, unless the "Recently Processed Collections" page hasn't been updated in a while, it appears that the Rouben Mamoulian Papers have become the freshest crop of Dietrich-related resources available to researchers. Browse the finding aid to learn more about this collection, which includes correspondences between Mamoulian and Dietrich throughout the '30s, '40s, and even 1960, materials related to the production of The Song of Songs (e.g., correspondences, memoranda, photos, and a script), and a jeweled cigarette case that Dietrich gave to Mamoulian.

And now for the blind item!

Miriam, was it you?

Maria Riva described what I assume was the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, which rocked the set of The Song of Songs. A "well-known actress" whose name Dietrich couldn't remember told Dietrich to calm down during the quake and not worry about Maria back at the Marion Davies estate because her children were also in Santa Monica. Dietrich then crudely pointed out that this actress's children were adopted. Who was this victim of Dietrich's razor tongue?

My guess is Miriam Hopkins (a name Bette Davis never forgot), who would have been filming Paramount's The Story of Temple Drake around that time, but I'm not sure. As far as I can tell, Hopkins had only one adopted kid (Michael Hopkins), and I wouldn't be surprised if Dietrich made at least one disparaging comment about her looks in Maria's book.

Think it was another actress? Let me know!

Flickr Odds 'n' Ends Pt. 5

2011-12-30T00:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a light and airy entry I've whipped up before the New Year's festivities distract me, Dietrich and Gary Cooper on the set of Desire. You can see the pair in the same threads here (apologies in advance for the unsolicited soundtrack) and here (the first photo in the second row), but I'm posting this photo because the fellow who uploaded it has many more well-scanned classic Hollywood images. Click and see:

For those of us who don't read Dutch, I've been told this is a loose translation:

La Dietrich duranguense

2011-12-29T02:07:00.000-08:00


Andrea Palma, La mujer del puerto, 1934

Marlene Dietrich has influenced sundry entertainers, but I never knew that she became an archetypal performer within less than five years after her Hollywood debut, inspiring a fellow emigrant named Andrea Palma to transition from obscure milliner to iconic Mexican actress. I may be a smidge illiterate because I fail to notice in either Steven Bach or Maria Riva's tomes any mention of Palma.

Born Guadalupe Bracho in 1903 from a good Durango family, Andrea Palma was the cousin of two other famous Mexican stars, Dolores del Rio and Ramon Novarro, and the sister of director Julio Bracho (if you read Spanish, check out the biographical chronicle that informs this post, Los Bracho: tres generaciones de cine mexicano, by Jesus Ibarra). Of course, we're familiar with the dolorously gorgeous del Rio, whose beauty Dietrich admired (that Maria did confirm in her book). Even though I'd rather swim with the fishes than fantasize about them, I'm aware that some of you may find it titillating to imagine del Rio attending those mythical sewing circle shindigs.

Certainly, it wouldn't be fair to let del Rio upstage this post when the spotlight should fall on Palma. Growing up in Mexico City, Palma studied millinery and helped support her family with her skills, making her first hat sale at the age of 17. According to Ibarra, Ramon Novarro invited the teenaged Palma to stay in Hollywood for a few months. Despite respecting her father's wishes by not visiting any movie studios, Palma was bit by the acting bug. Back in Mexico City, Palma designed hats for theater actors, parlaying her connections to practice her nascent acting prowess onstage.

Eventually, Palma returned to Hollywood, but she never quite abandoned her first career. In fact, her stage name harked back to it, "Andrea" from the hat shop she had opened--called Casa Andrea--and "Palma" from Calle Palma--the street on which the hat shop La Ciudad de Londres, her former employer, was located. Furthermore, Palma used her hat-making skills to develop a relationship with Dietrich.

A quinquagenarian Dietrich in a Dior turban,
which did suit her, especially in this famous photo

If Ibarra's account is true, Dietrich expressed doubt in the ability of North Americans to make hats and told Palma that only turbans suited her. Either Dietrich had spent too much time around the gringos or Ibarra had never seen Marlene strut in a top hat or swipe an officer's cap because Palma supposedly convinced her that any hat would complement her face. When Dietrich borrowed Palma's beret, she liked it and commissioned six more hats from Palma, who apparently became Dietrich's personal milliner during the filming of Blonde Venus (see the "Miscellaneous Crew" section) as well as a personal assistant of sorts who handled Dietrich's makeup.

Is that you in there, Andrea?

Wikipedia editors also purport that Palma was Dietrich's stunt double, and although Palma lumbering in the gorilla suit would make for thrilling trivia, I can't find any sources that confirm this. If Maria Riva never mentioned her, I would guess that her home confinement during the Lindbergh copycat kidnapping scare prevented her from meeting Palma, who may have only maintained a professional bond with Dietrich. Thus, I'm only left to wonder whether these hats were Palma's designs:

flophouse floozy | maternal kept girl | stage sargeant

Soon after her behind-the-scenes role in Blonde Venus, Palma returned to Mexico, where an opportunity arose that echoed Dietrich's ascent to fame in The Blue Angel. The Russian director, Arcady Boytler, could not find an actress who fit the type he had in mind for his film, La mujer del puerto (The Woman of the Port). Until he saw Palma in a movie reel. Less convinced was Boytler's assistant director, Rafael J. Sevilla, and Palma had to prove herself by filming a screen test. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Aside from biographical similarities, Ibarra mentioned that Palma imitated Dietrich's appearance and voice in her first starring film role, and Palma's recollections indicate that she spent her time in Hollywood--and around Dietrich--like an apt pupil. In Vino todo el pueblo: Notes on Monsiváis, Mexican Movies and Movie-Going, Andrea Noble quoted Palma (via de la Vega's Arcady Boytler, 1893-1965) as saying that she absorbed every detail--from walking, to false eyelashes, to proper camera angles. Palma even adopted Dietrich's practice of checking herself in a mirror while filming scenes. If you're still dubious, take a look at this 1935 newspaper article, which also credited Dietrich as Palma's cinematic sensei.

Thanks to YouTube, you can watch the results of Palma's Hollywood "schooling" in the film that started it all, La mujer del puerto. My apologies for the lack of subtitles, but you can at least read a synopsis and appreciate the visuals:

To say that La mujer del puerto evoked the fallen woman's tale of Blonde Venus would diminish its shocking impact. Dietrich may have played prostitutes, but her characters never matched the depravity of Palma's Rosario, who committed incest. Compared to Guy de Maupassant's "Le port," the literature that inspired Dietrich's films was indeed "weak lemonade." Even the camp value of Boytler and Palma's collaboration challenged Sternberg and Dietrich's oeuvres. Forget raining on parades! The confetti and streamers that congested the Dishonored party scene were abruptly obfuscated by a funeral in La mujer del puerto (see this scene).

In spite of similarities between Dietrich and Palma's poise, Palma's acting style was far less reticent (compare Rosario's abandon to Shanghai Lily's), and she forwent her beauty for more natural lighting. Nevertheless, Palma's posing uncannily reflected Amy Jolly's ennui, and her languid gestures, stares, and blinks could lure men just as Dietrich's did. If Dietrich was the laziest gal in Hollywood, Palma must have been the laziest in Mexico City, and I would swear I hear her counting her pauses before she uttered her throaty lines.

Marlene 110

2011-12-27T08:15:00.001-08:00

A birthday surprise!

Christmas

2011-12-24T21:55:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays, here's two shots of my fave Kylie Minogue wearing a coat and dress that look very familiar. From a Dec 17th, British Comedy Awards show

Happy Holidays, All!

2011-12-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

Whatever you may celebrate as this year winds down, I'm sure Marlenemas is the most holy of your holidays. I'll spread some seasonal cheer by posting Klaus Nomi's video for "Falling In Love Again":

Dietrich's Fashion Advice for Dionne Warwick

2011-12-20T13:50:00.000-08:00

Dionne Warwick's book, My Life, As I See It: An Autobiography, contains a funny anecdote about Marlene Dietrich tossing her clothes out because they were mere prêt-à-porter. Dietrich then played Warwick's fashion godmother by giving her a Balmain dress, which Warwick modeled on her Here I Am album cover (see left). Aside from gifts, Dietrich treated Warwick to her wisdom, such as the criteria for choosing a gown. No wonder Warwick called Dietrich "Momma"!

Now for dry technicalities. Did the Olympia concert in Paris, where Dietrich gave Warwick her big break, take place in 1963 or 1964? Warwick's book says the latter, while her official site lists the former. Whatever the case may be, I hope you enjoy reading from Warwick's book below:

Dishonored/Shanghai Express DVD!

2011-12-19T22:59:00.000-08:00

Thank you, TCM Vault, for releasing Dietrich's flicks on DVD in the U.S.! The latest release is a two-disc double feature with Dishonored and Shanghai Express.

You can pre-order the item now, which should ship starting February 6, 2012. Check this out, and don't forget to use the promotion code "nextday."

Totally unrelated to this news, someone give me the scoop on the movie My Fair Lidy, which screened at the Orlando Film Festival back in October. From reading blogs and watching the clandestine trailer, I only know that the star--Christopher Backus--plays a blue-collar straight guy who earns cash by dressing in Dietrich drag. It sounds like a tale of the Panhandle meeting the Keys, and I hope I won't have to trek all the way to Palm Springs to see it next year.

Dior Trick?

2011-12-19T12:57:00.000-08:00

I've been reading that Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, and Marilyn Monroe were digitally included in the Charlize Theron J'Adore Dior "movie" (is this what we're calling commercials nowadays?) that premiered this fall, but that Lola Lola doesn't look like a CGI Dietrich to me. Rather, she's a beautiful impersonator, no? If this doppelganger has any acting skills, maybe she can play Dietrich now that Gwyneth Paltrow thankfully no longer has the biopic listed on her IMDB page.

Venus, Untouched

2011-12-19T01:55:00.000-08:00

I recalled that missladiva had mentioned Dietrich's involvement with the play, "One Touch of Venus," when I came across a biography of its producer, Cheryl Crawford. Even though "Surabaya Johnny" with musical saw accompaniment sounds like roaring camp, I can't believe Dietrich wormed her way out of two original Kurt Weill projects during her career. Aside from this play, which eventually became a star vehicle for Mary Martin (listen to her lush rendition of "Too Soon" with Kenny Baker here), Dietrich never recorded "Der Abschiedsbrief" back in 1933, which Weill apparently wrote with her in mind.

To read more about "One Touch of Venus," see:

Also, read this for more on "Der Abschiedsbrief" and--even more surprising--a proposed Dietrich-Sternberg-Weill movie musical proposal that fizzled:

Others have speculated that Weill's compositions were too vocally demanding for Dietrich, but Weill tailored songs to his wife Lotte Lenya's voice, which Dietrich could have easily sung as well, knowing how to compensate for her weak diaphragm by emoting. In fact, many utterly unimpressive vocalists have put their spin on Weill compositions over the years (e.g., The Doors' version of "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)" and Louis Armstrong's take on "Mack the Knife"). If I must settle for "Surabaya Johnny," though, someone please let me know whether any recordings of Dietrich's performance exist.

Tsk, tsk, Daily Mail

2011-12-16T10:12:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, I blogged about Dietrich's Rolls Royce featured in Morocco. Daily News has reported more on that car, which Bonhams expects to sell for around $0.5 million next month, and the article has used what appears to be the screen captures that I made. I don't care that people take content from this blog, but how tasteless of them to pass those images off as their own copyrighted material. I hate to sound so "kumbaya," but we should be sharing our sources when we spread information instead of presenting ourselves as the harbingers of facts for the sake of profit.

Gypsyface

2011-12-16T00:26:00.000-08:00

When I babble about Marlene Dietrich's film characters, I tend to revert to her name, but the loner Lydia in 1947’s Golden Earrings was a creation that I regard as a true alter ego, paralleling in some respects personas such as Amos 'n' Andy. Like that pair, Lydia presented ethnic/racial stereotypes for comical effect, yet these characters diverge in terms of their historical background. Although blackface has been traced as far back as the Middle Ages in France, the blackface minstrelsy that tapped into American culture had developed during the early nineteenth century. As for Gypsyface, the only instances that I know to have preceded Golden Earrings were stage and screen renditions of Victor Hugo's novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Please tell me more about these adaptations because the 1939 film version is the earliest one that I’ve seen. In that film, the Gypsies don’t prominently embody comical stereotypes; rather, some are bestowed with sharp wit. Of course, Maureen O'Hara as Esmeralda was so fair that I would more likely mistake her for an Irish Traveller.

In contrast to O’Hara’s gypsy performance, Dietrich’s Lydia embodied the phenotype, attire, and accoutrements of a Hollywood Gypsy (see here): a horse-drawn wagon, greasy black hair, bronze skin, a torn skirt, head kerchiefs, and gold coins strewn in her hair and sewn on her clothes. Lydia was also gifted with a Gypsy's supposed sixth sense: spewing garrulous curses, reading the mind of Ray Milland's character Col. Ralph Denistoun, and telling fortunes. When Lydia's supernatural powers couldn't aid her, she relied on superstitious rituals such as marking her chin to guard herself from the evil eye. In contrast to her broken sentences with omitted articles and botched conjugation, Lydia peppered her vocabulary with Romani words such as “gadze” (also spelled "gadje"--a non-Gypsy), German words such as “Liebling,” and Hungarian words such as “istenem,” evoking an exaggerated creole that Gypsies would speak after encountering multiple languages during their international wanders. By stealing apples and a coat, Lydia flouted concepts of ownership in a caricatured Gypsy fashion, too.

Aside from Lydia, other characters contributed to this barrage of Gypsy memes, such as Murvyn Vye's character Zoltan, who boasted of his fertility by claiming to have “thirty--and three” children and praised Denistoun for eating with his fingers. As far as Lydia was concerned, Denistoun’s visual trappings did not suffice until he pierced his ears to wear the film’s titular Gypsy symbol--a pair of golden earrings. Gypsy characterizations sometimes overlapped Black stereotypes as well, with Denistoun stealing a chicken from a coop. Paradoxically, this farcical imagery underscored the severity of Denistoun’s situation--survival in hostile territory. By upholding Gypsy tropes, Denistoun evaded his Nazi enemies and continued his espionage. In fact, Denistoun was able to reconvene with his colleague and learn about the Gestapo's actions under the pretext of telling fortunes. If Gypsies were the film’s archetypal tricksters, Denistoun was a metatrickster because he fooled friends and enemies to believe he was merely an errant buffoon.

With a penchant for reason, Denistoun resembled Shanghai Express’s Captain “Doc” Harvey when he told Lydia she would go to jail in England for her “hocus pocus.” Denistoun, however, suggested that the Lord’s Prayer could substitute spitting in a river before crossing a bridge, as if that act were any less ritualistic. While reading his colleague's palm, Denistoun unexpectedly foresaw his colleague's demise and later expressed to Lydia his doubt in his rationalist views. All along, Denistoun shared traits associated with Gypsies, which corroborated his realization, “Gypsy, gadze. Gadze, gypsy. It's all one, Lydia.”Indeed, Denistoun expressed assumptions about Gypsies (“I thought Gypsies always travelled around in caravans”), but Lydia and Zoltan also revealed their ignorance of gadzes. For example, Zoltan asked Denistoun whether gadzes bathe every day and blamed his father's early death on the baths the Hungarian army had forced him to take. Also, Lydia made an observation about gadzes that resembled the concept of white privilege: “You suckle pride and become ruler of world at your mother’s breast.” Perhaps you agree with Lydia’s statement, but my point in this context is that Gypsies saw gadzes as The Other just as gadzes saw Gypsies. In some later Hollywood productions, Gypsy characters exploited gadzes’ perception of them as exotic outsiders and used this status to con unsuspecting gadzes and elicit audience laughter. See this 1966 episode of The Andy Griffith Show:

Unlike this clip, serious references to ethnic persecution pervade the dialogue of Golden Earrings. Soon after meeting Denistoun, Lydia claimed that her husband had no papers, and that “they”--the gadze authorities--took them. Later, Lydia’s statements about gadzes became overtly bitter, such as, “In old days, they hunt us like wolves,” and, “One day in this accursed land, they will kill all of us.” Toward the film’s end, Lydia, Zoltan, and Denistoun boldly approached a home where high-ranking Nazi officials had met, and a houseguest declared, “We of the master race should not contaminate ourselves.” It was as if the film dealt with historical atrocities against Jews such as pogroms and the Holocaust through Gypsy allegory. Gypsies, too, were victims of genocide, and even though Golden Earrings did not entirely overlook prejudices against Gypsies, it did diminish the brutality that Gypsies endured during the Porrajmos by portraying Gypsies who roamed relatively freely through Nazi territory. Even the saccharine character development of Lydia couldn’t compensate for this historical omission, nor could her endorsement by a respectable Englishman like Denistoun: “You are the most wonderful person I ever met. Your generosity, and your warmth and affection, and your loyalty and devotion--you spill over with it.” The only other movie I know of that addressed both the persecution of Gypsies and Jews was The Man Who Cried, which I admittedly must watch again because I haven’t seen it in about a decade. If you've seen the film, please discuss it.

Of course, I can’t forget a woman who racked up three Billboard #1 hits in the 1970s by performing in ethnic drag--Cher. In addition to Bob Mackie’s peekaboo style, the imagery of Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” performance (see below) was rife with exotic Gypsy stereotypes, in contrast to the seemingly intimate lyrics that conveyed the desolation in which Gypsies lived as pariahs. Before the Kardashians, who made Armenian ancestry a brand, Cher had an exotic look that didn't fit the All-American mold. Thus, it's no wonder she performed as lyrical characters of Gypsy and Native American descent. Dietrich also played various ethnic parts, which her foreign image in the U.S. allotted her, but Lydia represented such a drastic departure from Dietrich's usual appearance that it came off as parody. Since her arrival to the U.S., Dietrich had perfected her international sensuality, and Golden Earrings was a unique film in which Dietrich clowned around with her non-native status, comparable only to that dumpy milkmaid disguise in 1931's Dishonored.

P1167 in Hollywood

2011-09-22T17:23:00.000-07:00

P1167 at her home, on the lot, and around town. Good publicity!

Dietrich vs. Garbo

2011-09-20T17:15:00.000-07:00

Even before she arrived in the US, Dietrich was being compared with Garbo by critics; today, the two are still compared. In 1938, Photoplay compared the two and declared Garbo the "winnah!". What's your take on these endless comparisons between the two?

Glamour!

2011-09-17T17:04:00.000-07:00

In 1938, fan magazine Photoplay revealed how their readers too, could cultivate that Dietrich allure.

French Radio's Marlene Tribute

2011-09-15T16:55:00.000-07:00

In August, France Culture broadcast a series of five programmes dedicated to Dietrich.

Subjects include Marlene's love life, her role as muse and the Dietrich-Sternberg collaborations. Archive interviews with Marlene are used, as well as new interviews with Silke Ronneburg and Werner Sudendorf (from the Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin), Jean-Jacques Debout (whose songs Marlene recorded), Marlene's friend Louis Bozon and her grandson Peter Riva.

You can listen to the programmes on France Culture's site. The programmes are in French.

Monday Marlene

2011-07-18T06:12:00.000-07:00

A few candid shots of Marlene, currently on ebay:

Marlene in London, October 1950.

Dietrich and Brian Aherne, suited, April 1933.

Marlene and Brian Aherne go to the movies, September 1934.

Arriving in New York, December 1939.

Unissued Marlene: Aus der Jugendzeit (1954)

2011-07-16T15:01:00.000-07:00

Marlene performs "Aus der Jugendzeit", one of a set of unissued recordings made in July 1954 for Columbia Records. The orchestra is directed by Jimmy Carroll.

Candidly Marlene

2011-07-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

Some interesting candid shots of Marlene from various old newspaper archives have shown up on ebay recently (many offered by this seller):

With Rouben Mamoulian (November 1935)

On the set of "Angel" with Herbert Marshall (December 1937)

With Van Heflin and Claude Rains during a radio broadcast of "Madame Bovary"

On the set of "Desire" (November 1935).

Marlene Dietrich vs Peggy Lee

2011-07-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

Marlene and Peggy Lee offer their interpretations of When The World Was Young:

Marlene Dietrich, live in London (1972).

Peggy Lee on The Judy Garland Show, 1963.

Derek Prouse Interviews Marlene Dietrich: "I Hated Being A Film Star" (1964)

2011-07-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

Derek Prouse interviewed Marlene Dietrich in December 1964.

What clues does the flat in the elegant Avenue Montaigne afford to the character of its celebrated occupant?

An uncountable mould of suit cases in the hall; a salon impersonally furnished, the décor of a constant traveller, a purposeful book case whose books are clearly there to be read: Goethe, Scott Fitzgerald, the collected scripts of Ingmar Bergman; a large photograph of General de Gaulle inscribed: “Pour Madame Dietrich – en temoinage d’admiration pou son magnifique talent.”

Dietrich enters: one feels instantly that here is a shy and private woman; the flowers one has brought to her she holds almost defensively before her face; this is a subtle way of saying “thank you” without words. She places them attentively in a large vase on a desk, and it capriciously keels over. Suddenly we are under the desk in a spreading pool of water and spiteful rose stalks. The ice is broken.

Out of the busy coming and going of the mopping-up operation a few random phrases are speared: “I’m not a myth” . . . “I never see the Press … why should I?” . . . “America? A country can stay young for too long. Everything that is new is still automatically the best there” . . . “The thirties? Who wants to hear about old films nowadays?”

“I do,” one asserts. Obviously, sooner or later we must speak of The Blue Angel and the man whose name was inseparably linked with hers for so long, Josef von Sternberg.

“Well, Mr von Sternberg came to the theatre to see some actors he wanted for The Blue Angel and I happened to be in the play. That was towards the end of ’29. I was at the Max Reinhardt theatre school in Berlin. (There’s not much done in the theatre today, and called new, that Reinhardt didn’t do first.)

“Reinhardt had four theatres in Berlin and in the evenings we students would have to go around saying ‘The horses are saddled’ in the first act of this play or ‘Here’s a letter for you, Madam’ in the third act of another – as part of our training.

“After the success of The Blue Angel I just went with Mr von Sternberg to America for one film. One film – and then if I didn’t like the place I would be allowed to leave. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gone; I wanted no seven-year contract or anything like that. I had to look at the country first; I didn’t know if it was good enough for my child. Then I saw it was good and brought her over and my husband came whenever he could; he was working here in Paris for Paramount. But then Hitler came in and we got stuck in America. The film I liked best? The one that had the least success: The Devil is a Woman.

“And after you left von Sternberg?”

“I didn’t leave Sternberg (the faintly weary voice suddenly rises in passionate assertation; the only time the deferential “Mr” is forgotten). “He left me! That’s very important. In my life he was the man I wanted to please the most. He decided not to work with my any more and I was very unhappy about that, before that, Mr von Sternberg had picked Rouben Mamoulian to direct Song of Songs and I love Mamoulian because of his kindness to me at that time. It was the first time I’d worked without Mr von Sternberg and I behaved atrociously. I thought I’d never do anything again since he left me.

“Perhaps I’m wrong to say I was unhappy – you can’t be made really unhappy by something you’re not interested in. My heart was never in that work. I had no desire to be a film actress, to always play somebody else, to be always beautiful with somebody constantly straightening out your every eye-lash. It was always a big bother to me. And I hated the stupid publicity that was created around one.”

“Like that much publicised feud with Mae West, for instance?”

“Not at all true. She was very kind to me. And she’s such a witty woman.”

The voice was becoming low, almost distant. “No. It’s so difficult playing somebody else. I like playing myself.”

“Is that way you prefer working in cabaret?”

“Cabaret!” (Suddenly, it might by Lady Bracknell confronted with the handbag.) “I never play in cabaret! I play in theatres; that’s quite different. Oh yes, I did play the Café de Paris in London and Las Vegas but that was five years ago, now I sing the songs I like to sing. I have no script and no director; I don’t have to waste my energy explaining why I want something like this and not like that; I don’t have to fight with anybody or say ‘Please let me do this.’ I explain to nobody why I come in from the right, the left or the centre. I stand or fall by my own decisions. No front-office interference; just my conductor, Burt Bacharach, and me. He is my only critic; if he says ‘Don’t do a song,’ I don’t do it.”

Dietrich’s long career has not been without its perilous impasses; at the end of her association with von Sternberg her stock was dangerously low in Hollywood. With Desire, that witty film directed by Frank Borzage in which she played an international jewel thief, she swept back into favour.

But it was at Universal that she made one of the greatest and most unpredictable successes: In Destry Rides Again, gone were all the glamorous trappings; the atmosphere of aloof, impregnable mystery that had always been her stock-in-trade was exploded. Instead, a brawling saloon-entertainer in the West, dodging guns and belting out “See what the boys in the backroom will have.” Was this transformation Dietrich’s own idea?

“No it was Joe Pasternak’s. He made the decision.”

“And you were in favour of it?”

“I needed the money.” Flat factual and forthright, this statement imposes a pause.

“But you must have enjoyed it.”

“No! (a protesting cry.) I – never – enjoyed – working – in – a – film. You have to get up at the crack of dawn, and then you have to get prettied up all day long and every hair has to match the next day and 60 000 people fool around with you. It is just awful. Anyone who enjoys that … (the voice trails away in speechless stupefaction).

“But I was grateful for one thing: the big legend that the Paramount publicity machine built up did, paradoxically, afford me privacy. I never like to talk about myself: I think that no one has a right to know about one’s private life and private affairs. Mr von Sternberg said: you have to give the magazines something to print so the glamorous legend was fine, even if there wasn’t a word of truth in it.” (The “legend” that was exhaustively “plugged” during the thirties implied that Dietrich was a Trilby manipulated by von Sternberg, her dark and mysterious Svengali.”
“But now I do the work I enjoy. I’ve toured South America. I’ve played all the Scandinavian countries, Russia, Israel, Holland and many others.

“But you always come back to Paris?”

“Everybody loves Paris – even Hitler didn’t dare to push the button. And Paris has always recognised artists; it understood von Sternberg and it understands Orson Welles. When I talk with him I feel like a plant that has been watered.

“And in Paris there is freedom: they let you live and nobody bothers you. You can do what you want, live with whom you want, and that’s wonderful – no? They are so full of their own lives that they have no time to bother about anybody else’s. I can go to the meat man and buy my meant and nobody pesters me. They say ‘Bonjour Madame Marlene’ and pass me by.”

Dietrich moves out on to the balcony. The Avenue looks bleak and anonymous but to her seems beautiful. “They’ve cut down my trees,” she murmurs wistfully. Chekov has taken over. But the telephone soon snaps her back to her intense professional world.

“I’ve just made a new record. I produced it myself. Fifteen songs of Berlin; songs of the town in the old days. Berlin always had something special; it was always in island. An island with its special kind of tragic wit without self-pity and without reverence.”

I recall Johnny, which Dietrich first recorded in 1929 and which is in her recent long-player. She sings in German:

Johnny, when you have a birthday
Come and be my guest
For the night.

The singer, the song and the invitation seem to have gained with the years. The spell is potent and not easily broken.

I left, remembering Jean Cocteau, who told me just before his death that he had arranged to hire a copy of Shanghai Express (one of Dietrich’s early Hollywood successes). “I wanted so much to see ‘chere Marlene’ once more,” he said.

One sees what he meant: a legend can often boomerang, but Dietrich, by hard work and artistry, has kept hers meaningful and alive.

Who's Afraid of Marlene Dietrich?

2011-07-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

Here's Marlene Dietrich in her shiny black rain jacket with her "pet hate" Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Although Taylor appears either awe-stricken or amused by the legend standing before her, Dietrich seemingly ignores Taylor--perhaps exchanging Richard Burton's furtive glance? According to the account quoted here, both ladies unsheathed their claws, with Taylor emerging victorious. That didn't stop Dietrich--always such a gracious competitor--from generously bestowing Taylor with her title as the world's most glamorous grandmother.

Throwing Shade: Homophobia In Riva's Dietrich Bio? Pt. 1

2011-06-27T01:14:00.000-07:00

First and foremost, this blog entry represents my participation in the Garbo Laughs Queer/LGBTQ Blogathan. I look forward to continuing my exploration of queer/LGBTQ topics and encourage others to do the same. In this blog entry, I will give you some definitions of terms I'll use and then explore whether Maria Riva's biography, Marlene Dietrich, contains examples of homophobia.

With that said, I encourage you to use “throwing shade,” “homophobia,” “homosexuals,” “homosexuality,” and any other terms in the comments section. For the sake of mutual understanding, I only ask that you clarify what these terms mean in your comments if they differ from my definitions. Here's an example of why it's important to understand how people use terms in different ways. In May, a mother in Los Angeles calls her son in Melbourne to ask him, “When are you going to visit me?” The son says, “Some time during the summer.” June, July, and August pass, and the son has not even mentioned visiting his mother, infuriating her. At the end of September, the mother calls her son to confront him, “Why did you say you were going to visit me in summer if you never had any intention of doing so?” Taken aback, the son says, “What? It's not even summer yet!” Then, the son—who has been living in Melbourne for decades—realizes why his mother is confronting him and reminds her, “Oh, mom! We misunderstood each other! Summer in the Southern Hemisphere doesn't begin until December!” If the mother and the son had simply understood each other's different uses of terms, no hurt feelings would have resulted—at least, not because of the terms.

Now, here's how I'm using the following terms:

Throwing shade - to criticize, demean, or insult; to diss or derogate (from here).

Homophobia – Throwing shade at homosexuals' homosexuality.

Homosexuals – People who express romantic and/or sexual attraction toward or practice romantic and/or sexual acts with others of the same sex or gender (adapted from here).

Homosexuality – Expressing romantic and/or sexual attraction toward or practicing romantic and/or sexual acts with others of the same sex or gender.

MARIA RIVA'S BIOGRAPHY

In his March 5 1993 Entertainment Weekly (EW) review of Maria Riva's Marlene Dietrich, George Hodgman stated the following: “The catalog of lovers is interminable, moving across gender lines and back again. Riva is obviously uncomfortable with her mother's bisexual tendencies and her large gay following. The case that she builds against her mother for trying to encourage homosexuality in the young girl by leaving her with a lesbian nanny is shoddy and homophobic.” Due perhaps to word limits, Hodgman did not supply examples of how Riva expressed her discomfort, and he omitted an important detail: Riva wrote that the lesbian nanny had raped her. If I accept Riva's admission of rape as truth, I would posit that Riva's speculation regarding why her mother chose a lesbian nanny was not homophobic; rather, the homophobia in Riva's case rests in how she characterized her lesbian nanny: “Strangely, I never really blamed that woman. She frightened me, disgusted me, harmed me, but 'blame'? Why? Lock an alcoholic into a liquor store and he helps himself—who's to blame? The one who takes what is made available or the one who put him there? Even an innocent parent would not have put a young girl into an unsupervised, wholly private environment with such a visually obvious lesbian.” Not only did Riva compare lesbianism to an addiction, she also asserted that a blatant lesbian shouldn't be a girl's primary caretaker, thus throwing shade at “obvious” lesbians as sexual predators with an appetite for female children. By the way, a 2010 study showed that ZERO percent of its adolescent participants had reported sexual abuse by a lesbian mother or other lesbian caretaker. While this study was flawed in its nonrandom, non-diverse, and small sample, its findings suggest that the experience that Riva suffered was a singular exception. Unless, of course, the sample was composed of only lipstick lesbians.

If you want to explore Hodgman's observation that Riva was “obviously uncomfortable with her mother's bisexual tendencies and her large gay following,” please consider addressing it in the comments section because I won't investigate it at this time. Instead, I will explore whether there were any other instances of homophobia in Riva's book by examining her descriptions of homosexuals. Keep in mind that I will continue listing people in future blog entries--this is only the beginning!

Banton & Dietrich on Angel set

Travis Banton (see this blog entry for another photo of him with Dietrich) – I don't know whether Banton was homosexual, but some sources report that he was. Riva did not overtly mention his sexuality in her book; in fact, she recalled that she “liked him. No matter what time of day, and that could mean anywhere from six a.m. To two a.m., Travis looked like one of his sketches—elegant, with a kind of razzmatazz.” Riva also praised Banton for treating his staff kindly and crediting him for introducing her to American cuisine, with no hints of homophobia.

Mercedes de Acosta

Mercedes de Acosta – Riva threw ample shade at de Acosta, calling her “a Spanish Dracula,” implying that she wasn't a skilled screenwriter, and stating that her renown derived from her romance with Greta Garbo. Throwing shade at homosexuals wouldn't alone count as homophobia according to my definitions, though. Riva would have to throw shade at their homosexuality, and I don't see anything homophobic in Riva's countless jabs at de Acosta. Rather, Riva seemed to tease de Acosta's purple prose (particularly de Acosta's “highly romantic pseudonyms”) and tedious romantic efforts (“She was so 'smitten,' she was boring!”).

The “boys” (see this blog entry for their possible identities) – Riva referred to them as “comic relief,” “an odd couple,” “their kind,” “scavengers,” and “homosexual cons.” The use of the word “homosexual” was gratuitous, but I don't consider the shade that Riva threw to be homophobic. Riva was describing a particular group of gossipy sycophants who happen to be gay, and she cleverly quoted a gay man, Clifton Webb, as calling the boys “Dietrich's private Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”

The Pirate (right)

The “Pirate” (see this blog entry for her possibly identity) – Riva buried this woman's looks in shade. Despite describing that the Pirate as “a sexy, flat-chested woman” first mistaken as “a sexy boy,” Riva compared her to a rhinoceros. Poking fun at a person's looks doesn't constitute homophobia, though, and the preceding comments that Riva did make regarding the Pirate's masculinity were not demeaning.

Well, here's where I'll end this blog entry, and I will pick up from where I left off to continue reviewing whether Riva wrote homophobic portrayals of others, including Edith Piaf and Noel Coward.

Weekend Youtube

2011-06-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

Marlene sings "When I'm Not Near the Girl (Man) I Love" live in Las Vegas, 1955 (unissued recording).

Marlene reads Goethe to Max Colpet on his birthday in 1989.

On Hollywood Memorabilia And Museums

2011-06-23T02:33:00.000-07:00

Unrelated photo of M.D. and Billy Wilder from here

Recently, I read a blog entry about the Debbie Reynolds auction that prompted me to write a lengthy comment. The comment is pending the blog owner's approval, but I want to post it here to initiate a dialogue with all of you regarding the role and responsibility of museums to manage Hollywood memorabilia. I'll edit it to give you all a better understanding because I make a lot of local Los Angeles references and--as you have perhaps already observed--often correct typos and undesirable diction.

Thanks for posting what may be the most comprehensive overview of Debbie Reynolds' collection efforts. I have been seeking such an article since I read about the big auction and failed to find one until I stumbled upon your blog. This situation reminded me of Maria Riva's claim that that she offered her mother Marlene Dietrich's estate as a donation to American film museums (see this video), and when no one showed interest, Riva reportedly sold it to the city of Berlin for $5 million, which subsequently made the Filmmuseum Berlin [note: then known as Deutsche Kinemathek, no?] its caretaker. The contradiction between donation and sale makes me wonder whether Riva acted solely as an altruist, and I harbor similar suspicions about Debbie. Certainly, I wouldn't blame either woman for making money (or, in Debbie's case, attempting to recuperate money) from a Hollywood collection. If it's their property, they have every right to sell it.

On another note related to this blog entry, the contradiction between donation and sale also reminds me that the distinction between culture and commodity can be blurred, which is why I wouldn't consider Debbie's auction items national treasures. Debbie's former possessions have made a cultural impact in films, but they are also the products of profit-driven movie studios, which do not uphold all the criteria of non-profit institutions such as museums. For the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) or another local museum to accept Hollywood memorabilia, the following criteria would have to be met: first, the memorabilia would have to promote the museum's mission; second, the memorabilia would have to be affordable; third, the museum would require the staff and space to properly preserve the memorabilia; fourth, these staff and this space would have to be affordable.

When movie studios such as MGM housed old costumes, they had to deal with the second, third, and fourth criteria, but because they are businesses, they had no obligation to accept the most important criterion, the first one. If a business needs money to stay afloat, it will sell its assets; museums could never ethically follow such a model (although some have, e.g. the Hermitage Museum when its hometown was called Leningrad). Certainly, the memorabilia from Debbie's collection would meet the mission of LACMA and even the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), but I don't know whether any museums in the United States let alone in L.A. have the money, staff, and space to properly preserve items such as costumes—and such an extensive collection as Debbie's was. Only the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) Museum comes to mind as a local option, but I can only say with certainty that they have the staff to care for what Debbie sold. As for financial means and space—I don't know. They thrive on donations—dress and textile as well as financial—which suggests that unless someone donates a multimillion-dollar Monroe gown or donates millions so they can purchase a Monroe gown, they can't afford to play with the big spenders at auctions.

Personally, I would love to see every museum, library, and archive object (Hollywood memorabilia, fine art, cuneiform, what have you) digitized in a high-quality three-dimensional form to maximize their accessibility so that people who might never even have a chance to visit an institution could view and research its holdings, but I know the costs of my dreams are currently nowhere near the reality of any institution's budget.

Beyonce For L'Uomo Vogue

2011-06-22T02:04:00.000-07:00

Folks didn't flock to bid on Marlene Dietrich's "Boys in the Backroom" ensemble at Debbie Reynolds' recent auction, but celebrities continue to emulate La Dietrich in fashion magazines. Sometimes their intentions are questionable, and other times they genuinely pay respect, as Beyonce did at L'uomo Vogue. Although the intertitle would have been a more appropriate nod to Pola Negri or some other actress who peaked in silent films, Beyonce faithfully recreated two of Dietrich's most iconic looks--the swansdown coat and the top hat and tails. Manning the camera, Francesco Carrozzini snapped shots of Beyonce's prominent cheekbones in black-and-white and in color, but Beyonce's poses suggested a Dietrichian intimacy with her key light. Just as Dietrich couldn't play Catherine the Great without playing Dietrich, Beyonce couldn't play Dietrich without playing Beyonce--her hair flips making me wish for a Sasha Fierce "Diva" redux.

If questions of race came to your mind when you saw these Beyonce images, let me state that the video and photos reminded me of various analyses I've read regarding race and Marlene Dietrich's "Hot Voodoo" performance in Blonde Venus. I recently stumbled upon this blog entry by Natalia Cecire that drew from Mary Anne Doane's discussion of "Hot Voodoo," emphasizing the following concepts: white femininity representing unstable sexual purity, black masculinity representing sexual impurity, and black femininity remaining invisible. Cecire and Doane slightly weakened this last point by acknowledging the black(face) female troupe onstage during Dietrich's "Hot Voodoo" performance, who stood conspicuously behind an afroed Dietrich, but Cecire and Doane noted the insignificant and ornamental role of the dancers, calling them "props" and "mise-en-scene" respectively. EDIT 2: Additionally, "Hot Voodoo"'s song lyrics countered the claim that black female sexuality was invisible because Dietrich sang, "I'm beginning to feel like an African queen." Thus, black femininity was not only visible but also prominently typified sexual impurity in the "Hot Voodoo" sequence.

If I were to continue Cecire and Doane's comparisons, I'd add that this reduction of black women to stage decor valued only for their skin color subsequently minimized their skin color to a mere color. Just as an interior decorator could have a table painted red, a director could have a woman painted in blackface. Let me interject one admission: I am not certain as Doane was that the chorus girls were primarily white; some could be white, black, Latina, mixed, etc., but all we see is their uniform skin tone, exemplifying a sensibility expressed by "Blonde Venus" director Josef von Sternberg in Fun in a Chinese Laundry. Relating a story about a bearded extra who demanded to know his motivation for walking across the set of another director's film, von Sternberg revealed that this extra was replaced by another wearing a fake beard. Then, von Sternberg asserted that an actor "is no more than a small part of the entire chiaroscuro."

I don't know why von Sternberg opted for blackface instead of black skin, and while Cecire and Doane's depictions of these dancers-as-decor correlated with von Sternberg's description of actors as elements of his film canvas, I can't fully endorse Cecire's observation that "blackness becomes yet another prop for fully commodified white female sexuality."*** According to how von Sternberg objectified actors, white female Dietrich would be as much a prop as the troupe in blackface. In fact, black people were one of many groups whose look von Sternberg appropriated in his films with Dietrich--for example, Chinese people in Shanghai Express, Spanish people in The Devil Is A Woman, and Russian people in The Scarlet Empress. As for the presence of commodified white female sexuality in the "Hot Voodoo" scene, we could say that Dietrich's character used her sexuality to sell her show, ultimately to help pay for her husband's radium treatment. Indeed, in other von Sternberg-Dietrich films, we can enumerate many examples, the most blatant perhaps being Dietrich's role as a prostitute-turned-spy who used her sexuality to earn money (as a prostitute) and learn military secrets (as a spy) in Dishonored. I'd only add that in von Sternberg's films, Dietrich's characters held or eventually snatched the purse strings of their white female sexuality. The Scarlet Empress illustrated this inevitable act, with Dietrich's character initially a hapless Prussian princess brought to Russia to bear a male heir to the throne, hardly different than a female panda shipped to a British zoo as part of a breeding program. Later, Dietrich's character took the reins of her sexuality to woo suitors stronger and more attractive than her spouse, bear the needed heir, and usurp the Russian throne.

***Some time, I would like to accept this premise to explore how Beyonce inverted it. In other words, I'd be interested in assessing how Beyonce used (Dietrich's masculine and feminine?) whiteness as a prop for her commodified black female sexuality. Evidence I might use to support Beyonce's commodification of her sexuality as a black woman would include her House of Dereon fashion line and a term she coined--"bootylicious." Such a discourse would draw too much attention away from this blog's star, Marlene Dietrich, so I'll leave it for another outlet. If you would like to discuss it, though, please do and please discuss anything else that comes to your mind in relation to this blog entry. EDIT: Can't help but touch this topic a little more because it struck me that Beyonce lit white female mannequins--props, if you will--on fire in the "Diva" video (linked in this blog entry). EDIT 2: Keeping the aforementioned concepts in mind, what intrigues me about Beyonce is that her entertainment career took off in the 1990s, when black female sexuality became increasingly visible in commercially successful songs by black male entertainers (from Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" in 1992 to D'Angelo's "Brown Sugar" in 1995). Of course, there was no reason why men alone should profit from this emerging visibility, and Beyonce--like Dietrich's characters in von Sternberg's films--has successfully wrested black female sexuality to commodify it herself. Moreover, Beyonce has begun creating unique business ventures to sell multiracial female sexuality, which could be another way that I regard the House of Dereon, which bears the maiden name of Beyonce's Creole grandmother. With her recent single "Run the World (Girls)," Beyonce's marketing radical feminism, displaying impressive performance finesse and special effects.

The Legionnaire and the Lady

2011-06-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

Dietrich (a la Tante Valli?) & Clark Gable, Lux Radio Theater

When Marlene Dietrich first performed on Lux Radio Theater, the CBS-run program had recently begun airing from Hollywood with Cecil B. DeMille as its presenter. Not only was Dietrich's Lux Radio Theater debut an adaptation of her American debut film Morocco, it was also Lux Radio Theater's first film adaptation. In this June 1 1936 broadcast, called The Legionnaire and the Lady, Clark Gable took over the role of Gary Cooper, who coincidentally sat in the star-studded audience. Dietrich did not replicate Amy Jolly's drag king act, but she maintained the controlled cadence of her silver screen character, despite having mastered English so well that she had earned a reputation for critiquing her film scripts. Around the time of this broadcast, Dietrich had returned to Los Angeles from Arizona to complete another desert drama, The Garden of Allah, whose dialogue left a taste like rancid halvah in its stars' mouths and which failed to repeat Morocco's success.

Listen to The Legionnaire and the Lady below, or download it from Internet Archive. See photos from the Lux Radio Theater show at IMDB (with inaccurate dates).

Marlene Dietrich Costume Sells for $ 8 000

2011-06-18T14:18:00.001-07:00

Marlene Dietrich's Destry Rides Again costume, offered at the Profiles of History auction of items from the collection of Debbie Reynolds, sold for $ 8 000 (buyer's premium excluded), the low end of their estimate. There was only one bid for the item.

When the costume was previously offered at auction a decade ago (probably when it was bought by Debbie Reynolds), it sold for $ 19 000.

Dietrich's First Rolls Royce--A Barn Find?

2011-06-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

This unrestored 1929 Rolls Royce Phantom, which was on display at the Saratoga Automobile Museum in 2007, was reportedly Marlene Dietrich's first set of wheels in Hollywood. Like many Dietrichian legends, this one is shrouded in conflicting details that may frustrate the fact-finders among you. Simply identifying who gave Dietrich this vehicle will make one's head spin. Was it her movie studio Paramount? Was it her "producer" Josef von Sternberg? Or was it inexplicably Warner Bros. exec Jack Warner? Clearly, it was Mr. Warner, consoling Dietrich over a decade in advance for having to play Edward G. Robinson's wife (image from Film Noir Photos) in Manpower. If it were Dietrich's "producer" von Sternberg, we need to get the facts straight. Gregory Peck was not the lead actor in Morocco--everyone knows Paul Robeson played opposite Dietrich! Read more about this vehicle's "history" below, and you will learn a new nickname for Maria Riva (no, not Heidede or The Child!):

According to the above, the vehicle was most recently owned by Kansas-based Roger Morrison, and this link suggests that Morrison (or whoever the current proprietor is) has taken efforts to restore the Phantom to its former green glory. In that link, you should also note that the two Dietrich photos appear to feature different cars; compare the convertible tops, the tires, and--most significantly--the metalwork around the tires.

If reading the above tortured you, be relieved the know that a more likely back-story regarding this vehicle appears here. Furthermore, you can read about other cars associated with Dietrich here.

EDITED TO ADD: I just skimmed through Morocco and noticed the car in 3 scenes.

First, when Dietrich bids Gary Cooper farewell...

Second, after Dietrich and Adolphe Menjou ditch a dinner party to see whether Cooper has been injured...

Finally, when Dietrich leaves Menjou to follow Cooper into the desert...

Maria Riva's Clarification About Mercedes De Acosta

2011-06-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

In a 2002 e-mail interview with The Advocate, Maria Riva was asked about the nature of Dietrich's relationship with de Acosta.

"Allow me to clarify," she wrote. " De Acosta was 'the lover,' Dietrich was the recipient. Not all lesbian relationships are those of mutual acceptance. The taker and receiver are often unresolved persuasions, romanticized experimentation, sometimes even physical forms of self-punishment excursions. To declare one's sexual preferences does not always make one free, no?"

Clear?

Another article in that issue of the magazine was "Marlene vs. Adolph", a review of Her Own Song. Adolph Menjou, perhaps?

Got Dietrich Under Your Skin?

2011-06-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

Do any of you have Marlene Dietrich tattoos? Below are some inked renderings of La Dietrich, perhaps an intriguing way to avoid licensing permissions. For those of you with tattoos, why do you think all these people have Marlene on their limbs? Because those body parts are more visible, or because those body parts are less sensitive to pain?

Where Have All The Flowers Gone? - Live in Australia

2011-06-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

Marlene Dietrich sings "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" live at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. From her 1968 TV special, "The Magic of Marlene".

Marlene Dietrich Stoops To Conquer The Press

2011-06-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

from: Sydney Morning Herald,
22 September 1975

Marlene Dietrich turned the tables on the press at the weekend by giving a press conference.
In recent years Miss Dietrich has been as loath to talk to the press as her 1930s rival, Greta Garbo.

On Saturday she spent 40 minutes sitting in the sunlight at the Loft at the top of the Boulevarde Hotel talking and talking.

She talked, rather than answered questions, on almost everything from photographers - "I hate them" - to relaxing - "I don't."

Miss Dietrich put everyone at ease. She was asked: "Will you ever make another film?"
She would not.

Not even a film about her own life? "Oh dear, I'd be bored stiff!" she said.

According to Dr Roger Manvell's Encyclopaedia of Film, she is probably 74 years old. Whatever her age, she certainly did not look a day older.

she wore a stylish but simple brown pants suit with a matching peaked cap. She wore a modest amount of makeup, with or without which, the mildly mocking Dietrich eyes were as recognisable as ever.

"Why was she talking to the press?"

"It's him, Mr Smith persuaded me," she said indicating Cyril Smith, the promoter of her show which opens at Her Majesty's Theatre tonight.

Why had she avoided talking to the press before?

"I haven't given any interviews since 1972. In 1972 someone wrote a very misquoting article about me.

"Anything you can ever read in the papers you can never believe. You are newspapermen, you know how they make it up," she said with a look which suggested there was a hint of something more in her jest.

Questions about her films prompted no nostalgia.

"Let's get one thing straight, don't mix me up with my movies. On stage, in my show, I am myself but not in films.

"When I was young I played a tart in a red light district. I would not have chosen it for myself.
"I was supposed to be the Blue Angel but it was nothing to do with me. They said can you play a tart in a harbour town? I said yes, I suppose I can, I went to theatre school. When they said can you speak with a deep voice? I said sure."

Why did she still sing her old songs?

"I have to sing them otherwise they won't go home," she said with the Dietrich huskiness of her films coming through.

Why did she still tour?

"To be a performer you have got to be disciplined, you have got to know that you are not very important. Young people tell you what they think and if they do something wrong it is not their fault - it is because they had an unhappy childhood, they say. It was not like that for us.
"My sister died the day I opened in Birmingham on my last tour. No one knew and I could not say 'I can't perform today.'

"We stand out there with a high fever and perform. We have been taught not to allow little personal things to get in the way."

Lola Cubed

2011-06-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

Imitations and spoofs of Marlene Dietrich cropped up soon after her Hollywood arrival. From a 1932 Hollywood on Parade short, here are the Brox Sisters singing "Falling In Love Again":

Did Dietrich herself ever appear in any Hollywood on Parade shorts? They were produced by Paramount but seem to only feature supporting actors and Dlisters (e.g. Helen Kane and Anna May Wong).

Flickr Odds 'N' Ends Pt. 4

2011-06-14T02:44:00.000-07:00

Feast your eyes on Hannah Höch's 1930 photomontage, simply entitled "Marlene." If you have an institutional affiliation, you can read the 1990 article, "Androgyny, Spectatorship, and the Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch," in which Maud Lavin characterized Marlene Dietrich as "an actress well known for her ambiguous sexual identity" and claimed that the name "Marlene" bore "connotations of androgyny." If you suspect that these assertions are clouded by hindsight, you must evaluate the evidence that Lavin supplied--a heavily paraphrased quote attributed to the actress Hertha Thiele regarding Dietrich's status as a Berlin lesbian icon during 1930: "There was at that time a trend [...] to appear like Dietrich [...] and each would call herself Marlene." The pragmatists among you may argue that the name "Marlene" was not a coded message to Berlin lesbians but a simple declaration of the work's subject. I merely contend that this work playfully refers to Dietrich's well-sculpted legs, iconic to all--regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

A Day in Tunisia

2011-06-12T16:44:00.001-07:00

This cute photo of Marlene with a nurse, taken at the 36th General Hospital in Tunisa in the 1940s, is from the website for the Walter P Reuther Library at Wayne State University.

Want To Buy Some Illusions ?

2011-06-12T16:31:00.001-07:00

A few interesting current ebay listings:

A photo taken around 1960, location unknown. Who's that with Marlene?

An interesting portrait from the mid-40s.

Marlene in her cockney getup for "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957).

A programme for Marlene's appearance at Expo 67.

On Dietrich's Generosity

2011-06-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

In a 1987 interview with Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show, Bette Davis praised Marlene Dietrich's generosity, recalling that Dietrich came from the set of The Garden of Allah to the Hollywood Canteen, "covered in gold paint" and making the men go mad. In fact, Davis was referring to Kismet, but set aside that inaccuracy to hear one legend praise another:

As for Joan Rivers, I Googled her and Dietrich's names together on a whim and found an amusing anecdote by a Preston Neal Jones (the same Preston Neal Jones who wrote a book on The Night of the Hunter?) about Dietrich ignoring Joan on an airplane.

Marlene Dietrich News Bytes

2011-06-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

As missladiva already wrote, one of Marlene Dietrich's Destry Rides Again costumes is up for auction. See it here. According to that page "Public previews [are] at the Paley Center for Media, 465 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210 [...] June 4-5, 8-12 and 15-17 [...] 12pm to 5pm," which I gather means you can take a gander at it for free if you can't afford the the $8,000 minimum bid. To those of you who admire Dietrich's collaborators, you may also enjoy gazing at the Travis Banton creations made for Rudolph Valentino, Carole Lombard, and Claudette Colbert (no Banton-Dietrich confections at this time, though).
Speaking of fashion, the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa in Getaria, Spain, which was inaugurated on June 7, will open to the public on June 10. Visit the museum's website in the language of your choice (English | español | Euskara | français) and see its YouTube channel. According to some articles, a Dietrich gown will be on display. If so, perhaps Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin (MDCB) loaned it out? Maybe it's in one of the YouTube videos? I didn't see anything Dietrich-related when I searched the museum's site.
EDIT: See where Marlene Dietrich apparently lived when she arrived to [now West] Hollywood here.
Comments? Questions? More news?

Maria Riva's Blind Items Pt. 3

2011-06-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

In Marlene Dietrich, Maria Riva wrote of a character nicknamed the "Pirate" (known as "Jo"/"Joe" by others), who courted her mother during the summer of 1939. According to Riva, Dietrich mistook the Pirate for a man when she first laid eyes on the butch beauty sailing her schooner along the French Riviera. In fact, the Pirate was a woman named Marion Barbara "Betty" Carstairs, dubbed "The Queen of Whale Cay," a cheeky reference to a Bahamian isle Carstairs owned and developed. Not only was Carstairs a woman of many monikers; she was also a woman of many hats. As a Standard Oil heiress, speedboat racer, World War I ambulance driver, and former owner of a chauffeur (or should I say chauffeuse?) company, Carstairs was perhaps the first diesel--well, I digress! Although Carstairs likely wasn't what Billy Ocean had in mind when he sang "Caribbean Queen," I would rather see more socialites like her and less like Paris Hilton.

Like Dietrich, Carstairs had a special German doll in her life, only hers was a Steiff--not a Lenci. Called Lord Tod Wadley, he was a foot-tall leather figure who wore Savile Row and hammed it up for the camera like his "friend" Carstairs, to whom he brought good luck during her boat races. Terry Castle wrote an extensive article about Carstairs and Wadley, which you can read here. Speaking of dolls, there is a building on Great Whale Cay called the Dollhouse and also Marlene Pavilion, which Carstairs apparently built for Dietrich and is now in ruins (see it here). Did Dietrich ever visit this island? Riva's book dispelled legends that she did. I wonder what this bio on Carstairs says of Dietrich. Have any of you read it?

As one of Riva's more thinly veiled blind items, the Pirate--who dared to call Dietrich "Babe"--was easy to unmask. In fact, Steven Bach mentioned Carstairs several times in Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend. Steven Bach also identified a "former secretary" of Carstairs who joined Dietrich's entourage, a certain Violla Rubber--a fitting name for a woman who ostensibly was the notorious nanny nicknamed the "Rhinoceros" by Riva (incidentally, Riva had earlier noted this animal's resemblance to Carstairs). According to Riva, Dietrich employed the Pirate's Rhino and installed her in a Beverly Hills Hotel apartment alone with Riva, corresponding to Bach's description of Riva's living arrangements with Rubber. For those who have read Riva's book, you know that the Rhino--"a visually obvious lesbian"--violated the teenaged Riva, who couldn't turn to her mother for consolation because Dietrich was apparently recovering from an abortion (Jimmy Stewart's child, which Bach claimed was Riva's revelation). After Riva's first engagement, the Rhino bolted, leaving Rudi Sieber to discover that she had forged Dietrich's checks.

What shocks me is that if the Rhino was indeed Violla (sometimes spelled "Viola," which would make for an awful pun in Spanish) Rubber, she may have been the same Miss Rubber who worked as Bette Davis' manager in the 1960s, likened to a "gym mistress" by Lionel Larner in Ed Sikov's book, Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis. Allegedly, Davis demanded that Miss Rubber try on a bathing suit she had purchased for Davis' daughter B.D. The Rhino may have also been the same Violla Rubber who gave Diana Barrymore a break and knew her intimately, inheriting $10,000 from Barrymore after her demise. Furthermore, the Rhino may have been the Broadway producer Viola (with one "l") Rubber, who was nominated for two Tony Awards in 1962 for the Tennessee Williams play, "The Night of the Iguana."

Thoughts? Comments? By the way, I will save the Cavalier blind item for the next post in this "series" because this entry thoroughly distracted me.

Ebay Finds Pt. 3

2011-06-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

In this July 29, 1953 letter, Marlene Dietrich granted Paramount free permission to use her name in the Irvin Berlin-penned song, "Gee, I Wish I Was Back In The Army," which cited her among other USO performers--Katherine Cornell, Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, and Bob Hope. As Dietrich mentioned, the song was intended for a little screenplay called White Christmas, which became the biggest blockbuster of 1954. Dancing to Bob Fosse's choreography, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen (whose voice was dubbed by Trudy Stevens) performed the song in the film (yes, Bing name-dropped himself), which you can watch at the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) site here. Although the song's overall sentiment is in line with a Dietrich quote from Maria's book ("I never felt so happy as in the army") and also a quote that Dietrich attributed in her autobiography to taxi driver veterans regarding the war ("We were happier then"), neither Maria nor Marlene's descriptions of the army experience corroborate Berlin's lyrical imagery. Of course, few ever matched Berlin's patriotic legacy.

Flickr Odds 'n' Ends Pt. 3

2011-06-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

In 2007, someone took a snapshot of this square dame at Legoland Discovery Centre Berlin, noticing her resemblance to Marlene Dietrich.We've seen Dietrich dolls and statuettes, but now we've seen it all--Marlego Dietrich. Is she still posing there?

The Newest Classic Movie Blog Association Member!

2011-06-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

This blog is now a member of the Classic Movie Blog Association (CMBA), which will give us an increased opportunity to share our interest in Marlene Dietrich's work and to communicate with other classic movie fans. Thank you for welcoming us, CMBA!

Marlene Dietrich Newsletters: How To Enhance Your Search

2011-06-06T14:38:00.000-07:00

The Marlene Dietrich (MD) Newsletters (available here and here) published by the Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin contain a wealth of information, and I recommend that all fact-finders consult them first when conducting an online search. In fact, I've noticed that Google has been indexing them, but not in a systematic way that will help you sift through their contents more efficiently. If you want to conduct an organized search of newsletter contents, follow the tips below.

For www.marlene.com

Go to www.google.com
Type any Dietrich-related term that appeals to you, followed by site:http://www.marlene.com/newsletter
Press the "Search" button--it's that easy! I will show a screen capture example, with the search term "sternberg" below.

For www.marlenedietrich.org (whose contents do not differ from www.marlene.com, as far as I can tell, but it appears that Google hasn't indexed this site as extensively)

Go to www.google.com
Type any Dietrich-related term that appeals to you, followed by site:http://www.marlenedietrich.org/pdf
Press the "Search" button--it's that easy! I will show a screen capture example, with the search term "sternberg" below.

As you will see, there are 17 "sternberg" results from www.marlenedietrich.org and 36 from www.marlene.com, which is Google's fault. Bear in mind, however, that if you conduct this search with www.marlene.com and cannot open the PDF file in the search results, you can at least take note of the newsletter's issue number and see whether you can retrieve it from the Newsletterarchive at www.marlenedietrich.org.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to sort Google's search results by date, but you can limit the date range by clicking "More search tools" in the lefthand column

Then, by clicking "Custom range..."

Finally, by picking any date range you want (I chose "1/1/2003" to "12/31/2004" as an example) and pressing "Search"

As you will see, restricting the dates will render 1 result from www.marlene.com:

Be aware that search engines can make mistakes, but if you do not want to wrack your brain trying to remember--for example--in which MD newsletter you saw Nicholas von Sternberg's letter about his father and Cesar Romero, try adapting these tips to your search. As always, if you have questions, comments, or other tips, please add them in the comments section.

Studies in Light and Dark

2011-06-05T18:08:00.000-07:00

Marlene Dietrich Movies That Never Were

2011-06-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

You may be well aware of Marlene Dietrich's 1936 film, I Loved A Soldier, which went into production but was never completed. Doctor Macro's site has impeccable stills from that abortion. Did Dietrich perform in any other unfinished flicks? I don't know, but according to the American Film Institute catalog ( here and here), Marlene Dietrich was considered for the following films:

Confessions of a Nazi Spy, a 1939 Warner Bros. propaganda film in which Dietrich would have reportedly starred and probably refused to avoid any association with Nazi Germany. Aside from that, Dietrich was still “box office poison” and had yet to humanize herself in Destry Rides Again. I bet the role played by Dorothy Tree would have been hers.
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All Through The Night, a 1942 Warner Bros. thriller. On April 10, 1941, The Hollywood Reporter listed Dietrich as a possible co-star alongside her chum George Raft, with whom she made another Warner movie (Manpower). Of course, Hollywood wasn't bereft of Germans who opposed the Nazis because Kaaren Verne got the part and shared screen credits with the great Humphrey Bogart.
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China Girl, a 20^th Century-Fox war drama released at the end of 1942 (the years in the AFI catalog appear inaccurate). One version of the script cast Dietrich as “Captain” Fifi. Maybe Dietrich was busy making Pittsburgh for Universal instead, but the beauty of Dietrich and Gene Tierney (who, by the way, played a Chinese character) in one picture would have been incomparable. On the other hand, who would want to see Dietrich and Victor McLaglen together again?

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Dangerous Partners, an MGM crime drama released in 1945. In March (?) 1944, The Hollywood Reporter apparently announced Dietrich and Douglas Morrow as possible lead actors. In retrospect and with the help of Steven Bach's biography, I can't imagine why anyone would have considered Dietrich because she was in the midst of her USO tour. Then again, Dietrich was supposed to perform in a second film for MGM after Kismet, and Signe Hasso does exude the European mystique that would bring to mind Dietrich or more obviously Greta Garbo.
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I Remember Mama, a 1948 RKO historical drama starring Irene Dunne in the lead role rejected by Greta Garbo. Supposedly, Dietrich dispatched Mitchell Leisen, a Dietrich devotee and the director of The Lady Is Willing and Golden Earrings, to win her the role of Mama, but RKO refused due to Dietrich's “racy image.” No wonder Dietrich became the star of RKO's Rancho Notorious in 1952. Even though a matronly character would have fit her late '40s real-life role as a grandmother, Dietrich's part in A Foreign Affair proved her flair for the racy after all.
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All About Eve, a 1950 20^th Century-Fox masterpiece starring Bette Davis as Margo Channing. Producer Darryl F. Zanuck considered Dietrich for this role, and Steven Bach wrote that Joe Mankiewicz convinced Zanuck otherwise. Although the role would have given Dietrich the best dialogue of her career, I would be foolish to argue that Davis didn't own that part with her performance.
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Know more roles that Dietrich would have reportedly played but didn't? Tell us about them in the comments section.

Marlene Dietrich News Bytes

2011-06-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Yorkshire Post reviews the Stephen Joseph Theatre revival of Pam Gems' play Marlene. Was there a Vivian Hoffman in Dietrich's life? Or does she represent someone (or more than one person)? Or is she a fictitious character altogether?
Gazette & Herald also reviews the play. Again, it initially runs until June 18, then from August 18 to September 3. You get obtain ticket information here.
The Stage's review of the play. The reviewer, Kevin Berry, mentions that he spoke to Dietrich for three weeks over 50 years ago. Has he written about this somewhere?
Post more news and reviews in the comments section!

Marlene Dietrich With The "Mexican Hoofer"

2011-06-03T19:23:00.000-07:00

Question: did William Dieterle consciously borrow from Marlene Dietrich's dance scene in 1944's Kismet when he directed Rita Hayworth in 1953's Salome?

Clearly, Hayworth was the more skilled dancer, but Dietrich gave good face. Before I forget, let me note the genius structure of Irene's foundation on Dietrich and Jean Louis' flesh-colored chiffon on Hayworth, which would eventually equal a winning combination in December 1953--when Dietrich stepped out onto the stage in Las Vegas wearing "the eel."

Flickr Odds 'n' Ends Pt. 2

2011-06-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

Posting about The Song of Songs reminded me that sci-fi and movie memorabilia collector Forrest J. Ackerman decorated the bedroom of his Son of Ackermansion estate with a nude statuette of Marlene Dietrich. Frankly, it's cross-eyed and looks more like a mannequin at Charlotte Russe, but--for the time being--it may be the closest we will get to seeing one of those nude statues that Paramount supposedly sent to theaters back in 1933. Is Ackerman's collection on display anywhere? Better yet, is Son of Ackermansion still around?

Because it is a statuette and would be considered art, I shouldn't have to take precautionary measures such as these, but I will in case you are viewing this blog among those who may take offense.

Simply put, if you do NOT believe you are supposed to be viewing even a naked statuette, please do NOT expand this post!

EDIT: I'm finding more about the man known as "Forry" and his love of Dietrich! Here is a photo inscribed to him from Dietrich that is up for auction. Also, here is a video of him in his home, singing "Falling In Love Again" with Lola Lola's intonations, transitioning to the original German version:

EDIT AGAIN: There is even a chapter in a biography about Ackerman that mentions his interest in working as an assistant for Dietrich. These hopes never came to fruition, but he at least met her.

Marlene Dietrich News Bytes

2011-06-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

A photo of Dietrich at the Orly airport in Paris on September 16, 1970.
Artist Dal Ray Williams wants a grant to continue his Queer Academy exhibit, with the hopes of featuring Dietrich.
Read a quote at Life.com from a 1933 letter to Movie Classic magazine that indicates the resistance of some toward women in pants.
Add more news items in the comments section!

More on The Song of Songs DVD

2011-06-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

In April, I mentioned the latest DVD release of The Song of Songs. Dave Kehr of The New York Times has written a comprehensive review of the DVD itself. Kehr asks a question that has also been on my mind, "Why this relatively minor effort when perhaps the most visually stunning of the Dietrich-Sternberg films, 'Shanghai Express' (1932), has never been released on DVD in this country [The United States]?"

YouTube Collections

2011-06-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

Many YouTube users have posted Marlene Dietrich clips, and nowadays they are quite informative and well-executed. Of course, there is missladiva's MarleneDietrichVideo, which boasts an impressive array of live concert footage and audio, studio recordings, unissued songs, interviews, newsreels, and much more. There is also Ojara985's channel (run by the blogger of Serch Dietrich), with many HD clips from Dietrich's films, particularly her musical numbers. MarleneXtreme's channel features over 200 charmingly themed videos that pair Dietrich's songs with Dietrich's photos. Another channel I wish to recognize is MarleneInterviews, which delivers what its name suggests--Marlene Dietrich interviews (in French). Please inform me of others that I have overlooked.

On another note, someone wrote a comment asking whether Google is better than Yahoo, which I accidentally deleted (it was in the spam inbox). Perhaps it was spam, but I could answer simply by saying that I prefer Google, which more readily allows a user to search a term (such as "marlene dietrich") in specific sites, such as scholarly documents, books, blogs, realtime (e.g., Twitter) as well as translate sites. Please ask more about searching online if that interests you. I will gladly post tutorials to enhance your searching abilities.

Pointing Out The Obvious Pt. 1

2011-06-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

Marlene Dietrich fans and film buffs already know all the trivia that I post, but I don't cater solely to them. I also post for the casual pop culture observer who can't tell Dietrich from Bette Davis and may pronounce Our Lady's name as if it rhymes with "Darlene, why, bitch?" Thus, it's time I finally recognize some of Madonna's nods to Marlene, which others have acknowledged more disparagingly. By the way, who supposedly had the pleasure of hearing Dietrich say about the Madonna comparisons, "I only acted vulgar; she is vulgar"?

Madonna Channels Amy Jolly Two Ways

Many observers have astutely compared the above two photos, and I would only criticize whoever took Madonna's photo (by the way, who took it and when?) for barely emulating the "halo" effect of Dietrich's hair in this Morocco publicity shot. Nevertheless, I would compliment the photographer and Madonna for wryly capturing the "No Smoking" sign in the mirror's reflection and for incorporating Gary Cooper's lipstick message, as if to proclaim that they have seen the movie:

Madonna's Hot Voodoo

A little over a year after Dietrich's death, Madonna heavily referenced the Blonde Venus "Hot Voodoo" performance during her tour, The Girlie Show.

Naturally, we compare Madonna's blonde afro, bare legs, and sparking clothes to Dietrich's look, which uncannily exemplified a 1970s aesthetic that perfectly suited the revamped disco strains of "Deeper and Deeper." To misuse grammatical terms, it's the present (at least when 1993 was the present) referencing the past (the 1970s) by using the past perfect (Dietrich in 1932), which had shockingly predicted the past (the 1970s). Furthermore, Madonna reversed the staged shock and fear of the wild in Dietrich's number, substituting the performing gorilla that menaced the audience for a crazed fan who threatened the performer. Compare Madonna's Dietrich disco tribute with Amanda Lear's discofied "Lili Marleen," which is unadulterated trash:

Falling In Love Again With Too Many References

Finally, I cannot ignore Madonna's The Girlie Show performance of "Like a Virgin," in which she interpolated the melody of "Falling In Love Again," donned a tuxedo and top hat a la Amy Jolly, and butchered a German accent. What observers often forget when overwhelmed with this Dietrich pastiche is that Madonna also naughtily evoked Fred Astaire's 1946 Blue Skies cane choreography from "Puttin' On The Ritz":

I'm sure you know many more Madonna-Marlene comparisons, so feel free to add them in the comments section.

MGM Meets Paramount

2011-06-02T01:50:00.000-07:00

The above is a 1931 photograph of Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich. Does anyone have any more details to add? The patterned wall looks distinct. Where are they?

Name Recognition: Shanghai Lily

2011-06-01T02:27:00.000-07:00

Shanghai Express was Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg's most profitable collaboration, and the name "Shanghai Lily" was clearly on the tip of tongues at the Warner lot when James Cagney sang "Shanghai Lil" in 1933's Footlight Parade. That same year, Gene Kardos and his orchestra also recorded the song:

Unlike Dietrich's character, Shanghai Lil was Asian--played in yellowface by that cheap tap dancer Ruby Keeler.

Paul O'Grady's drag queen persona, Lily Savage, saw the link and conflated the Shanghai Lily/Shanghai Lil characters in this spoof:

Returning to the 1930s, the comic strip Jungle Jim featured a villainess named Shanghai Lil (this time a notorious White flower), played in radio adaptations from 1935-1937 by Vicki Vola and Franc Hale and in Universal's 1937 12-part screen adaptation by von Sternberg's former muse, Evelyn Brent.

Jungle Jim, Chapters 1-4

Jungle Jim, Chapters 5-8

Jungle Jim, Chapters 9-12:

And to think that it all started with this little coaster:

Rory MacLean Remembers Marlene Dietrich

2011-05-31T17:05:00.000-07:00

At the Goethe-Institut's "Meet the Germans" blog, Rory MacLean reminisced about his work on the film Just a Gigolo, naturally focusing on Marlene Dietrich. Although MacLean's name was expunged from the film's credits, he revealed that he had assisted the film's director, David Hemmings, and posted a photo of Dietrich with the production crew, pointing himself out in the back row. Read MacLean's memories of Dietrich:

PART ONE | PART TWO

If you know of other blogs, sites, etc. with people's memories of Dietrich, please share them.

Ebay Finds Pt. 2

2011-05-31T03:36:00.000-07:00

This Ebay find concerns Marlene Dietrich and Italian actor Raf Vallone in Rome. I believe the above photo was taken on or around February 5, 1960 because the Associated Press has photos of the two wearing the same threads with this date. That site is a Gordian knot, so you will have to search yourself for the images if these links fail: one | two . Or try another site altogether: one | two.

Reporters started rumors that the two were an item; in fact, this photo of the two likely fueled such gossip. According to a lovely biographical page on Vallone, the two were only friends. In fact, the page quoted (and loosely translated) Vallone's assertion that he met Dietrich in 1959, while he was playing in "Uno sguardo dal ponte" at Paris' Theatre Antoine. The two dined, became platonic friends, and Vallone became a fan, praising Dietrich as La Grandeur, with a generous spirit and a love for poetry.

In an interview from the page, Vallone revealed that he and Dietrich stayed up until 5am (see the original Italian interview), not in the throes of passion but in the midst of work. Dietrich typed as Vallone dictated "Il riposo del guerriero," a theatrical adaptation of Christiane Rochefort's novel, Le Repos du guerrier. Incidentally, Brigitte Bardot--one of Vallone's lovers--starred in a 1962 film adaptation of that novel directed by her von Sternberg, Roger Vadim.

As for Steven Bach's findings on Dietrich and Vallone, he quoted Noel Coward as exclaiming that Vallone was Dietrich's "new throb," noted that both admitted only to being good friends, and suggested that their flirtation was a publicity stunt, a possibility because Vallone was poised to become an international movie star in the 1960s, playing--among other roles--Anthony Perkins' daddy (no, not that kind!) in 1962's Phaedra:

Ebay Finds Pt. 1

2011-05-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

Obviously, I enjoy tinkering with embed codes, which is why I'm testing eBay To Go. Check out the above item, a The Scarlet Empress-era portrait of an ermine-collared Marlene Dietrich, which isn't in the stills gallery of the Criterion Collection DVD. As for that hat, it never sneaked its way into the film, did it? The material of that bow, however, resembles the material of the hood that Sophia Fredericka wore on her way to Russia:

This talk of hats reminds me that I have just begun learning about the often-overlooked milliner, Mr. John, who was responsible for the creations in Shanghai Express. What other Mr. John hats has Dietrich worn?

Marlene Dietrich News Bytes

2011-05-30T04:07:00.000-07:00

The late Pam Gems' play, Marlene, is running now until June 18 and then August 24 through September 3 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. See this site and this site for more details.
The Criterion Collection has made Knight Without Armour available to Hulu Plus subscribers. I consider this an auspicious sign that Criterion will package this film for DVD release. So far, Criterion has released The Scarlet Empress and a Josef von Sternberg silent film collection in DVD format. If you get a "blocked" message on the Hulu site, please let me know. I want to know whether the site is less restricted; I never had direct access to it when I lived in Bulgaria.
The Women Men Yearn For (a.k.a. The Woman One Longs For; Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt) will screen at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival on Saturday, July 16 at 8:30pm. Buy tickets here.
Any other news at the moment? Tell us in the comments section.

Maria Riva's Blind Items Pt. 2

2011-05-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

After I posted two blind items from Maria Riva's Marlene Dietrich biography, a reader named Paul mentioned two more in the comments section.

First, he mentioned a "cavalier." Could someone tell me when this person appears in Dietrich's life? The similarly-named Maurice Chevalier was Dietrich's lover and longtime friend, but I'm certain Paul didn't mean him:

Maurice Chevalier and Marlene Dietrich Pictures

Additionally, Paul concluded that Edinburgh Festival director Peter Diamand was the person whom Dietrich dubbed "P.D." (hopefully, there wasn't a French joke behind those initials) and described as "that sentimental old Jew I had in Edinburgh," where Dietrich took her cabaret show in August 1965. Diamand passed away in 1998.

Now, for another blind item. Riva recalled that two sycophants entered Dietrich's life before the production of Song of Songs in 1933. Riva characterized them as "homosexual cons" who attended to Dietrich's every need in order to serve their own agenda. Riva also quoted Clifton Webb as saying that they were "Dietrich's private Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." Riva then told one of the most gossipy morsels of her book--the one that always makes me cackle--about Greta Garbo abandoning Mercedes de Acosta for Rouben Mamoulian and catching gonorrhea. Garbo's alleged health problems didn't crack me up; rather, the indiscretion of the nurse who supposedly told Dietrich about another patient's confidential issue hit my funny bone. In Donald Spoto's Dietrich bio, Martin Kosleck and Hans von Twardowski, a gay couple, became part of Dietrich's posse around the filming of The Scarlet Empress. If these two were "the boys" of Riva's bio, Spoto had a better opinion of them, calling them "amusing and talented companions" of Dietrich. Frankly, I know little to nothing about these men as actors, having read in Steven Bach's bio that Kosleck was typecast in Nazi roles and that Twardowski played Empress Elizabeth's lover, Ivan Shuvolov, in The Scarlet Empress. I have, however, seen some fine oil paintings by Kosleck of Dietrich, which are held by the Schwules Museum in Berlin:

Who do you think "the boys" were?

Marlene's In The News!

2011-05-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

It's unfortunate that Dietrich documentaries seem to recycle the same old newsreel clips over and over again, especially when other (unseen) footage is available. Below is a selection of a few of these (image quality varies):

Marlene arrives in Brussels (1962).

Marlene in Rome (1960).

Marlene opens a bowling alley (!)

Marlene Dietrich sings "Frag Nicht Warum" Live on Australian TV (1968)

2011-05-28T15:15:00.001-07:00

Marlene Dietrich Tony Awards Acceptance Speech (1968)

2011-05-28T14:50:00.001-07:00

Gilding The Lily

2011-05-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

The marvellous watercolour by Anthony Wysard, above, is from the collection of London's National Portrait Gallery. Their collection also includes several other Dietrich-related works, including a caricature by Cecil Beaton done in the 1970s and original prints by Cornel Lucas.

From July 7 - October 13, the National Portrait Gallery will exhibit Glamour of the Gods, a collection of seventy prints from the Kobal Collection, celebrating Hollywood's golden age.

Joshua Sinclair, the knight in shining Charmin

2011-05-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

Joshua Sinclair, the Just a Gigolo writer who told Charlotte Chandler the toilet paper typewriter (T.P.writer?) tale in her biography, Marlene: Marlene Dietrich, A Personal Biography, has apparently lavished Chandler with praise on Amazon.com. Well, his story is the best part of that book, which I mentioned in my reluctant spiel.

Slightly Used, Second-Hand

2011-05-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

A lot of Dietrich-related memorabilia has come on the auction market recently. We reported about the Juliens auction of a cache of Dietrich letters earlier this month.

On June 18th, Profiles in History will auction off the dress Marlene wore while singing "The Boys in the Back Room" in Destry Rides Again.

It is offered as part of the Debbie Reynolds collection; the over 500 lots span film history from the teens up to the recent past. Highlights of the auction include a pair of test "Arabian" ruby slippers made for (but not used in) The Wizard of Oz, Marilyn Monroe's subway dress from The Seven Year Itch and the Cecil Beaton-designed Ascot dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. This auction is the first of several that Profiles in History are planning of items from the Reynolds collection.

The Dietrich costume on offer was previously sold by Sotheby's in 2002 when it sold for $ 19 120 (buyer's premium included).

Destry Rides Again, Dietrich's 1939 comeback vehicle after having been declared "box-office poison", was included in the National Film Registry in 1996. On its original release, Frank S Nugent remarked in his New York Times review that "[i]t's difficult to reconcile Miss Dietrich's Frenchy, the cabaret girl of the Bloody Gulch Saloon, with the posed and posturing Dietrich we last saw in Mr. Lubitsch's Angel."

Scarlett Johansson Should Have Done Jean-Louis Barrault

2011-05-25T00:14:00.000-07:00

Some little starlet named Scarlett Johansson posed as Marlene Dietrich, Giulietta Masina, Buster Keaton, and Sarah Bernhardt in W magazine. See the photos, taken by Tim Walker, here. Color me amused to see Dietrich's mid-'30s eyebrows arched blithely among a cast of buffoons. I am guessing Johansson and Walker were going for that flat Edward Steichen 1935 Vogue shoot?

Marlene, Anna May, and Leni

2011-05-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

Many of you have seen this Alfred Eisenstaedt-attributed photograph of Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl rubbing shoulders. Life identified this iconic occasion as the January 1, 1928 Pierre Ball in Berlin (or simply as a Berlin ball). Steven Bach wrote that the photo was taken in January 1930 at the Berlin [Foreign?] Press Ball and claimed that--despite her smiles for the camera--Dietrich threatened to commit suicide after Josef von Sternberg had invited Riefenstahl. In Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memories, Maria Riva eschewed details regarding date, captioning a portrait of Dietrich in the same polka dot pattern and hat (seen below) as a shot from a Berlin "pirate" costume ball. So many stories for one image! Knowing the dates of Wong's visit(s?) to Germany might help, but I don't have the Graham Hodges bio or any other sources to check. All I know is that artist Patty Chang created an installation about Wong's 1928 interview with Walter Benjamin.

Anyway, here are alternate shots of Dietrich, Wong, and Riefenstahl:

This photo's metadata is scant, but I am certain the actor above is--correct me if I'm wrong--Willi Forst.

Marlene Dietrich: Hollywood Canteen photos

2011-05-19T15:53:00.000-07:00


Marlene Dietrich sitting in 1st row 3rd from right, Hollywood Canteen 4th of July Picnic, 1944

Some more:

And many more Hollywood Canteen and USO images here and here.

EDIT: For those who clicked "dislike," please let me know why. My guess is that you disliked the low image quality, which also displeases me, but I at least appreciate that someone has compiled these shots and made them readily accessible. Please be aware that you may post anonymous comments and that I only delete spam. I welcome your feedback and wish for more conversation here.

Flickr Odds 'n' Ends Pt. 1

2011-05-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

I can't stop laughing! Some rag (which one? when?) published this as the last photo of Marlene Dietrich. It's obviously not her!

Is the photo below of Dietrich, though? It looks like her, but I am certain I've never seen it or this dress. Please help me identify who took it, when, and for what. Come to think of it, it bears a resemblance to the original DVD cover of Schell's documentary, which is apparently going for over 100 bucks?!

Maria Riva's Blind Items Pt. 1

2011-05-18T22:32:00.000-07:00

In her Marlene Dietrich biography, Maria Riva employed a literary device that strongly paralleled a blind item. Some readers may have preferred that Riva identify the conspicuously unnamed people in her anecdotes. I find the evasiveness engaging, especially because many of these people may have still been alive when the bio was first published.

So who were these mystery folks?

During 1937, Riva recovered from an illness and returned to the Swiss boarding school Brillantmont, where a “thin, dark-haired girl, with strange light-gray eyes” became her roommate. This girl audaciously asked in English whether Riva had her mother's gams. Riva remembered this moment as the first of many times that people would raise this question. Was "Gray-Eyed" the stunning Gene Tierney, who also attended Brillantmont in the '30s?

During the 1947 filming of Golden Earrings, Riva recalled that Dietrich wooed a well-built, up-and-coming movie star who had made a splash on the Paramount lot after debuting in a gangster film. Dietrich had Riva change sex-soiled Irish linens and charge a record player to Mitchell Leisen's account for this married gold digger. Was the boy toy Burt Lancaster, who got top billing in two 1947 flicks--Universal's Brute Force and Paramount's Desery Fury?

Your guesses?

Jim Brochu Remembers Marlene Dietrich

2011-05-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

Circle Star Theater, 1973 (Courtesy Jim Brochu)

The extraordinarily talented Jim Brochu has kindly granted me permission to reprint a photograph he took of Marlene Dietrich at San Mateo, California's Circle Star Theater in 1973. Additionally, Brochu has allowed me to reprint this text, in which he shares his charming and amusing memories of joining Dietrich and her entourage for a post-show supper. A friend of Dietrich's then-composer and wock of Gibwaltaw, Stan Freeman, Brochu had an insider's perspective that should be included in any Dietrich biography.

Before I copy-and-paste Brochu's account, I would like you all to know that you can order tickets here for his highly-acclaimed, Drama Desk Award-winning show, Zero Hour, at Pittsfield, Massachusetts' Barrington Stage Company from May 18-June 5, 2011. Brochu's show pays tribute to Zero Mostel, an illustrious actor who played Tevye in the original Broadway production AND first Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. You may read more about Zero Hour here.

And now for Brochu's encounter with Dietrich:

March 22, 1973 - San Carlos, California
I turned around in my front row seat to watch Marlene Dietrich scurrying down the aisle past me, generating a baby blue vortex of Chanel-scented air as she sprinted toward the unlit stage of the Circle Star Theatre. Glancing over her shoulder to memorize her route she noticed me sitting there alone, an audience of one in a two thousand-seat theatre, then continued down the aisle counting to herself with each step. Rehearsal had begun.

“Twenty-two, twenty-thwee, twenty-four...” she muttered and then, looking straight forward, head tilted up, she used the golden tips of her sequined high heels to feel out the three steps leading to the circular stage. She raised herself up so gracefully it was as though some invisible hand was lifting her and gently placing her back down. She was rehearsing her entrance down the steeply raked aisle and feeling out the steps for that evening’s opening. As long as she was there, she'd sing a couple of songs.

I was startled - though I'm easily startled - because A) I had just smoked a joint with her stage manager in the alley next to the theatre (Yes, it was the seventies) and B) I was assured that Dietrich never attended orchestra rehearsals; certainly never on her opening night; and if she did attend, she never, ever sang.

Dressed in a light blue denim pantsuit with wide bell-bottoms and tightly tailored jacket, her outfit was topped by an enormous denim Dutch boy cap perched upon unkempt tangles of ash blonde hair. With pie-plate sized sunglasses obscuring her eyes, she was heading straight for the microphone. The sparkling golden shoes were anachronistic to her blue jean ensemble but the three-inch heels were the ones she would be wearing for the performance that evening and she needed to be sure of her footing. She was not happy.

Stan Freeman, her musical director and my best friend, was conducting the orchestra and had just begun the introduction to “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” which Dietrich sang as an anti-Viet Nam War protest. Stanley was looking at his music when she glided unseen onto the stage behind him and he jumped a foot when she started to bark out orders. A few of the musicians tapped their instruments as a way of acknowledging her presence but she either didn't notice or didn't care. The music continued.

“Get me a wamp! I need a wamp! I can't climb steps with a spotlight in my eyes. I WANT A WAMP!” It dawned on the stoned-out stage manager that he was responsible for satisfying such a request and began darting around trying to locate a “wamp” as the work lights suddenly popped on. Although the stage would revolve a complete 360 degrees for her performance, it was stationary for now. The great Dietrich faced me as she grabbed the microphone and caught up to the song, joining in on “…long time passing…Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?”

Without makeup, standing under stark work lights that bleached the color from her hat, her clothes and the lines from her face, she was transformed into a black and white image. I felt as though I was watching an early film of Dietrich and not a live person. She was mesmerizing. There was something so compelling about her presence that you appreciated why she had departed the rank of movie star and had arrived at living legend.

I was so taken by the sight of her that I almost forgot how cold it was in the domed cavern - what seemed a few degrees above freezing. Dietrich told us all in the limo on the ride out that she wanted the air to be glacial so that the audience would remain alert. At this temperature, they would congeal. Standing at the mike, she was singing full out,
     “Where have all the graveyards gone long time passing?"
      "Where have all the graveyards gone long time ago?” in a low rumbling monotone that made her sound more like an ancient monk chanting than a chanteuse.

Suddenly she stopped. “Whewe are de bullets? Wemember de bullets!” she admonished Stanley.
     “I’ll make sure they’re louder, Marlene,” bellowed Stan as he abruptly waved the orchestra to a stop. “At numbers 78 and 79, those violins are fortissimo and multi-pizzicato. They should sound like gunshots.”
     “And bullets!” added Dietrich.

The orchestra began again and the violins pierced the air with their staccato shrapnel stings as Dietrich sang on to the end of Pete Seeger‘s masterpiece.

She stepped back from the mike as Stan told the orchestra that the next song was, unlike Dietrich’s current mood, bouncy and whimsical. It was Charles Marrowood‘s Australian novelty number, “Boomerang Baby.” Stan started the slinky vamp and Dietrich purred into the mike,
     “Boom boom boom boom boom-a-wang, baby.
     Fly, fly away, fly away from me, you boom-a-wang baby.”

When she got to the spoken bridge of the song, she took off those enormous sunglasses and looked me right in the eye, “Hey there. Back so soon? Have a nice twip?” She finished the song and asked again, to no one in particular, “Whewe is my wamp?”

The stage manager, still too stoned to move quickly, sauntered down the aisle and assured Marlene that a ramp was being taken out of storage and would be in place within fifteen minutes.
     “I will not be lied to,” she said with sharp finality.

Muttering something to the effect of “Everybody lies to you,” the worker set off again to look for a “wamp.” I recalled a story Stan told me about conducting for Dietrich during her Tokyo engagement at the Imperial Hotel when a concertmaster's lie very nearly led to an International incident.

The Japanese rehearsal was to begin at one p.m. By one-thirty, only half of the local Tokyo musicians had arrived and Dietrich asked where the other half were and why they were so late? It was “un-pwofessional! “

The concertmaster, bowing excessively low, indicated to Miss Dietrich that the string section was stuck in a massive traffic jam near the Ginza and would arrive at the venue shortly. Dietrich thought it a was strange explanation and asked a very logical question, “Do they all dwive here together in one car?” The concertmaster responded with another plastic smile, more excessive bow and backed away from her without further comment.

Ten minutes more went by when Dietrich encountered the first violinist and asked him where the other musicians were?
    “They called in sick,” he told her, “and the producers were finding substitutes.” Another bow.

Stan reported that Dietrich went ballistic. She drove her foot through the floorboard of political correctness and shattered it by saying, “Stop! I have now been told two diffewent stowies. First, the musicians are delayed by twaffic and now you tell me they are all sick. This is not acceptable. You have pwoven to me once and for all that the Japanese are sneaking, thieving, lying little people and I have not forgotten Pearl Harbor!” Marlene was not going to get the Ambassadorship to Tokyo that year.

Stan said there was a party for her after the opening show given by the Mayor of Tokyo where extravagant golden-silk kimonos had been made especially to present to her as gifts. She was so upset by the lies she had been told that refused to attend and sent word to the Mayor “to take back his bathwobes!”

I was snapped out of my daydream by a change of lighting. Some techies noticed Dietrich on the stage, turned out the house lights, brought the stage lights up and a phenomenon occurred. She seemed to get taller in the light, like a flower responding to the sun as she let them warm and comfort her. She stepped back and listened for the introduction to the next song. It was "I Wish You Love.”

I wondered why I had smoked that joint with the stage manager outside in the alley before rehearsals began. Was I appreciating the full impact of this event? Well, it was 1973 and everyone smoked pot for breakfast with their coffee and I thought the music would sound enhanced. The fact that Dietrich herself was singing to me alone in the middle of this icy cavern was by far the most surrealistic experience of my life to date. Or was it?

Was it my father dating Joan Crawford? Or being invited to Fenwick by Kate Hepburn? Or the New York City blackout of 1965? Or working with Ethel Merman? Or riding to New York's City Hall with Mayor John Lindsay? Or campaigning with Harvey Milk in San Francisco? Or hiring a 16 year-old John Travolta to be in a New Jersey dinner theatre production of “Bye Bye Birdie?” Or meeting President Kennedy? Or Mrs. Roosevelt?

No, this moment with Dietrich was it. Especially as she stopped singing in the middle of the song when she saw that a ramp had just been exchanged for the three steps and Dietrich seemed eager to try it out. She hit the aisle and just as she passed me said, “The Fisherman” and kept on going. It sounded like code - something one spy would say to another before exposing all their secrets.

“The Fishermam.” She didn't really stop. She didn't really look directly at me. Yet I knew she was speaking to me and wanted a response. But I was still too stoned to comprehend her meaning or form a response.
“The Fisherman.” What did it all mean? Was there a clandestine operation going on?

I thought about Myron Cohen’s joke about the Jewish spy on his first day at the job. He's given the most dangerous and critical assignment in the history of the CIA. He is to go to an address, ring the doorbell marked “GOLDBERG” and when a man comes to the door say the code: “The Sun Is Shining.” He will then be given confidential documents that will save the world. If anything goes wrong he is to bite down on a cyanide capsule placed under his tongue. At all costs, this mission must be kept top secret.

Our new spy gets to the address and sees two names and two buzzers: A. GOLDBERG (1-A) and R. GOLDBERG (2-A). He rings the first bell and an elderly man comes to the door. The new spy says, “The sun is shining.“ The old man says “You want Goldberg, the Spy - Upstairs. So Dietrich is the spy and “The Fisherman” is the code. Jeez, that pot was good.

After the rehearsal, Stan told me that she had invited everyone in her party out to a restaurant in San Francisco called The Fisherman for dinner after that evening’s show. Since I was with him, I was part of the group. The show would start in four hours and since we were an hour drive from San Francisco, we brought a change of clothes and would shower in the dressing room. Stanley thought that Dietrich was in a particularly good mood since she had deigned to come to the rehearsal.

“She wanted to try out her wamp,” I explained, “and she decided to stay. She saw me sitting there and wanted to do it just for me.” Stanley laughed - God what an easy and wonderful laugher he was. His voice was like stone workers sifting through a gravel pit but when he laughed, his eyes completely shut and a rumble of contagious guffaws burst forth.

When I went to San Francisco with him for this engagement, we had been friends for four years, having met through my roommate at the time, Bob Nigro, who directed the long-gone NBC soap opera, “Search For Tomorrow.” Bobby was another great laugher with a hairline trigger for high tone giggles that lasted forever. One of the greatest laughs the three of us ever had was at Bobby’s expense.

We were at Stan's house on Fire Island when Bobby walked directly into a closed floor-to-ceiling plate-glass door and knocked himself unconscious. Stanley and I were still hysterical when he came around. We weren't being mean. Bobby had commented not an hour before that only a idiot couldn't tell the difference between that door being opened and being closed.

The forty-five minute trip from San Francisco to San Carlos was taken in a stretch limo with the passengers being Miss Dietrich, Stanley, myself, Jeanette (Marlene’s aide de camp), Gene (her drummer) and Gene’s wife, who was also one of Marlene’s helpers. It was a stretch limo that featured jump seats and could hold five comfortably. Marlene opted to sit up front with the driver and leave the six of us fighting over the five seats.

Jeanette met us at the top of the aisle and told us that Marlene was taking a nap but she would see us all at seven-thirty for cocktails. Stan said La Dietrich always had a few people in her dressing room an hour before the show and served champagne, which she never took herself. It was all part of the ritual.

We stayed in Stan’s dressing room with Chinese take-out until it was time to change and go to Marlene’s. The drummer and his wife were there already along with Joe Davies (her British lighting designer), Jeff (the stoned stage manager), the owner of the theatre and his wife and a silent, dazed-looking girl who just stood there without any seeming affiliation.

We thought Marlene was in the other room of her dressing room suite, but then Jeanette came in from the hallway, followed by Marlene who had changed into a bright red tailored pantsuit, white blouse and red fedora.

“Well, it looks like a pawty,“ she said, “But what is a pawty without champagne.“ The theatre owner signaled the silent girl who went to the hallway and returned with a liquor trolley. Jeanette had already opened the door to the inner room and from where I sat, I could see Marlene’s famous nude dress in the mirror. It looked like it was standing up by itself. Marlene, looking older than her 70+ years, hung on the door of the inner room for a moment with a knowing smile on her face. She looked like a magician about to enter the enchanted box, and only she held the secret of the trick. The dressing room door closed and the old woman disappeared.

Remember Houdini’s great illusion, The Metamorphosis? He would lock his assistant in a trunk upon which he would then stand. A curtain flew up, then down and in an instant they changed places and Houdini emerged from the trunk in a totally different costume. Forty-five minutes later, when Dietrich‘s dressing room door opened and she stepped back into the room, she had been completely transformed into the icon-legend-megastar of the Silver Screen. She was breathtaking. None of us could speak as we all took her in. Then she broke the ice. “Anybody have a banana?”

Speaking of magic tricks, Jeanette seemed to pull a banana out of thin air and handed it to Marlene who carefully pulled the skin back and admired it before taking a bite off the end.

I asked, “Do you always have a banana before a show, Marlene?”
     “Always!” she told me. “Potassium!“ And I’ll have another at intermission. It’s good for when you have to stand so long.”
     “Fifteen minutes, Miss Dietrich!” announced Jeff, the Stage Manager. Joe Davies raised his champagne, “To our Marlene!”

I wondered if I should join in the toast. After all, I had only met her the day before at the airport and wasn’t sure if I knew her well enough to enjoin with the others to drink to “Our Marlene.” But I lifted my glass. “To Our Marlene!” After all, she was everyone’s Marlene.

As soon as the toast was done, Jeanette opened the door to escort us out. Marlene turned to the mirror and began to study every inch of herself as the door closed like a wipe fading out on a scene from one of her old movies. We stepped through the curtain into the back of the arena, which was packed and buzzing with anticipation.

I walked down the same aisle I saw Dietrich stroll down that afternoon and I started counting my steps. I stopped at twenty-four. It was twenty-eight steps to the ramp. I sat in the second row with Joe Davies, the designer who created the magical lighting that kept her looking like a Rembrandt for two hours.

Stanley came down the aisle in his tuxedo, unannounced and unlit. He was wearing a new toupee. It was a little too big for his head. I had noticed at the orchestra rehearsal that his hair had seemed to have edema. It was at least twice as big as it had been when he woke up that morning. His appointment to get a “haircut” had been actually to get a new hairpiece that was styled with bangs and wings that reminded me of Imogene Coca. This one was so over-sized you could, as they say, “Get to Baghdad on that rug!” The day after Dietrich opened at the Circle Star, the review in the San Francisco Chronicle was a rave except they reported that “Miss Dietrich’s conductor looked like Peter Lorre with a bad toupee.”

When Stan was in place on the stage, the house lights went out, the audience fluttered and a spotlight cut through the dark from one side of the arena to the other.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only, Marlene Dietrich.” Stan raised his hand and the orchestra came to life with the horns trumpeting the first notes of “Falling In Love Again” much like heralders announcing the arrival of a queen.

Wearing that incredible white ermine coat which followed behind her, she stepped into her beam and floated down the aisle, looking straight forward, neither waiving to the cheering crowd nor acknowledging the standing ovation they were giving her. Head high, moving forward, I applauded her and chuckled to myself that I was the only one there who knew what was going on in her head - she was counting the steps.

On the twenty-eighth step she started to ascend the “wamp” and the crowd exploded. She walked the perimeter of the circular stage so that everyone, as Ethel Mertz might say, could get a load of her. She acknowledged Stanley and stepped to the mike and purred into it as if it were the ear of her great paramour.
    “I can't give you anything but love, baby.
     That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby…”

After two more songs, the coat came off, the stage turned, she sang two dozen more songs including “Lili Marlene” and “Falling In Love Again” and left them wanting more. The audience stood and screamed.

I had seen this same show twice before Stan and I ever met. Once was in Montreal during Expo ‘67 and also when she played the Lunt-Fontanne on Broadway. I took my cousin Eileen Quain to see it and she begged me to wait with her so we could get Dietrich’s autograph after the show. We stood outside the stage door in three degree weather, right next to the door, and when Dietrich came out my cousin thrust her program at her,
     “Miss Dietrich, may I please have your autograph?” implored Eileen.

Without even looking at her Dietrich said “No“ and pushed her way through the crowd to her waiting limo. Oh, well. Five years later, I wanted to call Eileen and tell her I was sitting with Dietrich in her dressing room after her show drinking champagne with her but she wouldn’t believe me. I hardly believed it myself.

    “I’m vewy hungwy,” said Marlene, who had now switched to vodka. “We’re going to the Fisherman. I have a cwaving for soft-shelled cwabs.”

Stanley bellowed, “How about you, Jim? Some soft shelled crabs and then scallops and maybe shrimp cocktail, lobster and shad roe? How does that sound?”

I raised my glass and returned his toast by sticking out my tongue at him, which Marlene caught.
     “What’s this?”

Stan explained that he was kidding me because I had an aversion to fish. I couldn’t stand the sight of it. Still can’t. I tried to eat tuna salad once and couldn’t actually come to put it in my mouth before I started gagging. I know it’s totally psychological. I know it’s totally irrational. know I’m depriving myself of some of the greatest culinary pleasures on earth. But I hate fish and will never eat it.

Stan finished explaining my “problem” to Marlene and why he was laughing to Marlene who looked at me very strangely.
     “No fish?” she asked.
     “No fish,” I echoed.

The deep seated aversion I had to fish was inexplicable. I had grown up less than a quarter of a mile from New York Harbor, in Bay Ridge which is the section of Brooklyn that anchors the Verrazano Bridge. For the first ten years of my life a squat, green ferry crossed the narrows from the 69th street pier in Bay Ridge to Staten Island. The ferry went out of business when the bridge was finished in 1964, but the pier at 69th street was a favorite fishing spot where all the neighbors would go crabbing on the weekends.

I was terrified by the sight of these mesh cages filled with living breathing, ugly, monstrous crabs. My uncle John would be one of the fisherman from time to time and would take the crabs out their cages and chase after with me aiming the crabs for my throat. I had also just seen “The Creature From The Black Lagoon” which didn’t help my paranoia about biting into things that lived under the water.

In the Joan of Arc nursery school one of the teachers tried to convince me that the tuna salad she was serving me was actually chicken, but after one taste I knew I had been lied to and became hysterical. Fish and I would never come to an easy agreement.

Dietrich picked up the phone in her dressing room and dialed 411. “Get me The Fisherman,” she purred. Obviously the operator didn’t realize it was the great Marlene Dietrich when she asked. “What city please?
     “I don t know what city, just connect me to The Fisherman. It’s a westauwant.”
She held the receiver for a moment while the operator found the number ands then made the connection.
      “Hello, Fisherman?”
I swear I thought she was going to cut the reservation to 7 instead of 8 and let me sit in the car while they all had dinner. Instead she said, “This is Marlene Dietrich speaking. I am coming to your westauwant with a party of 8. One of my guests eats no fish. Does the Fisherman serve meat?” It sounded like an oxymoron. A meat-catching fisherman. She listened for a moment then nodded as though she understood the answer and hung up.
     “There will be no problem. Shall we go?”

It only took her a few minutes to change into her red pants suit and we left by the stage door. There was a crowd of about twenty waiting for an autograph or just a close up look at the great star, but she was like a tight end pushing her way through the people, not stopping, not looking until she was inside the back of the limo. The rest of us followed her in and within a few minutes we were being escorted into The Fisherman. The place smelled of fish.

The maitre’d bowed and led us to a beautifully set round table in the corner overlooking the wharf. Most of the people in her entourage didn’t want to sit next to her, leaving me next to the legend who still looked like the icon rather than the old German lady. As soon as we got settled, Stan Freeman noticed a young girl approaching the table. She was heading straight for Dietrich. There was another great star eating at the restaurant that night and she had sent the girl over to say hello to Marlene on her behalf.

The girl pulled up right next to Dietrich and said, “Excuse me, Miss Dietrich.”
Without turning or looking, Marlene said coldly, “You are not excused.”
The girl went white but continued with her mission. “But I have regards for you from Ann Miller. She’s sitting over there.” Dietrich looked across the room to see Miss Miller waving to her then turned to the girl and said, “Ann who?”

“Ann Miller,” repeated the girl.

“Well, you are vewy wude. Now please leave this table.”

The girl, almost in tears, ran back to the Miller table and whispered into Ann’s ear. Miss Miller shrugged and everything went back to normal. Stars and public figures can be funny about fans interrupting their dinner. There’s a famous story about Rex Harrison having dinner with Moss Hart at Sardi’s between a matinee and evening performance of “My Fair Lady.”

Legend has it that an elderly woman approached the Great Rex with a program in hand. “Oh, Mr. Harrison,” she gushed, “you are my most favorite actor in the world. I’ve seen every film you’ve ever made I waited a year for front row seats to the show and there you were in person and I was breathing the same air you were breathing and you are so handsome and talented and if only you’d sign my program my life would be complete.”

Harrison turned on the lady and barked, “How dare you, you old biddy. Can’t you see I’m trying to enjoy my dinner without you prattling on. I don’t care who you love or what air you breathe or anything else. You are disturbing me.”

With that, the lady held off, smacked him on the head with her playbill and walked away. Moss Hart then observed, “Well, that’s the first time I ever saw the fan hit the shit.”

I also saw Pearl Bailey treat a young fan terribly. It was at Sardi’s after a performance of “Hello, Dolly!” when a small boy of about ten approached the star at her table. “I saw the show today,” said the lad, “and could I have your autograph?”

Miss Bailey sneered at the boy, “Can’t you see I’m eating with my friends. Hasn’t your parents taught you any manners? I’ll sign the program when I finish eating and you can just stand there until I do.” The boy started to cry and stood frozen not knowing what to do. His mother ran over and collected him while Miss Bailey never looked up again.

The mood of the dinner changed for the good when Joe Davies, Dietrich’s lighting designer, arrived with an early edition of the San Francisco Chronicle that contained a rave:

Dietrich and her act are the most remarkable feat of theatrical engineering since the invention of the revolving stage, and age has if anything reinforced her voice to the point where (for " Lili Marlene” or Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone ?") she seems to have within her the strength of entire armies.

While we sat at dinner, I asked Marlene how Stan had come to be her musical director. She told me that when she first put the act together, Bewt Bachwach was her conductor and friend, but he had tired of doing the show and was preparing his first (and only) Broadway musical “Promises, Promises.“ As things are meant to happen, Stan was walking down Fifth Avenue one night and ran into Bert who said Marlene was looking for a new conductor and he would recommend Stanley if he wanted the job.

Bert warned him that she wasn‘t easy to work with, but Stan couldn‘t pass up the money and the perks that came along with the job so he took on the assignment.

The first few weeks were rocky. Stan said she was impossible to work with and found fault with everything he suggested or did. After one performance in London, Marlene complained about something Stan had done and he hit the ceiling, calling her every name in the book. He told her she couldn’t sing and that she was overrated and a supreme pain in the ass to work with. She loved him from then on.

The outburst did the trick. Marlene cried and said that she couldn’t lose him because he was the best conductor she had ever had. They were together for twelve years until Stanley helped to end her career for good.

They were performing at the Shady Grove Music Theatre outside Washington, D.C. On the first night, all went well except for the curtain call. Marlene came over to the foot of the stage and reached down to shake Stan’s hand after the performance. He said that she had to bend so far that he was afraid she would fall into the pit.

The next night, November 14, 1973, the show went along fine - full house, responsive crowd and standing ovation at the bow. Stan, being a gentleman, decided to stand on the piano bench so that Marlene wouldn’t have to reach down as far to shake his hand. He stood on the bench, took Marlene’s hand, the bench broke and he pulled her into the pit. Miss Dietrich landed on the drums, accompanying her fall with a tremendous, unexpected rim shot. Blood poured over her famous gown and it turned out she had gashed her leg open as she was impaled on the cymbal.

He told me that the audience let out a group gasp and an elderly married couple who had been sitting in the first row leaned over the orchestra pit railing and very nonplused said, “Very nice show.”

An ambulance took her the then 72 year-old to the local hospital where she was stitched up but the doctor found it difficult to close the whole wound which was about four inches in diameter. Senator Ted Kennedy sent his own personal physician to assess her condition and he told her that she lost a great deal of skin which had been sliced off by the edge of the drum kit.

Stan visited her in the hospital and was truly heartbroken that he had been the cause of her troubles. She said she didn’t blame him. It was an accident and accidents happen. Though she did mention that the pain was unbearable and she would have to go through months of skin grafts and physical therapy. She added that the doctors weren’t sure if the wound would ever heal or that she would ever walk properly again but that Stan shouldn't give it a second thought because it wasn’t his fault - though if he hadn't gotten on the bench, the accident wouldn’t have happened.

For weeks after the accident, Marlene would send pictures of her leg with horrific pictures of her wound - before and after the skin grafts - and then with huge bandages that covered her legendary leg from ankle to knee. With each note and each picture, Dietrich underscored that it wasn’t his fault and he shouldn't feel guilty.

She performed two weeks later in Toronto against her doctor’s wishes where she saw no one outside of her group, traveled by freight elevator between her room and the stage and played the entire two hour show in enormous pain. Her leg would not heal if she kept up the schedule so she knew she had to tend to her leg or it would be amputated. The leg that once had been insured by Lloyds of London.

After Toronto, she returned to her apartment in Paris where Stan would call her from time to time to cheer her up. Marlene always answered the phone herself but insisted she was the maid and that Miss Dietrich couldn’t come to the phone but she would pass on his good wishes.

Dietrich eventually went back to work after about nine months of recuperation and brought Stan back to conduct for her. But she wasn’t the same. She was brittle and in pain while she performed and took to using a stool so that she wouldn’t have to stand. Even the potassium from the bananas couldn’t help.

On [September 29], 1975, while she was performing in Sydney, Australia she fell again without any help from Stanley and broke her leg. That was the end of her career. She never performed again and she retired to her Paris apartment, a place she never left until she was carried out in feet first in 199[2].

Sometimes I just like looking at photos

2011-05-18T00:43:00.000-07:00

This 1943 photo of Marlene Dietrich at the Hollywood Canteen comes from Film Noir Photos.

If you want to see all the Marlene Dietrich photos at Film Noir Photos, try this.

If that doesn't work, follow these instructions:

--Go to Google.com.
--Put this in the search box:
"marlene dietrich site:filmnoirphotos.blogspot.com"
--Press the "Search" button.
--You're done! Enjoy!

Lola-Lola Blackface Drag Tribute?!

2011-05-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a scene from 1980's La Cage aux Folles II, in which Albin (played by Michel Serrault) performs as Marlene Dietrich's Lola-Lola--but in blackface! Carolyn A. Durham wrote this article about the film, which you may wish to read after watching the clip. I will make one observation about all this: the blackface bit appears prominently in the Francophone trailer but not at all in the Anglophone one.

Buzz About Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist

2011-05-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist made a lot of noise at Cannes Film Festival this Sunday because it's a 21st-century silent film. Read more about it here. It's telling that the movie's lead actress, Bérénice Béjo, researched Marlene Dietrich's films to enhance her performance because many of Dietrich's talkie-era scenes--such as the wedding in The Scarlet Empress--evoked an atmosphere with only visuals and music. I will, however, have to see The Artist to determine whether Béjo studied hard enough. Based on the trailer, I'd give her an F for emulating Dietrich's winks and eye movements. In fact, it looks like Béjo visited a proptosis clinic or watched a Bette Davis film for inspiration.

Marlene Dietrich: The eBook Issue

2011-05-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

If you read this blog, I want you to take action and tell me how to take action. Here's why:

I can only find 2 Marlene Dietrich biographies available in eBook format--Charlotte Chandler's and one by a David Stuart Ryan.

WHY?

Steven Bach's biography, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend, was reprinted this year, perhaps to ride on Chandler's coattails. Why wasn't it released in eBook format? Would the cost of making it compatible with the kit and caboodle of eBook readers (e.g., iPads, Nooks, Kindles) currently outweigh its potential eBook sales? This little article that mentions the publisher responsible for reprinting Bach's book, The University of Minnesota Press, makes me wonder. Naturally, I'm aware that university publishers struggle to compete with commercial publishers such as Chandler's Simon & Schuster.

Why, then, isn't Maria Riva's Marlene Dietrich already in eBook format? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe she's in publisher's no-man land because Random House still has a page about her book. By the way, why didn't William Morrow--the publisher of Bach's 1st ed. bio--reprint his paperback? How did University of Minn. Press acquire permission to reprint it (for that matter, why did Da Capo reprint it in 2000)? And when? Bach's been dead since 2009.

You may have noticed that Amazon has a simple link allowing viewers to request books in Kindle format, but that stupid thing appears on EVERY page (as if you can convince THIS publisher to format Pierre Louys' book for a Kindle--imbeciles!).

How, then, can we push for the release of Bach and Riva's books in eBook format? Chandler's book should not be the most accessible work on Dietrich's life and career, and people who prefer eBooks should not have to resort to Chandler's bio in the absence of other Dietrich bios. They are already attracted to Chandler's book because it's prominently displayed and discounted in traditional print format at chain bookshops such as Barnes & Noble. Also, it's generating positive buzz online. I reviewed it, too, but I certainly didn't praise it. While I wouldn't tell people NOT to read it, I would enthusiastically recommend Bach and Riva's books. As long as Marlene Dietrich bios can generate blogger buzz and prime shelf space in bookstores, Bach and Riva's books should be alongside them.

British Pathé's Marlene Dietrich Collection

2011-05-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

Pathé has amassed an extensive collection of footage featuring many subjects, including Marlene Dietrich. The French branch of the company keeps a closely guarded hoard, but British Pathé shares many free preview clips.

I've never heard or read about Dietrich's 1955 philanthropic efforts for the curiously named

( BLIND BABIES PARTY )

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And at the end of this 1962 clip, Dietrich almost trips on the stairs:

( TAORMINA FILM FESTIVAL )

Marlene Dietrich: A Baudrillardian View

2011-05-14T00:50:00.000-07:00

Marlene Dietrich fan and collector, Terry Sanderson, has kindly allowed me to share this photo of his Marlene Dietrich doll, a Clark Hanford masterpiece. Let me remind you that Sanderson will be presenting his show, "Marlene Dietrich - An Affectionate Tribute," on May 26 at The Cinema Museum in London at 7:30pm. The aforementioned link perfectly summarizes the content of Sanderson's show, and I would only add that Sanderson has revised this popular tribute many times over the years, before British and American audiences alike, making it worth watching for the first or the umpteenth time. Please be aware that Sanderson expends his efforts to put on this show as a hobby, not as a commercial enterprise. In fact, Dietrich inspires in many fans this same proclivity.

Incidentally, I noted Sanderson's activism as a secularist while I was glancing at the doll photo and perusing sites about him and Clark Hanford, subsequently unearthing my undergraduate memories of Baudrillard's simulacra and simulation concepts (translated by Sheila Faria Glaser). If you take this blog's name seriously and prefer to deify Dietrich, refrain from reading beyond this point. Otherwise . . .

I couldn't help but ponder what phase of simulation this doll represents. The fourth and final phase seems most appropriate: "it has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum." Without shoveling morbid images in your face, I will only state that the real Dietrich was laid to rest almost two decades ago, while this doll evokes Dietrich during her mid-century reign as a cabaret queen, wearing a bugle-beaded Jean Louis gown and swansdown coat as her official regalia. Even during Dietrich's lifetime, however, Hanford's dolls simulated her when she--the "real" Dietrich--could no longer represent herself. In a 1983 Playboy issue, Helmut Newton photographed Natassja Kinski with a Hanford-made Dietrich doll (NB: OBVIOUSLY not safe for work! one | two | three ) as an Exposed movie tie-in. In 2004, the folks at Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin (MDCB) also reported that Newton shot another Hanford-made Dietrich doll, misleadingly captioning one of the photographs in his 2000 book, Work, as the real Dietrich! From my pedestrian 21st-century perspective, I would echo Linda Sheng's opinion that the Dietrich doll could almost pass as a crudely-Photoshopped Dietrich in the Playboy photos. The Work photo could have fooled me at first glance as well!

Back to Baudrillard, in which simulacra phase would you classify Newton's photos? "It masks and denatures a profound reality" or "it masks the absence of a profound reality"? I'd say the Work photo performed the latter function, as it at least attempted to precede the real Dietrich. Perhaps Maximilian Schell's documentary, Marlene, which screened a year after the Playboy shoot, embodied the second phase because, of course, we hear only Dietrich's voice against archival footage and Schell's clips of Dietrich wannabes. For those who deify Dietrich, listening to the drunken slurs of an elderly dame claim that women's brains are half the size of men's indeed would exemplify "an evil appearance" that "inaugurate[d] the era of simulacra and of simulation, in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own," because Dietrich could no longer portray her divine image, thus necessitating nostalgic clips such as the ones that Schell expertly cobbled together. On the other hand, for fans of my ilk, a new Dietrich icon emerged from the Schell documentary--a bitch who could send home Alexis Colby and Amanda Woodward with their tails between their legs--a hilarious, politically incorrect, bitchy Dietrich whom Maria Riva would biographically reconstruct as masterfully as Clark Hanford recreates a glamorous Dietrich.

"Marlene on the Wall" - Suzanne Vega (1985)

2011-05-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

I heard Suzanne Vega's 1985 single, "Marlene on the Wall," ages ago but saw its video for the first time today. Perhaps I'll help pop your video cherry, too. The butterfly lighting, leg shots, smoke, and dissolves all evoke Josef von Sternberg's vision of Marlene Dietrich. Vega's lyrical syncretism of two internationally renown German icons (Dietrich and the Berlin Wall) reminds me that Dietrich's 1948 A Foreign Affair song, "The Ruins of Berlin," presaged Berlin's division through multilingual lyrics representing the Germans and the post-WWII powers that occupied their land. Where do you all think "Marlene on the Wall" stands among other '80s songs that referenced Dietrich's peers? I know of two--Kim Carnes' "Bette Davis Eyes" and Mylène Farmer's "Greta."

Anna Skubik & Marlene Dietrich: La femme et le pantin?

2011-05-10T01:20:00.000-07:00

I envy all of you who caught the show, "Broken Nails," starring Polish artystka Anna Skubik and her Madame-wannabe Marlene Dietrich puppet. The available clips pitch the concept as a paean to mixed metaphors, don't they? The Dietrich puppet belting "Mein Herr" and "Whatever Lola Wants"--it's like a camp version of the game, "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"! Is Skubik still performing this act?

The Marlene Dietrich puppet bowls a strike as Sally Bowles:

The Marlene Dietrich puppet can even pull off Polish:

Finally, here's Marlene Dietrich puppet in rollers as if she's Mrs. Roker!

Marlene Dietrich: Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind (Unicef, 1962)

2011-05-09T09:36:00.000-07:00