The Testatrix Is Willing

Totally unrelated. Fred MacMurray & Marlene Dietrich
on the set of The Lady is Willing.;)

Marlene Dietrich's last will and testament as well as its codicil became public record after it was granted probate by the New York County Surrogate's Court in September 1992. Even though private recorded conversations and letters between Marlene and her friends as well as photographs of Marlene's wounded leg after her 1973 fall at Shady Grove Music Fair have circulated among Dietrich fans for years, her will--accessible to anyone--never appears to have emerged. Until now.

Maria Riva at 90

Happy birthday to Maria Riva, who turns 90 on Saturday!

El Morocco Memories

With Clifton Webb, c 1937.

The zebra print on the banquettes was really dark blue, but that pattern (which reproduced so well in newsprint photos) served as background for the rich, the famous and the climbers of a generation and clearly identified their location at Manhattan's El Morocco nightclub.

The club, originally opened as a speakeasy, on 54th Street in in 1931, claimed to have invented not only the velvet rope at the entrance, but Sibera, too (on the wrong side of its tiny dance floor, to which the socially undesirable were banished). Nanette Fabray remembered: “One entered, and there was a hierarchy of where one sat. The first table on the right was the best; the second was reserved for the owner, John Perona. You didn't dare go unless you were perfectly turned out.”

Doctor Dietrich's Best Production? Her Daughter.

[In 1971, Jeffrey Archer organised a charity midnight matinee (to benefit MIND) at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was Marlene Dietrich's first  concert appearance in London for several years. This backstage interview – with both Marlene and Maria Riva, preparing for the show –  comes courtesy of the wonderful Crees Collection.]

FRIEND, 

LIVING LEGEND 

AND LIGHTNING TYPIST

by James Green

September 1971: Marlene at Heathrow.

There are many ways of saying Darling. But Marlene Dietrich's way is unique. A mixture of warning, invitation, seduction, plus a mocking suggestion that the men are about to be separated from the boys. But “Dar-ling” she says silkily by way of greeting. And crosses to plant a kiss on my five o'clock shadow. Not at all a bad start backstage at the Drury Lane theatre where tonight at midnight she will hold the football pitch size stage alone for one hour, 45 minutes. It is a charity concert and the audience will be paying up to £50-a-seat to hear her sing 25 songs and turn on the living legend magic.

At the moment she is wearing a navy blue coat with matching trousers, and a floppy-brimmed hat in the same colour pulled down over one eye.

As she checks on songs, running order, lighting, I have a word with her daughter, Maria.

Maria Riva's Blind Items Pt. 7

¿Quién es esa niña?

Due to my lack of motivation, Maria Riva's blind items have been on the blog's back burner, but some kind words from superliz6 at Tumblr have encouraged me to turn the heat up on them because many mysterious identities remain in Riva's oeuvre about her mother, Marlene Dietrich, including this one that superliz6 has brought to my attention.

During Christmas of 1963, a children's book writer barged in on Massy and the Rivas' festivities to carnally console Dietrich, still in mourning after the recent assassination of John F. Kennedy. By 1964, Marlene was lamenting the plane crash death of this "lady author," who was none other than Nancy Spain. Despite Riva's characterization, Spain wrote much more than juvenile literature, including perhaps this account.

Finding reference to Spain in other Dietrich bios has been quite a chore. In fact, I had to dust off Leslie Frewin's reworked 1967 book, Dietrich: The Story of a Star, to find mention of Spain. According to Frewin, Spain hurled threats at him to keep him from writing his Dietrich bio. Frewin incorrectly locates Dietrich's first meeting with Spain at the Theatre de l'Etoile in 1959, where they realized they shared fashion tastes. Frewin also describes an extensive interview that Spain conducted with Dietrich the following day. In addition to Marlene's revelation that she medicated roses with aspirin, the two "talked of clothes and beauty and men." Obviously, the most unfathomable part of that sentence is that men were a topic of their conversation. Please share this interview if you have it because David Bret wrote that it was "thought to have been [Dietrich's] most explicit ever." Bret may be the only other Anglophone Dietrich biographer to recognize Spain, quoting Marlene as saying that Nancy introduced her to Gilbert Becaud, the composer of "Marie, Marie." Those of you more knowledgeable of Nancy Spain will certainly flesh out the details of this blind item, as I have only just ordered Nancy's cookbook and memoir.

Maria Riva In Action

Ever been curious to see Maria Riva, the daughter of Marlene Dietrich, act? Watch her below in a 1952 episode of Suspense entitled "Death Drum" (NOTE: Maria appears starting at about 6:00):



Thoughts? Aside from finding her beautiful--dark wig (?) and all--I admire Maria's cool disdain--a counterbalance to Herbert Berghof & Co., most of whom are hams. Not that I would want them to act in any other way. Their histrionics are exactly what I would expect and enjoy with such a foreboding organ soundtrack. My favorite moment is in clip two at around 2:20, when Berghof's character is cornered by a ghost from his past, a gunman, and a harrowing maraca player.

Truthfully, I'm interested in locating DVDs of  '50s T.V. programs that feature Maria, so please share your wisdom in the comments section.

Maria Riva's eBook: The Tea and (no) Sympathy

All, this will be an uncharacteristically brief post from me. I contacted Random House about the eBook release of Maria Riva's biography, Marlene Dietrich, and received a cordial yet appalling reply:

Thank you for contacting Random House, Inc.  We appreciate your feedback and continued interest in our publications.

Our current production schedule shows the electronic release of Maria Riva's "Marlene Dietrich" is 3/11/2014.  This date can change at any time.

To be notified of when new releases for Ms. Riva are available we invite you to sign up for "author alerts" at the following link:

http://www.randomhouse.com/author/at.pperl?authorid=25657&action=age_check

Thanks so much for your time.

2014??? Please let your interest in Maria's eBook be known! Read this post on how you can contact Random House. If you have more potential contacts, let me know.

Random House, I Beseech Thee!

I have been excited about the eBook release of the original manuscript of Maria Riva's book, Marlene Dietrich, ever since I read about it on the "office" Marlene website. Unfortunately, there seems to be a delay.

On November 5, a person asked about the book on the official Marlene Dietrich Facebook page, and "Marlene Dietrich" stated that "Random House is dragging its heels." Well, I would like to express my interest in this release to Random House, and--if you share my sentiments--I urge you to do the same.

Contact Random House on Facebook to let them know that you want to purchase this eBook.

Contact Random House on Twitter to request its release, too. Please use the hashtag #teammariariva so that we can make our campaign trend.

Contact Random House on its website as well. If you have any specific, influential contacts at Random House, share them in the comments section. Better yet, ask on the official Marlene Dietrich Facebook page whom to contact at Random House. If you use my link, please feel free to copy-and-paste the following text in the Question/Comment box (or share what you have sent in the comments section):

Hello,

I am an avid reader who is looking forward to the eBook release of Maria Riva's biography about her mother, Marlene Dietrich. It appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list for several weeks in 1993 and will certainly find renewed success in electronic format.

Please let me know whom I should contact to express my interest in its release because I was hoping to purchase it during the upcoming holidays for myself as well as to buy more copies as gifts for all my friends and family members. I certainly don't want to resort to buying the Charlotte Chandler biography published by Simon & Schuster, which would be like putting coal in my loved ones' stockings.

Regards,
[Your name]

1940 U.S. Census--Here's Marlene Dietrich!

 After a simple search of the indexed 1940 United States census at FamilySearch.org, I finally discovered Marlene Dietrich's name on page 81 of the 84-page census schedule for California Enumeration District (ED) 19-43! Scouring through so many scanned sheets back in April must have made my eyes bleary because I know I viewed this very list. Indeed, Dietrich lived at the Beverly Hills Hotel (which then had the address 1201 Sunset Boulevard). Listed below Marlene is her retinue: daughter Maria Sieber, "secretary" Viola Rubber (a.k.a. "The Rhino"), and Erich Maria Remarque. See the full page for more details. You'll notice that Marlene is only 35, in keeping with her preferred birth year of 1904. You'll also observe that she worked only 8 weeks in 1939--on Destry Rides Again, of course--earning "over $5,000."

Thom Nickels' "Daddy, Buy Me That" (Pt. 2)

Many moons ago, I shared the first part of an interview that Thom Nickels conducted with Marlene Dietrich pal John Banks, called "Daddy, Buy Me That!" Well, if you weren't sold on Banks' story, maybe this second part will sway you. Banks discusses Dietrich's envy and jealousy toward Angie Dickinson, his thoughts about Maria Riva's depiction of her mother, the time he gave Marlene a Twiggy make-over, and much more.  I'll add my two-cents in brackets. Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, I never got around to contributing to the Paramount centennial blogathon, but I will post what I had intended someday--hopefully before the studio celebrates its bicentennial. Now, please enjoy . . .

Daddy, Buy Me That!

part two

by Thom Nickels

 

  Turbulent Sixties

Banks says that the '60s were a hard time for Marlene because she didn't like the fact that age was waning her power.

"In her book, Maria talks about Marlene arriving home from Washington, D.C. and walking in her apartment waving her panties in the air and saying that she'd just had it off with John Kennedy, and that you could still smell him on them, or whatever." Banks thinks this is a crock and maintains that, because Marlene was 60, he doesn't think that John Kennedy would have been interested. "Especially since they'd known each other since they were [e.g., he was?] small. She and Joe Kennedy spent the summer of 1938 or 1939 on the Riviera together when Kennedy was a child. But would a child of his age have kept that image of that super woman until 1960?" Banks says he doubts it.

"When she finally faced age, she realized that things finally had to stop. She could have gone on having affairs right up until her death, but she didn't because she wasn't offering what she had before. She also began to drink in the '60s. She drank as much tea and honey as she drank scotch when I met her," Banks remembers. "She also drank beer. We went to restaurants, and I would always order a Pilsner, and she would always order a half a bottle of champagne. She'd get the champagne, and I'd get the beer, but we'd switch . . . I thought drinking champagne was still very exciting. She was very European. She drank beer at noon. She drank beer with meals. She was German, darling. She was a wonderful German broad."

Thalidomide Babies

 

"What she'd been all her life, even in those pictures that we see of her in the 1920s when she's kind of hefty, was a gorgeous woman. People wrote about her then as being absolutely fabulous looking. She had reddish blond hair. She had this white-white complexion, a great bone structure. I have very few photos of me with Marlene. I would have felt as if I was insulting her if I'd asked to do photographs. I couldn't say to her, 'Can I have my photograph taken with you, please?' I didn't think she would have liked that. I think she rather liked the fact that I didn't.

"She was a funny broad. She had a good sense of humor. The only thing we did not joke about was 'the image.' That was work, and you did not fuck around with work. But, otherwise, she was pretty funny, and she could laugh at herself. She liked practical jokes like tripping people. She had great gallows humor. For instance, she'd make terrible jokes about thalidomide babies and then say, 'Oh, that's terrible!'"

Is Dietrich Through? (2/2)

In their January 1933 edition the fan magazine, Photoplay, published an exclusive interview with Marlene by Ruth Biery. Dietrich's "startling statements" promised to answer the questions that "kept the public and studios agog". (We presented Part One of the interview on Monday.)

PART TWO: AN UNDERSTANDING HUSBAND

Her American life has not been happy. Her first year -- Mrs Von Sternberg's suit for alienation of affections. The suit was understandable from an wholly American viewpoint -- it was completely a puzzle from Marlene's European one. She had a husband. He understood. Why should not Mr Von Sternberg's wife do the same? she reasoned. Incidentally, I have known both Marlene and Von Sternberg since she first came and I have always said both in print and in person that Marlene's devotion has always been as she now explains it.


A mental and, to her, common sense one. Then -- the fight on "Blonde Venus". Von Sternberg did not want to direct it. The studio wished to make the story saccharine. He bolted. Richard Wallace was assigned as director. She bolted. You now know why. Von Sternberg really went back and directed that picture for the sake of Marlene. He hated it then -- he hates it now. And no man can do a truly great picture with a story which he hates.

And then -- the kidnapping threats for her baby. Any description of her suffering would sound like an exaggeration. That Marlene Dietrich has a mother complex, no American would question. To her, the extend of her love is is only as natural as her refusal to be directed by any man other than the one who bridged the screen chasm for her. The letters she received were made up of words clipped from newspapers to avoid trace of handwriting. People said it was a joke.

They continued for six weeks. Each new letter showed a new knowledge of her movements. Why had she hired detectives? Why had she taken her child to such and such a place the day before? Marlene Dietrich was close to a mad woman. Neither she nor her child even now stir in the open today without armed guards.

The bars on the windows of her home are inches thick.

Is Dietrich Through? (1/2)

In their January 1933 edition the fan magazine, Photoplay, published an exclusive interview with Marlene by Ruth Biery. Dietrich's "startling statements" promised to answer the questions that "kept the public and studios agog".

PART ONE: "PLEASE MAKE MR VON STERNBERG DO IT"

HOLLYWOOD is eagerly discussing Marlene Dietrich and her problems.


Her contract with Paramount is finished in February. Will she re-sign? Will she make pictures with other directors than Von Sternberg? Will she remain in this country or return to Europe as has been rumoured? That Maurice Chevalier gossip? What was behind the seeming unfriendliness between herself and Von Sternberg?

What was ll that fuss about the kidnapping of her daughter? Was this just another publicity racket?

Literally hundreds of curious, anxious questions.

Marlene has not granted an interview for seven months.

She has remained isolated behind her forbidden guard of nine detectives. Yes, I said NINE. Neither Marlene nor her daughter has moved without the protection of armed guards for many, many weeks. She had added what threatened to be an indefinite silence to her well-managed defense.

But now she has broken that silence. "It is right that the American people who have been kind enough to see my pictures should know and understand. It is right that I, myself, should tell them."

Thom Nickels' "Daddy, Buy Me That" (Pt. 1)

For a blog entry, this is a long read, which is why I'm dividing it into 2 parts. When I first read about Marlene Dietrich's friend John Banks and sought information about him, I learned that a writer named Thom Nickels had published his interview with Banks in 2003. Unfortunately, it was no longer available online, which led to me emailing Nickels to obtain the text. Nickels kindly sent me what was far more than a brief interview. In fact, it's quite a substantial piece called "Daddy, Buy Me That," which I hope will be enlighten those of you who are casual Dietrich admirers and corroborate the beliefs of those of you who are hardcore Marlenephiles. I have made some minor edits (e.g., formatting, punctuation, some names, spelling, and occasional bracketed notes) and added photos, but what you'll read below is almost exactly what appears on Nickels' typed manuscript. As for whether Banks makes any inaccurate statements, I will leave that for you to highlight in the comments section because I'm far more impressed by Banks' extensive knowledge of Marlene.

Because I tend to devour as much as I can when I find writers who interest me, I'll add that I've read the Kindle edition of Nickels' Walking on Water & After All This. I suppose that the two novellas fit within the genre term "speculative fiction," but both are also imbued with humor and cultural references, which is why I intend to read more of Nickels' work. Now, for what you're here to read!

Daddy, Buy Me That!

by Thom Nickels

In Montreal's last remaining Anglo gay bar, La Mystique, the bartender, John Banks, talks with the customers.

The talk is rarely about Marlene Dietrich, if only because John says everyone he knows is sick of hearing about her. The fact is, they've heard it all. How she talked. That her favorite food was hamburger. That when she had people over she'd crave odd foods in the middle of drinks and offer to make ice cream sundaes. That she lived to be 91 years old and spent the last 14 years of her life, like Garbo, in solitude.

Banks knows so much about Marlene Dietrich because for 12 years he worked as her personal assistant both in the United States and Europe.

Dietrich, the icon--the gay icon, as Banks insists--has given the world more than 34 films, including The Blue Angel, Morocco, Blonde Venus, Shanghai Express, The Devil Is a Woman, and The Garden of Allah. Discovered by director Josef von Sternberg in 1929, she came to Hollywood in 1930. A well-educated woman who played the violin and piano and spoke several languages, Banks says she was definitely "not the Hollywood movie star but the kind of well-rounded figure we don't see today."

So it's plenty good, yes, to be shaking the hand that once comforted the great legend in various hotel rooms around the world.

In his home, some 15 minutes by cab from La Mystique, the 60-something Banks opens a bottle of wine. By now I'm fully aware that the precise quality of his speaking voice is matched by a manner that is as unambiguous as his opinions. With us is Edward, a little man from Toronto who attached himself to us in a bar the minute he heard us talking about Dietrich. Inviting him to come along, in  Montreal terms, was easy, since strangers easily become friends here.

Maria Riva's Blind Items Pt. 6

For those of you new to the game, Maria Riva gives lots of people funny nicknames in her biography about her mother, Marlene Dietrich, just barely obscuring their identities. In many cases, these blind items were still alive when Maria's book was published in 1993 and could have put up a stink had Maria been audacious enough to name them directly. This blind item is a piece of cake--especially because Maria includes not one but two photos of him--but I figured I'd get him out of the way.

The Knight & his Dame at the London premiere of Accused

During 1936, Dietrich was in London filming Knight Without Armour, and she coincidentally acquired an American lover who aspired to be knighted. Thus, Maria Riva calls him the Knight throughout her book, and we learn--thanks to Heidede's photographic memory--that Mutti mocked her lover's social climbing, questioning how a person with a rope-swinging, possibly Jewish father could ever become a Sir. If these hints haven't given it away, I regret to inform you that you're as thick as two short planks. The Knight is Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who eventually got the title he desired in 1949.

While Maria was apparently nibbling on her Norwegian roommate's brunost care packages at Brillantmont, Dietrich moved to 20 Grosvenor Square (address just included at Mapping Marlene Dietrich), in the apartment below her Knight's. By 1937, Marlene convinced her Knight to follow his daddy's swashbuckling footsteps and play the villain in a David O. Selznick feature. If I have to tell you the name of that film (The Prisoner of Zenda), go do something else because you're a novice!

Anyway, when Dietrich returned stateside to make Angel, her Knight followed. The two broke up at some point, but the Knight gave Dietrich something to remember (but unfortunately not regift): a gold cigarette case engraved with his nickname for her, Dushka, which Maria jokingly associates with Marlene's post-coitus ablutions. You can see a photo of it (the ciggy case, not the ablutions!) in the book, Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memories.

To read my guesses about Maria Riva's other blind items, click here!

Marlene Dietrich in the Twilight Zone

Was this the image of Madge & Chirac that shocked Dietrich?
(from Madonna Superstar Queen Photogallery)

Finally, I’ve watched the recent France 5 documentary, Un soir avec Marlene Dietrich: Le crépuscule d’un ange. Despite my frustration that such programs never air in the United States, I must admit that many folks can’t conveniently tweet about them, Pinterest them, or “like” them; therefore, they can’t engage in any discourse about them.

Book-ended by commentary from the presenter Laurence Piquet and the film critic Henri Chapier that references the well-known tropes of Dietrich-as-Galatea and Dietrich-as-myth-and-image, this documentary offers an assortment of testaments from friends, family, and others that invite us to the inner sanctum of our last goddess, not panegyrizing her but rather humanizing her during her Ragnarok. For those less fond of my pretentious rhapsodizing , let me put it to you this way: you’ll get to see and hear Dietrich being a hot mess before she died, which you may find tasteless or morbidly fascinating—or both!

Maria Riva's Blind Items Pt. 5

It's been quite a long time since I wrote an entry in this series, but I notice that readers keep finding this blog by searching "maria riva," so I'll take that as a sign that many of you find Marlene Dietrich's daughter and her book as interesting as I do. For this blind item, I need your help because I only found one mention of the person in Maria Riva's book and am sure I missed previous references. More importantly, you can tell me who the person is because I haven't got a clue!

Maria mentioned that Dietrich's "one-time Swedish Blonde" became the target of Swedish media gossip for her alleged drug abuse. According to Maria, Dietrich mailed out amphetamine care packages to the Swedish Blonde, apparently to ensure her friend's happiness and because the Scandinavian junkie would have got her fix from her roomies, "those two fags."

So who was the Swedish Blonde? She certainly wasn't Ingrid Bergman. Maria extensively quoted Dietrich's jealousy of Bergman, her suspected rival for Yul Brynner's love. Via Maria, we learn that Dietrich called Bergman a "Swedish horse" and "an internationally known whore." Poor Bergman always got crucified for doing publicly what her Hollywood peers were doing privately. Every time I think about the "scandal" between Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, I remember a song I used to play from my mom's record collection, Sophie Tucker's "Mister Segal." Yes, it goes without saying that my mother was a bit of an Auntie Mame!

To read my guesses about Maria Riva's other blind items, click here!

Why Is Maria Riva Still A Punching Bag?

I haven't heard of Richard "Bugs" Burnett, a columnist at Montreal Gazette's blogs whose bio touts him as a maple-flavored Michael Musto. I don't know of John Banks either, one of Dietrich's boys during the '60s and '70s--figuratively and literally, apparently beginning his service to Dietrich at the tender age of 15. Burnett, however, gave me a thorough introduction to Banks in an article just published called "How one night in Montreal changed the life of Marlene Dietrich." Clearly, the presumptuous title should have been "How one night in Montreal changed the life of John Banks," but Dietrich's name naturally has more SEO clout.

Misleading title aside, Burnett extracts a lot of details from Banks, including a beautiful photo of Dietrich and Banks together, who remind me of Catherine Deneuve and Pierre Clementi in Belle de jour. More intriguing are Burnett's choice of authoritative biographers, Charlotte Chandler and David Bret. I've covered Chandler a bit after having read her Dietrich bio and still have yet to read Bret's, who has at least made his presence known, but I'm well aware that both biographers are of ill-repute if you take Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin's newsletters as gospel (Bret here; Chandler here). Of course, those who read enough of my shtick must know that I enjoy the apocrypha as much as the torah and welcome all. In fact, I still have hopes of writing about Dean Goodman and Erik Hanut's books, which I read many months ago.

Back to Burnett, while I find his favored biographers a surprising choice, his silence on Maria Riva's book--the Song of Songs as far as Dietrich tomes are concerned--strikes me as strange. Instead of citing Maria's book, Burnett quotes Banks' recollection of Maria enabling Dietrich's alcoholism. Maria admitted to being Dietrich's handmaiden but never her Hebe! Sometimes, I wonder whether some Dietrich fans still have it out for Maria. Burnett expresses his fandom throughout his article--especially the introduction--and in an earlier article he wrote that mentioned Banks. I've been meaning to post a lengthy look at all the times Dietrich fanboy Steven Bach poked fun of Maria's weight in his book, and I have been keeping my eye on the vitriol that some (or one?) DataLounge poster(s) spew(s) Maria's way, too. Do any of you still have these kinds of feelings about Maria? Feel free to air them out here!

I'll just request that if any of you know more about John Banks, please educate us in the comments section in between your rants. So far, I've learned that he was a bartender at Le Mystique, the oldest gay bar in Montreal until it closed in 2009. As least its Angelfire site remains, which may very well be the last Angelfire site standing. Seriously, I hope someone salvaged its NOSTALGAY exhibit. Establishments like Le Mystique remind me of the Hollywood gay dive that I never had a chance to visit--Spotlight, which looked like Skid Row on poppers from the street but must have been brimming with history within its doors.

Mother & Daughter Act

With Mr Elizabeth Taylor, 1955 (above).
Radio Broadcast, around 1943 (above and below)

First class (1947), above.

Not sure when this was taken.

At a premiere in 1936.

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

(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.

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

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.