HQ Dietrich photos in the LIFE online archive

I ought to have mentioned this earlier, but a large portion of LIFE magazine's photo archive is now online, with the help of its host site Google. Search for "Marlene Dietrich" and feast your eyes on the glory.
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Дитрих in Moscow

Can't catch the "Great Marlene: Story of the Star" exhibition at Moscow's Tsaritsyno Museum? Check out this link for the stage costumes, posters, and other memorabilia on display. Maria Riva's message for the exhibition opening highlighted that Dietrich "loved Russians and Russian culture." Indeed, I recall mentions of borsht quite a few times in Riva's biography.

Sahara Hotel, Las Vegas. 1953.

Marlene Dietrich wears a gown of transparent black net, which veteran show buisiness people called the most revealing they could remember, for her night-club debut at the Sahara hotel, Las Vegas, here last night, Dec. 15, 1953.

The clinging gown, which supplied only a few scattered bangles and beads between Dietrich and her public, was reported to have cost $ 6.000.

Actress Marlene Dietrich holds the $3,000 sequin and lace creation made for her during an appearance at the Hotel Sahara in Las Vegas, Jan. 6, 1954. The revealing dress, designed by Jean Louis Berthauldt, left, which she vowed never to wear again, made a sensation when she wore it in her show.

That Hat! (Mostly) Paris 1959

Not exactly sure where the photo above was taken - perhaps Germany in 1960?


Above: Arriving in Paris, 1959.

What about her liquor bills?

After her alma mater Paramount released Mommie Dearest, Dietrich had quite a bone to pick. Like most of her private exchanges, a letter Dietrich wrote to Peter Bankers in response to the film was recently purchased on the Christie's auction block for about $1,500.

Among its most catty slams: "Fay [sic] Dunaway should be ashamed of herself, but then she probably needed the money to pay her liquor bills." 

On Christina Crawford, Dietrich says, "I am shocked that Paramount bought that filthy book and made that frightful bitch who wrote it rich." 

I don't recall Dietrich having any fond feelings for her fellow Box Office Poison, yet she declares, "I did not know Joan Crawford, but nobody deserves that kind of slaughter." 

All this makes me wonder what she would have said to Maria.

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