As your sacrificial lamb, I ordered and watched a DVD called Classic Movie Bloopers: Uncensored, which purported to feature Marlene Dietrich. Yes, she appears in the Manpower wedding scene with Edward G. Robinson. Yes, there's a blooper: the minister bungles his lines. Pardon my ignorance, but who is he? All I can say about the scene is that it's Robinson's best angle; however, you don't need the DVD to watch it because it (as well as the rest of the DVD footage, which consists of Warner Bros. bloopers compilations under the title Breakdowns) is readily available on YouTube. Skip to 6:11 and play:
Now that you've watched, please point me to the real Dietrich snafus! Where are the umpteen takes of Amy Jolly garbling the word "help" and Catherine the Great showing Quasimodo how to tug a rope? Where are Liza almost dropping Baby Corey like a flaming bag of feces and Countess Alexandra slipping in a tub and proving that even White Russians are a little red inside? Let's set our sights even higher. Where's Anna Sedlak refusing to look the slightest bit plebian? Will the real bloopers and lost footage please stand up?
Now that you've watched, please point me to the real Dietrich snafus! Where are the umpteen takes of Amy Jolly garbling the word "help" and Catherine the Great showing Quasimodo how to tug a rope? Where are Liza almost dropping Baby Corey like a flaming bag of feces and Countess Alexandra slipping in a tub and proving that even White Russians are a little red inside? Let's set our sights even higher. Where's Anna Sedlak refusing to look the slightest bit plebian? Will the real bloopers and lost footage please stand up?
Fun stuff! And so funny that you posted this -- just the other day I came across another one of these classic blooper thingies on youtube -- it was pretty funny. No Marlene bloopers there either, though.
ReplyDeleteDo you remember whether it was Warner Bros. or another studio? Despite the lack of Marlene, I was quite entertained by these bloopers thanks to the many Bette Davis moments. In fact, a user named afrenchindublin compiled Bette's blunders on YouTube--what a mouth she had!
DeleteJoseph, thanks for this! Marlene probably made bonfires of her own outtakes and unretouched negatives.
ReplyDeleteWhat I want to see is more of her home movies! The new German documentary uses the same old clips, apparently MD only shot 5 seconds of home movie footage in her life, even if there are reels and reels in the MDCB.
I think those early 1930s home movies (black & white with Marlene and Maria) are probably in Kodacolor, a system requiring filters in projection to reproduce the colour:
http://giant-squid-audio-lab.com/hip/kodacolor_page/kodacolor.html
If the Museum has them properly transferred, it would be the earliest colour footage of Marlene.
missladiva, what you have in mind is much more feasible because we know that these home videos exist. I don't know the logistics behind it, but I'd love to see the home videos licensed for distribution as special features/extras on a DVD/Blu-ray--or even as DVD/Blu-ray features in their own right. If the on-demand business model has been lucrative for Marlene and Marlene-related releases, why not?
DeleteThanks for sharing this. Thanks to youtube we have been able to hear MD rehearsing her song in Just A Gigolo. What I personally would like to see the most are the outtakes from her TV Special ("Who's talking? Would you shut up?"). Of course, there must be more of them and they are not at MDCB.
ReplyDelete"demand and supply" Marlene would say. I would LOVE bloopers and home movies. (And yes, the Bette Davis ones are Gold!) We need to see Charles Boyer's fake hair sweat off and fall in desert sand with a giggling Marlene. I would pay good money for that hahaha.
ReplyDelete