Real name is Marlene Dietrich. The amazing life of an amazing man - biography of Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Real name: Maria Magdalena von Losch. (born December 27, 1901 - died May 6, 1992)
Outstanding German and American film actress, German by birth. The creator of mainly images of fatal, mysterious women in more than 40 films.
Performer of pop songs and songs from films.
Recipient of honorary awards: Medal of Freedom (USA) and the Order of the Legion of Honor (France).
“When you think about Marlene Dietrich, the word “legend” seems to be most suitable, although she does not accept it in relation to herself. But still she cannot escape this definition. For life cannot be called anything other than a legend, in which a dream has become the embodiment of eternity,” - this is what Francois Chalet wrote about the famous actress. It is really difficult, when speaking and thinking about Marlene Dietrich, to resist adding the epithets “legendary” and “mythical” to this name. But behind this “eternal myth” lies long life a real person with his joys and troubles, ups and downs, moments of happiness and disappointment.
At the beginning of her rise to fame, Marlene Dietrich was called the “blue angel” everywhere - after the title of her first sound film, shot in 1930 and which brought her worldwide fame. That’s what they called her in Germany, the actress’s homeland. But only until the brilliant Berliner challenged fascism by emigrating from a Nazi country. Adolf Hitler, being an ardent admirer of Marlene, repeatedly called her to his homeland, promising that he himself would “meet her at the station and take her along the carpet to Wilhelmstrasse.” But the actress rejected all offers from the “glorious Reich” and in 1938 accepted American citizenship. Far from politics, Dietrich nevertheless had a clear civic position: she adored de Gaulle, an opponent of Nazism, and she herself hated fascism: “I hated from 1933 to 1945. It's hard to live hating. But if circumstances require it, you have to learn to hate.” During the war, the actress raised a million dollars for the needs of the front; she often visited the front line and supported the morale of the soldiers with her performances. Dietrich later recalled: “I felt responsible for the war that Hitler started, and I wanted to be involved in ensuring that this war ended as quickly as possible.” She was seen in Germany only in the spring of 1945, and in an American military uniform. After this, in the eyes of her compatriots, she became a “fallen”, “unloved angel.”
Germany never fully forgave Marlene Dietrich for her “renunciation.” The point is not even that the famous actress became a great loss for her country. As the Hamburg magazine Der Spiegel wrote, “Dietrich, by her living example, although in a privileged position, demonstrated to the Germans the ability to resist Hitler. The civic courage she demonstrated exposed the cowardice and hypocrisy of those who liked to justify themselves by saying that under Nazism there was no choice. That’s why Dietrich was hated and spat upon in our country when she toured Germany in the 60s, that’s why her grave in one of the Berlin cemeteries is still desecrated with regular vileness today.”
Nevertheless, albeit in absentia and too late, an attempt at a truce between the “prodigal daughter” and her homeland took place. Germany could not resist the acting and excellent performance of Marlene Dietrich's songs. Not so long ago, in Berlin, the main German film prize, an analogue of the American Oscar, was awarded for the 50th time, which was named “Lola” - after the seductive singer from “The Blue Angel”. A museum of the actress is also preparing to open here, and in Hollywood, German director Josef Vilsmeier shot the film “Marlene,” in which 39-year-old actress Katya Flint achieved a striking resemblance to Dietrich, recreating the main events of her life.
Maria Magdalena von Losch was born in a small town near Berlin into a military family. Her childhood years were spent on Berlin's Lindenstrasse, where the Konrad Felsing jewelry store, owned by her mother's family, was located. The girl's father died in 1911, and her mother, Josephine von Losch, had to raise her daughters alone - the eldest Elisabeth and the younger Maria Magdalena. But the family did not experience need either then or later, when Josephine again married a military man. Marlene (the future celebrity came up with this name for herself at the age of 13, combining her two names together) had a difficult relationship with her mother. Nevertheless, she often repeated her words: “Don’t relax, do something!”, which forever became her life motto. Marlene Dietrich went to the Berlin theater school to “do something” after she, a promising violin student at the music academy, received severe inflammation of a tendon in her hand and the doctors’ verdict was that she would not play professionally! After finishing her studies at drama school, Marlene played in several Berlin theaters. But her roles were very minor, with one or two lines per performance, or even completely wordless.
Marlene Dietrich became famous in 1930, starring in The Blue Angel as a singer in a Hamburg port tavern. The director of this film was an American of Austrian origin, one of the most famous people in cinema of that time, Joseph von Sternberg. This was not Marlene’s first film work; before that she starred in 17 films, but success and fame came only after meeting Sternberg. It was he who played the biggest role in the actress’s life, making her a movie star. After the premiere of their first film together, the actress gave Sternberg a photograph of herself, on which she made a symbolic inscription: “Without you, I am nothing.” She later admitted: “He was for me a confessor, a critic, a teacher, a man who fulfilled all my desires, he was my impresario, he pacified my pride and brought peace to my family hearth, he was my absolute patron.” Indeed, Sternberg became for Marlene a friend, a lover, a protector, and a support, a person who did literally everything for her. The famous director himself recalled that before meeting him, Marlene was “a simple-minded, rather plump Berlin housewife, who in the photograph looked as if she was trying her best to look like a woman.” In The Blue Angel, Sternberg, like a real magician, uses light, shadow and cosmetics to transform a plump simpleton into a sophisticated beauty. He lifts Marlene's eyebrows at an angle, highlights her high cheekbones, and even forces the actress to pull out four molars to make her face look a little longer and more sophisticated. Subsequently, the director constantly improved the screen images of Marlene, dressing her in furs, in a tailcoat, then in men's suit and a tie, then a Basque beret, a cap and even a hat. It should be noted that with Dietrich’s light hand, the men’s suit that she loved to wear so much became the latest “squeak” in women’s fashion of those years. And her extravagant, breathtaking evening dresses captured the imagination of even the most sophisticated fashionistas. In those days, Dietrich was considered a generally recognized trendsetter, “the most elegant woman in the world.”
In 1930, the actress, following her beloved teacher, left for America, where she hoped to sign a contract with the Paramount film studio. She worked a lot in Hollywood, and this saved her from difficult adaptation to American life. In a short period of time, she starred with Sternberg in several films that were a fantastic success: “Morocco” (1930), “Dishonored” (1931), “Shanghai Express”, “Blonde Venus” (both in 1932). But after filming “The Devil is a Woman” (1935), which Marlene considered her best film work, the creative union of the director and actress fell apart.
Marlene Dietrich tried to act with other directors, sometimes transforming even gray and inexpressive material with her bright talent. At this time, Marlene's screen image changes. Millions of viewers are accustomed to seeing her in the role of a fatal, fatal lady, but now the heroine of the actress has become an intelligent woman with an amazing sense of humor. But her beauty, charm and rare, hypnotic voice remained unchanged. Ernest Hemingway wrote of Marlene that “if she had nothing else but her voice, she could still break your heart with that alone. But she still has such a beautiful figure, these endless legs and the timeless charm of her face..."
Hemingway knew what he was writing about. The seductive Marlene captivated more than one man's heart, including his. She was loved by many and she loved many. Among her lovers there were many celebrities: Erich Maria Remarque, Maurice Chevalier, Raf Vallone, Yul Brynner. But the greatest love in Marlene Dietrich’s life was Jean Gabin, the number one star of French cinema of that time. “I liked everything about Gaben,” the actress admitted. - He was the ideal of many women. There is nothing false - everything in it is clear and simple.” Together they starred in the unsuccessful film “Martin Roumagnac” (1946), playing the main roles. Marlene Dietrich and Jean Gabin had a deep, passionate feeling for each other, but they were separated first by the war, then by work. After the war, Marlene was afraid to leave Hollywood for France, where she, no longer young, would have to win over the European audience anew. Gabin, meanwhile, married model Dominique Fourier, with whom he lived happily for 25 years and raised three children. But the French actor remained forever in the heart of Marlene Dietrich - the portrait of “Jeannot” hung in her living room all her life next to the portrait of de Gaulle. When Gaben died in 1976, Marlene Dietrich said: “Having buried Jean, I became a widow for the second time.” Not long before this, her ex-husband, director Rudolf Sieber, with whom she actually lived for 5 years, died, but was married until the end of his days.
During her long and colorful life, Marlene Dietrich, being an unusually strong personality, withstood more than one blow of fate. But, persistent in spirit, she was at the same time a very soft, romantic woman. Billy Wilder, who directed Marlene in Witness for the Prosecution (1975), said that “she was really a nurse and a housewife... Mother Teresa, only with beautiful legs. As soon as the lighting guy on the scaffolding sneezed, she rushed to the dressing room for drops and pills.” Above all else in human relationships, Dietrich valued friendship and compassion. She said: “I have a Russian soul. And this is the best thing about me. I easily give away what someone needs.” Surrounded by a halo of fame, the actress was, although unusual, still an earthly woman. For all her “stardom,” she was famous for her culinary abilities, which she was very proud of. Her love for cooking was reflected in her book “The ABCs of My Life,” in which she brought together seemingly incompatible things: the world of cuisine and the world of art. In it, next to each other, the words “Belmondo” and “Eggplant Caviar”, “Dostoevsky” and “Home” are located. Living in the illusory, made-up world of cinema, Marlene appreciated the most ordinary, everyday things. “A simple person, a simple woman, who, I am sure, is forced to put on her myth, like medieval knight“Tournament armor” - this is what journalist Jean Ko wrote about the great actress.
But still, she would not have become the same famous Marlene Dietrich if she had not, first of all, been “a person doing her job.” Being a true connoisseur of acting, she did not tolerate amateurs: “I love professionals and don’t like amateurs.” Everything that the actress herself did, she did to perfection. As the American film director Peter Bogdanovich wrote about her performances on the stage, “in her concert there was not a single half-thought-out gesture, not a single thought that was not completed... She is economical in every movement, she simply stands on the stage and plays for each of those sitting in hall What is carefully rehearsed is born on stage as a revelation, as if for the first time: she is a great performer, very theatrical and incredibly sophisticated.” Marlene Dietrich tirelessly polished her talent, successfully and widely filming in the late 30s - early 40s with famous directors - Ernst Lubitsch (“Desire”, 1936, “Angel”, 1937), Rene Clair ( "New Orleans Light", 1941). She later worked with other European directors who immigrated to the United States - Fritz Lang (The Notorious Ranch, 1952), Billy Wilder (A Foreign Romance, 1949, Witness for the Prosecution, 1957) . One of Dietrich's most recent significant film works was her role in Stanley Kramer's film The Nuremberg Trials (1961). Marlene’s anti-fascist views were expressed in this picture. She played here the widow of an aristocrat who condemned her husband, who collaborated with the Third Reich. This image was completely new for the actress, far from her usual on-screen images of femme fatales or comedians. This role allowed the “angel” Marlene Dietrich to soar to new heights.
Marlene reached the heights not only in cinema, but also on the stage. Already middle-aged, at the age of 52, Dietrich began her career as a pop singer with amazing success. With her marvelous voice, she sang songs from the films in which she starred, and songs from the war years. The actress traveled to all continents with concerts, and in 1964 she triumphantly performed in the USSR, giving concerts in Moscow and Leningrad. “Russian in soul,” she later wrote in her book: “I think about Russia with great love. Russians know how to sing and love like no other people in the world.” Marlene Dietrich delighted the audience with her performances until 1975, when at one of the concerts in Sydney, being drunk, she fell, caught on a cable on stage, and received a severe fracture of the femoral neck. Since then, the actress has not performed and appeared in films only once - in the film “Beautiful Gigolo - Poor Gigolo” (1978). In it she performed one of her best songs - “Just a Gigolo.” She was 77 years old then...
The last years of her life, “magnificent Marlene” lived in complete solitude in her modest apartment on Avenue Montaigne in Paris. In 1979, she suffered another severe fracture and after that she could no longer move independently. She suffered greatly from the inattention of her daughter Maria Riva, who wrote a scandalous book about her, “My Mother Marlene Dietrich.” Some Dietrich biographers claim that it was her daughter’s “creation” that Marlene read that made her heart stop. Even though in her 90s she was the way Maria Riva describes her in the book - with shriveled and inactive legs, pink hair, dirty white strands, blackened teeth... But in people’s memory, Marlene Dietrich was preserved as herself wanted - “with delicate features, with a captivating manner of crossing her legs, breaking her ankles and making these legs with broken ankles emit music.” The embodiment of beauty, grace, magic and mystery...
She died suddenly on May 6, 1992 at 3:20 p.m. Her body was wrapped in the tricolor French flag, and then the coffin, already under the American flag, was sent by plane to Berlin, where the body of the great actress was interred under the German flag in the Friedenau cemetery, next to her mother. Such was the will of the deceased...
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Marlene Dietrich / Marlene Dietrich. Biography and creative path
Marlene Dietrich(Marlene Dietrich) was born in Berlin on December 27, 1901 in the family of a military man, and later a police lieutenant, Louis Erich Otto Dietrich and his wife Wilhelmina Felsing, who came from a wealthy family of watchmakers. Real name Marlene - Maria Magdalena Dietrich von Losch. A year before Mary was born, her parents had their first daughter, Elizabeth.
When Marlene was five years old, her father and mother went to different addresses, and a year later Otto Dietrich died.
At the school for girls, where the future actress began studying in 1907, Maria became interested in music, began playing the lute, and later the violin. When the times came
During the First World War, the life of the Dietrich family changed, the entire way of life was subordinated to current military events. In addition, mother and daughters moved to Dessau, from where they returned to Berlin in1917. That summer she played the violin in front of an audience for the first time.Having decided to protect Marlene, who attended high school in Berlin until 1918, from dangers (the country was dominated by devastation, inflation, epidemics, and popular despair), her mother sent her to Weimar, where Marlene continued to study violin at the school of Frau von Stein until 1921. Then the mother took her daughter back to Berlin. Now Marlene studied violin with Professor Robert Reitz. However, I soon had to say goodbye to this hobby, since Marlene began to have
pain in the hand, and besides, the family needed money.Marlene worked in an orchestra accompanying silent films for about a month, then began taking vocal lessons from a famous Berlin teacher.
In the 20s she began singing in cabaret. And in 1922 she starred in a movie for the first time - in the biographical drama “ Napoleon's younger brother».Marlene's star work, which literally created her, was the role of a cabaret singer in the film " Blue Angel(1930) featuring Emil Jannings ("Eyes of the Mummy Ma").
The premiere of The Blue Angel, which took place on March 31, 1930, became a sensation. Despite lukewarm criticism, the film was a huge success with the audience, which attracted the attention of American film producers and distributors to the film. The film, even after a long time, has not ceased to be considered an icon of cinematography. After the furore of The Blue Angel, Marlene herself signed a contract with Paramount Pictures and in April 1930 left her native Berlin.
As for the director Joseph von Sternberg, then he cast the actress in six films, forced her to lose weight, remove several molars and taught her how to set the light so as to emphasize all the advantages of Marlene’s face. All their joint films brought them more and more fame. Dietrich quickly became one of the highest paid actresses of her time. She starred in the extremely popular " Shanghai Express"(1932), and then in the famous film " Blonde Venus"with Cary Grant ("Alice in Wonderland", "The Philadelphia Story", "Arsenic and Old Lace"). The last tandem work of Sternberg and Marlene was the film “ The devil is a woman"(1935).
The films of the mid-30s with the participation of the actress did not have significant success with either critics or the public. The actress returned to Europe and starred in the western " Destry is riding again"(1939), where James Stewart played opposite her ("Rear Window", "The Man Who Knew Too Much", "Vertigo", "It's a Wonderful Life", "The Philadelphia Story"). After the war, Marlene's career received a second wind thanks to theatrical work, including performances on Broadway.
Since 1945 Marlene Dietrich starred in one or two films annually. Among the films with the participation of the actress are films that subsequently acquired cult status - “Witness for the Prosecution” (1957) and “Nuremberg Trials” (1961) .
In 1963, Dietrich came on tour to Moscow and Leningrad, where her concerts were a stunning success. Afterwards, in an interview, the artist admitted that visiting the USSR was her long-time dream, and also added that she loves Russian literature, feeling a special awe towards the writer Konstantin Paustovsky.
Dietrich's last film work dates back to 1978, when the drama " Beautiful gigolo - unhappy gigolo"with musician David Bowie and actress Kim Novak.
In 1979, the actress fell on stage and received a complex leg fracture. Dietrich spent the last 13 years of her life (12 of which were bedridden) in her mansion in Paris, maintaining contact with the outside world only by telephone.
1930-1931: Oscar nomination - “Best Actress” (film “Morocco”). 1957: Golden Globe nomination - “Best Actress, Drama” (“Witness for the Prosecution”). Marlene Dietrich is a Knight of the Legion of Honor.
Marlene Dietrich / Marlene Dietrich. Personal life
In 1924, Dietrich married an actor for the first and only time. Rudolf Sieber. They lived together for only five years. Dietrich remained Sieber's wife until his death in 1976. From this marriage, Marlene gave birth to her only daughter, Maria, in December 1924.
Marlene Dietrich died on May 6, 1992. in his Paris apartment. The coffin with her body was taken to Berlin, where the actress was buried in her home district of Schöneberg next to her mother's grave in the Stadttischer Friedhof III cemetery.
Marlene Dietrich / Marlene Dietrich. Filmography
Beautiful Gigolo – Unhappy Gigolo (1978) / Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo
German Song Festival 1963 (TV, 1963) / Deutsche Schlagerfestival 1963
The Nuremberg Trials (1961) / Judgment at Nuremberg
Touch of Evil (1958)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
History in Monte Carlo (1956) / Montecarlo
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)
Notorious Ranch (1952) / Rancho Notorious
No Way (1951) / No Highway
Stage Fright (1950) / Stage Fright
Foreign Affair (1948) / A Foreign Affair
Golden Earrings (1947) / Golden Earrings
Martin Roumagnac (1946) / Martin Roumagnac
Kismet (1944) / Kismet
Following the Boys (1944) / Follow the Boys
Pittsburgh (1942) / Pittsburgh
Scoundrels (1942) / The Spoilers
The Lady Is Willing (1942)
Manpower (1941) / Manpower
New Orleans Sweetheart (1941) / The Flame of New Orleans
Seven Sinners (1940) / Seven Sinners
Destry Rides Again (1939)
Angel (1937) / Angel
Knight Without Armor (1937) / Knight Without Armor
I Loved a Soldier (1936)
The Garden of Allah (1936) / The Garden of Allah
Desire (1936) / Desire
The Devil Is a Woman (1935) / The Devil Is a Woman
The Bloody Empress (1934) / The Scarlet Empress
Song of Songs (1933) / The Song of Songs
Blonde Venus (1932)
Shanghai Express (1932) / Shanghai Express
Dishonored, or Agent X-27 (1931) / Dishonored
The Blue Angel (1930) / The Blue Angel
Morocco (1930) / Morocco
Danger Before the Wedding (1930) / Gefahren der Brautzeit
The Ship of Lost Souls (1929) / Das Schiff der verlorenen Menschen
The Woman Who Is Desirable (1929) / Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt
I kiss your hand, Madame (1929) / Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame
Princess Olala (1928) / Prinzessin Olala
Cafe "Electric" (1927) / Café Elektric
The Big Swindle (1927) / Sein größter Bluff
Heads up, Charlie! (1927) / Kopf hoch, Charly!
The False Baron (1927) / Der Juxbaron
Dubarry today (1927) / Eine Dubarry von heute
Manon Lescaut (1926) / Manon Lescaut
My wife is a dancer (1925) / Der Tänzer meiner Frau
The Monk from Santarem (1924) / Der Mönch von Santarem
A Leap into Life (1924) / Der Sprung ins Leben
The Tragedy of Love (1923) / Tragödie der Liebe
The Man by the Road (1923) / Der Mensch am Wege
Napoleon's Younger Brother (1923) / So sind die Männer
In the Shadow of Happiness (1919) / Im Schatten des Glücks
If we talk only about scandals, countless love affairs and sexual preferences of Marlene, this will be partly true, but it is not fair to Marlene as an intelligent, deeply sensual person, a selfless, disciplined worker, a devoted friend and simply a good actress. One can only try to bring together these two halves which will reveal the GREAT MARLEN.
Jean Cocteau himself divided her name like an atom inhabited by positive and negative particles: “Her name begins as a gentle touch and ends with the blow of a whip.” One of her friends, the English playwright and writer Noel Coward, once complained. “She could have become the greatest woman of our century, but - alas! “Intelligence does not adorn women!” Smart and educated, read a lot of old and modern authors, knew Rilke's poems by heart, and adored James Joyce, Marlene shocked the American Puritans with her provocative behavior, from their point of view. She smoked constantly, appeared in society in a man's suit, and changed lovers like gloves...
She was born on December 27, 1901 in a small town near Berlin into a military family who participated in the Franco-Prussian War. However, soon, her father left the family, and her mother remarried. Already in childhood, Marlene showed duality of nature: As a child, Dietrich called herself Paul, hoping that she was more like her father than her mother. Until the age of 18, she bore her stepfather’s surname – Maria Magdalena von Losch.
The name Marlene Dietrich appeared when she decided to enter the stage. She made up her pseudonym from the name of the biblical harlot Mary Magdalene, which is what her parents named the future film star at birth. Already as a child, she was known as an actress in the school theater and attended musical concerts. Until 1918 she attended high school in Berlin. At the same time, she studied violin with Professor Dessau. In 1919-1921 she studied music seriously in Weimar with Professor Robert Reitz. I planned to graduate from the conservatory and become a professional musician.
However, a wrist injury ended her hopes of a music career. She returned to Berlin, where she began studying at the Max Reinhart drama school. In the 1920s she began singing in cabaret, and in 1922 she starred in a movie for the first time (the film “Napoleon’s Younger Brother”). Next year, on May 17, she marries film production manager Rudolf Sieber.
Marlene saw him as a man who could help her career. In December 1924, their daughter Maria was born. Unburdened by maternal responsibilities in 1925, Marlene resumed work in theater and cinema. Marlene, 165 cm tall, plump, with a flat chest and masculine habits, did not shine with beauty. She began wearing men's tuxedos and suits.
However, at the same time she exuded sexuality. Famous film director Georg Wilhelm Pabst rejected Marlene for the role of Lulu in the classic film Pandora's Box because of this. “One sexy look, and the picture will turn into burlesque,” he said. Pabst later wrote that Dietrich was too old and too vulgar.
Well, Marlene played a year later in “The Blue Angel” a triumphant vulgarity, in a collision with which the spirit collapses. No less famous director than Pabst, Joseph von Sternberg, saw her in the revue “Two Ties.” As the master himself would later write: “In that performance I saw Fräulein Dietrich in the flesh... It was the face I was looking for...”. This face promised everything and more... According to critics, Sternberg "shaken the ocean, and from the waters emerged a woman who was destined to enchant the world."
He invites her to play the role of Lola in the film The Blue Angel. They become lovers, and the film itself, released in 1930, was a resounding success.
“I was created by von Sternberg from beginning to end. He shaded my cheeks, slightly enlarged my eyes, and I was captivated by the beauty of the face that looked at me from the screen,” recalled Marlene Dietrich. Marlene Dietrich managed to bring to life the complex image of a woman who had nothing in common with her. Marlene Dietrich herself considered this role, which brought the actress worldwide recognition, a true debut in big cinema. The film was a success all over the world in 1930, but in Germany itself the film was banned by the Nazis. By the way, “The Blue Angel” exists in English and German versions - these are not dubs, but two different films, and the plot and dialogue are slightly different.
Shooting 2 different versions of a film in different languages was a common practice at that time. On April 1, 1930, literally immediately after the premiere, Marlene Dietrich left Berlin, since back in February she had signed a contract with Paramount.
Dietrich and von Sternberg went to Hollywood, where together they shot a series of wonderful films: “Dishonored”, “Shanghai Express”, “The Bloody Empress”. Sternberg carefully cultivated Marlene's masculine appearance.
As he wrote: “I saw her wearing a man’s suit, a tall hat and the like back in Berlin, and that’s exactly how I showed her in the film “Morocco,” Marlene’s first American film. For this role, Marlene receives her only nomination for “ Oscar".
And the scene where Marlene, in a tailcoat, top hat and with a cane, sings a French song on behalf of a man and casually kisses a woman sitting at a table. This was already too much for the American puritans. But the Hays Code of Ethics, adopted in 1930, with its draconian methods of banning anything sensual from American cinema, was only gaining momentum. And the scene was not cut. Otherwise, world cinema would have lost one of its best pearls. The tailcoat from the film and the top hat became Marlene's calling card.
She wore men's clothing items with great charm. None of the men could resist. Shtenberg, being married, was very jealous of Marlene’s film partners, for example, Harry Cooper, who starred with Marlene in “Morocco.” In general, Marlene’s personal life has always been ambivalent. Until the death of her husband Rudolf, Marlene needed this game: as if she had a legal spouse. Having been married to the same man since 1923, Marlene remained married to him until his death in 1976.
In reality, she lived with her husband Rudolf Sieber for only five years, but for the rest of almost half a century she was officially listed as his wife. This was an excellent hiding place for the morality commission. The Hays Code was gaining momentum. Marlene never remained faithful to Schnenberg. And he himself, when his wife invited him to marry Marlene, said with a shudder: “I’d rather go into a telephone booth with a cobra.”
After “Morocco” Marlene gained all-American fame. After much persuasion, Marlene convinced her husband to give her his only daughter, Maria. However, despite Marlene’s later assurances in her memories, she was a bad mother. The girl is frightened by the frequency and speed of Marlene’s transformations in life. From the caring housewife and exaggeratedly affectionate mother she is when she leaves home in the morning, she returns in the evening, arm in arm with von Sternberg, as a capricious, lips-pursing lover, and at night in Madame Dietrich’s restaurant, in an embarrassingly bold outfit, she flirts with all the men in a row. The next day, newspapers publish playful photographs of her with Maurice Chevalier, John Barrymore, Douglas Jr., the first Hollywood cowboy John Wayne... She was credited with a love affair with her good friend producer Joseph Kennedy, the father of the future President of the United States.
Marlene commented on this relationship as “family friendship.” This woman always knew how to get away with it. For example, she had an affair with John Gilbert, the former lover of Greta Garbo, whom the latter almost married, but ran away at the last minute. Marlene was with the actor in the last two years of his life. Gilbert suffered from seizures (a consequence of drinking) and died of asphyxiation on January 9, 1936, at the age of 36.
Dietrich was with him when it happened, but, realizing that the poor fellow was dying, she ran away - like this tragic episode could have had a very bad effect on her career. She ordered the servants to destroy all traces of her presence in the bedroom. I called the doctor. She looked with sadness and shudder at the face of deceased John and disappeared from the apartment. At Gilbert's funeral, Marlene fainted.
And once a week, Dietrich, as an exemplary wife, calls her legal spouse and father to Berlin with her daughter to report on what is happening. Their relationship was very strange. Marlene's husband lived with Russian emigrant Tamara Krasina. And Marlene even rented a house for them.
Years later, the daughter would take revenge for her mother's callousness by releasing her memoirs, My Mother Marlene, in which she presented her as a worthless and vain libertine. Many claimed that Maria was driven by envy, because her daughter’s film career did not work out. But, for sure, her memories are not without some truth. It is difficult to imagine a good mother who leads such a lifestyle. Changing men like gloves. Some who knew Marlene personally claimed that after the release of her daughter’s memoirs, Marlene did not want to live.
But for now it’s the 30s of the 20th century. Marlene falls in love with 40-year-old screenwriter Mercedes de Acosta. At first, she did not reciprocate, and Marlene began to literally shower her with flowers.
Every day she sent her dozens of white roses and red carnations. Their connection, which they did not hide, continued throughout almost the entire 30s of the last century. This, however, did not stop Marlene from having new male lovers. So, at some point she became infatuated with the young actor Kirk Douglas. Many details of Dietrich’s sex life became known after her diary was discovered in 1992, in which the names of her lovers and the dates of meetings with them were encoded. Marlene, as many of her partners testify, was not particularly energetic in bed. But Marlene dressed in men’s clothes several times a month and visited lesbian and transsexual clubs in Los Angeles.
The famous director Fritz Lang clearly expressed himself about such a frequent change of partners: “When she loved a man, she gave him all of herself, but at the same time she continued to look around. This was the main tragedy of her life. She probably had to constantly prove to herself that one lover can always be replaced by another.”
After the triumph of “Morocco,” Paramount staged the premiere of the English version of “The Blue Angel,” and Sternberg in a short time made three films with Marlene: “Dishonored” (1931), “Shanghai Express” (1932), “Blonde Venus” ( 1932). The last picture was a fiasco, which forced Paramount to search for a new director for Dietrich.
It was Ruben Mamulyan. In his “Song of Songs” (1933), based on the novel by Suderman, Marlene again played the role of a prostitute. Meanwhile, Sternberg returns to the studio. In the film “The Red Empress” (1934), Dietrich creates the image of Catherine the Great. The most impressive episode of the picture is the wedding scene. It lasts five minutes without a single word, only music sounds.
In the early spring of 1934, Marlene visited Berlin, where she left her mother and sister. On the way back, the actress met Ernest Hemingway, who became one of her best friends. Later, she would even act as matchmaker in his marriage to journalist Mary Welsh, known as Mary Hemingway. The writer himself said that Dietrich “was capable of destroying any rival without even looking in her direction. The affair with Ernest Hemingway lasted almost 30 years, and in this affair there was more friendship than love.
They both didn't believe in loving each other. Marlene believed that Ham loved other women, and Hemingway believed that she also preferred others - Gabin and Chaplin. Both admired each other: Ernest Hemingway - Dietrich's beauty, and she - his novels; By the way, in “Islands in the Ocean,” Ham portrayed the heroine-actress, clearly based on Marlene Dietrich. And Marlene also understood that they could not be together as husband and wife. She wrote: “He needs a hostess who would look after him, serve him coffee, and in the morning I have makeup, a pavilion, filming…”.
Meanwhile, Sternberg announced that he would be making his last film starring Marlene. According to people who knew the creative couple Sternberg and Dietrich closely, the film “The Devil is a Woman” (1935), based on Louis’s novel “The Woman and the Puppet,” had a pronounced personal character.
The struggle of the proud Conchita with Don Pascal captured the complex love-hate relationship that existed between the director and actress. Dietrich considered this film her best film work. Marlene's first film after her breakup with Sternberg was called Desire (1935). It was directed by Frank Borzage. According to The Times, the result is “a romantic comedy full of kindness, cleverness and charm. And Marlene Dietrich played her best role in it...” However, these films became such a commercial failure that Dietrich was called “a ticket office with poison.”
This forced the actress to leave Paramount in 1936. Having learned about this, the famous producer Selznick offered her a “fabulous fee”, which, according to him, he would never pay to anyone - 200 thousand dollars. And although Dietrich absolutely did not like the script for the film “The Gardens of Allah,” she fulfilled her contract professionally. After which she left for Europe, where another producer Korda was already waiting for her with the largest fee of her entire life - 450 thousand dollars (7-8 million at the current exchange rate).
Dietrich starred in an exciting romantic film based on Hilton’s novel “A Knight Without Armor.” True, she never managed to receive the entire fee. Paramount's management makes her an offer she can't refuse: $250,000 per film plus bonuses. She is starring in “Angel” with Lubitsch.
The film starring the queen of the screen brings in such meager receipts that the “highest paid woman in the world” finds herself out of work. Marlene was Hitler's favorite actress. At the end of 1936, she receives an invitation from the Nazis to return to her homeland.
But Dietrich responded with a categorical refusal, and since then her films have been banned in Nazi Germany. On March 6, 1937, she accepted American citizenship.
In September 1937, Marlene Dietrich met the writer Erich Maria Remarque. Dietrich goes to Paris, where he spends time in the company of a German writer. Marlene persuades him to go to the USA.
Remarque was safe in America, but homesickness and fear for his loved ones who remained in Germany haunted him. The writer dedicated the novel “Arc de Triomphe” to his difficult relationship with Marlene, whom he called Puma, in which she is depicted in the image of the restless actress Joan Madu.
Surprisingly, in Marlene’s autobiographical book “Just Take My Life...” you will not find a single mention of Remarque, who maintained a very close relationship with Dietrich for several years.
Another story that is incredibly intriguing to many film lovers and film scholars - the story of Jean Gabin - is presented in the same book as if it did not mean very much in the life of the actress. Meanwhile, her most striking romance in the Old World was her relationship with the famous French film actor Jean Gabin.
Here Dietrich seems to have fallen in love. He called her “my little Prussian,” and she tapped him on the forehead, saying: “Why I love this place is because it’s empty!” She was even going to give birth to a child from him, but when Gabin decided to join the French Resistance forces, she had an abortion.
Marlene had not acted for two years, and many felt that her career was close to sunset. However, the actress returned to Europe, where she starred in the western “Dextry Is Back in the Saddle” (1939), where James Stewart played opposite her, and criticism again excitedly praised Marlene to the skies.
Producer Pasternak made several more films with Marlene's participation: “Seven Sinners”, “New Orleans Light” (1941), “Gold Diggers” (1942), “Pittsburgh” (1942) ... These films brought good profits to Universal. When World War II began, she felt "as if she were responsible for the war that Hitler started."
Dietrich conducts active anti-fascist propaganda, tours America to sell bonzes - war bonds, visits factories, urging workers to make donations. What was dearest to her was the image of Marlene the soldier.
She made military uniforms at Sachs's fashionable Fifth Avenue and in 1944 traveled to North Africa and Italy as part of an American concert troupe.
She takes pictures with the soldiers, dances with them, wears a military uniform and helmet. She is given army tags and an identification card. On the “dressing room” tent there is a sign with a menacing inscription: “Entry is prohibited! Secret... Dangerous... Marlene Dietrich's dressing room.” The actress became the first woman to receive the Medal of Freedom in the United States; in France she was awarded the Legion of Honor, and in Israel she was awarded the Medal of Courage.
Anyone who listened to Marlene Dietrich's stories about her front-line concerts got the impression that she really spent at least four years in the army, in Europe, and all the time on the front line, under constant fire, in danger of her life, or something else. worse, with the danger of being captured by the vengeful Nazis. Everyone who listened to her was convinced of this, because she herself convinced herself that everything was exactly like that. In reality, with all the comings and goings, Dietrich was in Europe from April 1944 to July 1945, and between concerts she flew to New York, to Hollywood, and then lived either in Paris or at the headquarters of her beloved general in Berlin. This in no way diminishes Dietrich’s commendable civic contribution to the cause of Victory, but only allows us to see everything in its true light. She truly was a fearless, heroic, dedicated woman. But many women, military personnel and pop artists possessed the same qualities, but they were not awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor of all three degrees and medals of Freedom.
Dietrich played the role of a brave soldier much better than them, and her fame and beauty attracted attention to her. In the winter of 1944 in France, Dietrich begged a jeep from a sergeant and rushed in search of Gabin, who served in tank units.
Their meeting was short-lived. In small photographs, Marlene and Jean are depicted in military uniform, very tired, but happy.
After his death in 1976, Dietrich told newspapers: “Having buried Gaben, I became a widow for the second time.”
She spoke about the “army past” with respect and often wrote memoirs. As with everything about her life, fact and fiction intertwined, and ultimately her version was accepted as historical truth even by those who were present at the scene and had their own experience. After the war, Dietrich starred in several films.
The most striking of them are “Foreign Novel”, “Nuremberg Trials”, “Stage Fright”.
As a girl, Maria von Losch wrote in her diary, which she kept throughout her life: “Happiness always comes to the diligent.” Having become Great Marlene, she forever remained true to her words. She could go through dozens of veils so that the light would fall perfectly on her face.
Hitchcock, in whom she starred in the film “Stage Fright,” believed that “she is a professional actress, a professional cameraman and a professional fashion designer.” Everyone who worked with her was delighted with her energy, efficiency and ability to delve into details.
She knew everything about lenses, spotlights, and was her own person in the editing room. But the offers to act in films became fewer and fewer, and Marlene was not used to being idle. And she preferred the film stage, “because the stage gave freedom of expression.” She had a seductive and exciting voice.
No wonder Hemingway said: “If she had nothing else but her voice, she could still break your hearts with that alone. But she also has such a beautiful body and such an endless charm of her face..."
It all started with participation in a show in which she played the role of master of ceremonies, having come up with a stunning outfit for this: short black shorts, a red tailcoat, top hat, high boots and a whip.
It must be said that Marlene was 50 when she put on this costume. Then came the famous "naked" dresses from Jean Louis, which gave the impression that sequins were sewn directly onto the skin! ... And endlessly long coats made of swan's down, in which she casually wrapped herself. Marlene's variety activities reborn her like a Phoenix bird.
The song “Lili Marlene” becomes her calling card. Her performances always attracted full houses. She is still desirable. Her post-war lovers included the brutal Yul Brynner, whom she called Curly, and he called her Gang.
English actor and intellectual Michael Wilding. When he married young Elizabeth Taylor, Dietrich exclaimed in her hearts: “What does she have that I don’t have?” .
Sweet-voiced Frank Sinatra, whom she considered the perfect man. According to Marlene herself, she had affairs with John Kennedy, the president of the United States, and with the French actor Gerard Philippe. But we should not forget that Marlene herself created her own story in several autobiographies, smoothing over the obvious unpleasant moments in her life. It can be assumed that, sometimes, she presented what she wanted as reality.
And yet, even when she was over 50, she looked great. Her famous legs were insured by Lloyd's for a million marks, and stocking companies competed for the right to use them for advertising.
She wore only handmade shoes and never sandals: open toes are for plebeians. The same goes for bright nail polish.
According to Marlene, it was vulgar. In general, she was pedantic to the point of absurdity: she always washed her stockings herself, even if she returned in the morning, her shoes were aired every day, and her dresses were hung up.
She needed a dozen towels to wash her hair, and in luxury hotels she personally wiped down the bathtub and furniture with alcohol.
In 1960, she came on tour to Germany, where she was denied hospitality due to her position during the Second World War.
In 1964, Marlene, who always believed that she had a “Russian soul,” came on tour to Moscow and Leningrad.The photographs captured her watching the artist’s work on one of the capital’s boulevards, and watching with interest men playing dominoes on a bench...
Soviet viewers wrote letters to her. "Dear and dear comrade Marlene!" - this is how one of them begins. At one of the concerts, in a crowded Variety Theater, a man came on stage, in front of whom Marlene knelt down and placed his hand on her forehead. It was Konstantin Paustovsky.
Having once read his story "Telegram", she could no longer forget the name of the author. She generally appreciated other people's talent.
Hence her friendship with Edith Piaf - a tiny sparrow with a powerful voice. Marlene Dietrich was even a witness at the wedding of Piaf and her stage partner Jacques Pills.
On September 29, 1975, during a concert in Sydney, Marlene Dietrich caught a cable in the dark, fell and broke her leg for the second time (before that, a metal rod had already been inserted into her thigh).
The unconscious actress was taken to the clinic. The producer came out to the public and, apologizing, announced the cancellation of the concert.
Thus ended the brilliant career of the famous actress and singer. This accident confined the actress to a wheelchair, which did not stop her from starring in her last film, “Beautiful Gigolo - Unhappy Gigolo,” in 1978.
The unsurpassed Marlene Dietrich, looking at whom men went crazy and were ready to throw everything at her feet, whose inimitable style women tried unsuccessfully to copy, spent the last 13 years of her life in voluntary confinement in a Parisian apartment at 12 Avenue Montaigne. Her faithful friend and only The connection with the outside world was the telephone and the phone book, swollen to incredible sizes. In one of Dietrich's last notes in large letters wrote lines from Theodor Kerner's poem "Farewell to Life":
Hier stehe ich/An den Marken/Meiner Tage (“Here I stand at the threshold of my days”) - they were engraved on her modest tombstone.
From the first person:
Tenderness is a better proof of love than the most passionate vows.
For a woman, beauty is more important than intelligence, because it is easier for a man to look than to think. If a woman has already forgiven a man, she should not remind him of his sins at breakfast.
It is easier for ugly girls to lead a modest life.
A country without a brothel is like a house without a bathroom.
Almost every woman would like to be faithful, the only difficulty is to find a man to whom she could be faithful.
The inevitable must be accepted with dignity. The tears you shed for the inevitable must remain your secret.
No one will tell gossip if there is no one to listen.
Friendship unites people much more powerfully than love.
I started smoking during the war. This is what kept me healthy.
Keep your mouth shut if you can't offer something in return for something you don't like.
In love, pride is more dangerous for women than for men. If you need to save the situation, a man forgets about his pride easier and faster.
A truly good wife does not need to dramatize everyday life.
Only a woman can see another woman with microscopic precision.
Only the ugly duckling is happy. He has time to think alone about the meaning of life, friendship, read a book, and help other people. So he becomes a swan. Just need patience!
It's so easy to be kind. You just need to imagine yourself in the place of another person before you start judging him.
A significant part of my life was spent with the Russians. First I learned to cook their dishes, and then I tried vodka, one of the healthiest alcoholic drinks.
Self-compassion is a forbidden thing, and you should not burden others with your worries. Old people are aware of the ossification of their body, but not their spirit.
Good parenting also has its downsides, especially when we're talking about about a career in the theater world.
Every man is more interested in a woman who is interested in him than in a woman who has beautiful legs.
Everyone who has been seduced wants to seduce himself.
My legs are not that beautiful, I just know what to do with them.
People look at me like I'm watching a tennis match, only they move their eyes not from left to right, but from top to bottom.
A friend is someone you can call at 4 am.
If a woman, when dressing, wants to please her husband, she chooses last year's dress.
I can be with different men, but I will always love only one.
Maria Magdalena von Losch was born on December 27, 1901. Her father was a Prussian officer (according to another version, a police officer), and her mother came from a wealthy merchant family.
The girl von Losch received an excellent musical education and was preparing to become a virtuoso cellist. However, a disease in her left hand ruined her plans.
To understand the further life path of the heroine of our story, you need to keep the following in mind. Maria Magdalena von Losch belonged to the first of the “lost” generations of the 20th century, which Erich Maria Remarque so vividly described. For Germany, the end of the First World War was accompanied not only by national humiliation, reparations and a deep economic crisis, but also by the collapse of social foundations. Having no illusions about their future, the young Germans either lived their lives, or walked towards their intended goal with their elbows wide apart, or managed to do both. This situation influenced the fate, character, career and stage appearance of our heroine. She belonged to those who persistently achieved a position in society, without forgetting to enjoy the delights of life...
At the age of 19, Maria Magdalena takes the pseudonym Marlene Dietrich (its first part is glued together from the names MARY and MAGDALENA) and makes a living by acting in advertising for women's underwear. In addition, she performs in the revue “Tilscher’s Girl” and appears in films, which, however, do not bring her either fame or wealth. The first 18 films with the participation of Marlene Dietrich (most of them were hastily shot in provincial studios) failed successfully.
Our heroine's career took off sharply after meeting film director Joseph von Sternberg. In 1930, Marlene Dietrich starred in his film “The Blue Angel,” which brought international fame to the actress and director. After this, the creative tandem moved from Germany to Hollywood, where they shot several cult films, special place Among them is the painting “Morocco”. This was the first film in which Marlene Dietrich, the leading actress, starred in a man's suit and, how can I put it, flirted in this form with traditionally dressed women. This was the first film whose authors touched upon the sensitive topic of “unconventional love.” In it, for the first time, it was publicly stated that in the depths of the so-called lower classes, SOMETHING was ripening that could turn the whole world upside down.
After “Morocco,” Marlene Dietrich came under the constant scrutiny of the yellow press for the rest of her life. The public was interested not so much in the talent and appearance of the movie star (all this could be seen on the screen), but in her love affairs. Rumor ascribes to Marlene Dietrich close relationships with many prominent men and women. Among her “lovers” are Erich Maria Remarque, Jean Gabin, Ernest Hemingway, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Harry Cooper, Maurice Chevalier. Among the “mistresses” are Gabrielle Sidonie Colette (a famous French writer of the early 20th century, a mime actress who turned striptease into art), Edith Piaf, the famous Hollywood screenwriter Mercedes di Acosta and Claire Waldoff, Marlene’s partner in Hollywood films. Without touching on the relationship between Dietrich and Waldoff, we note that it was Claire who helped the German woman find a second stage profession by teaching the inimitable Marlene to sing.
Little German woman in big politics
After the Nazis came to power, another sharp turn occurred in the fate of Marlene Dietrich. The leadership of the Third Reich did everything possible to return the “great little German” to her homeland. But Marlene did not give in: she hated Nazism with all her soul. She hated her so much that she forever broke up with her sister, her husband and nephew, SUSPECTING them of being Nazi sympathizers.
Hitler's ruling elite forgave Marlene Dietrich everything: not returning to her homeland, breaking up with her family who remained in Germany, refusing the offer of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels to become the “Queen of German Cinema” (1937), accepting American citizenship (1939). She was even forgiven for her anti-fascist activities: Marlene Dietrich not only spoke to the soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition during the war, but also stood at the origins of anti-fascist radio broadcasting to Germany. For her active participation in the fight against Nazism, Marlene was awarded the title of Knight of the French Legion of Honor and awarded the American Freedom Medal. And yet...
And yet, during the war, the voice of Marlene Dietrich was heard on both sides of the front line. Songs from her repertoire, and first of all “Lili Marlen,” were sung by soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the forces of the anti-Hitler coalition (the British and Americans sang Lili Marlen in the original, in German, until 1944). Marlene Dietrich's songs were broadcast by radio stations in Great Britain, Germany, the USSR and the USA.
What actually lies behind the loyalty unprecedented for the Nazis? There are two versions. “Yellow” claims that Hitler was madly in love with Marlene Dietrich and therefore forgave her everything. The “soldier’s” version looks more paradoxical, but more plausible. Working on anti-fascist radio, Marlene did not allow herself sarcasm towards German soldiers and officers. It got to the point that Marlene Dietrich refused to record a parody anti-Hitler version of “Lili Marlene” in the BBC studio. Her place was taken by another German film star, Lucy Mannheim (1943). Those who fought under fascist banners appreciated this fact. The top of the Third Reich did not dare to take away their favorite song from their soldiers. And the disgraced but beloved singer - Marlene Dietrich.
Marlene and fashion
Modern women owe the opportunity to freely wear trouser suits to Marlene Dietrich! It was she who, after filming the scandalous “Morocco,” began to appear in such a “provocative” form. But after Irene and Jean Louis (USA), Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and Dior (France) began creating toilets for Marlene Dietrich, passions subsided, and trouser suits became the norm even in aristocratic salons.
Marlene Dietrich also had a great influence on stage fashion. She was the first to appear in public wearing shorts, high boots and a white top hat. She also came up with a “undressing” dress, in which carefully selected inserts, sparkles and rhinestones created the effect of a naked body in the starry sky (later this technique was often used by Marilyn Monroe - remember Darling in the film “Some Like It Hot.” Finally, Marlene Dietrich was the first to bring out onto the screen the image of a hypersexual feminist with manners that delighted men and women.
A facelift is also the invention of our heroine. Even before plastic surgeons began to perform such operations, Marlene Dietrich “tightened” her face on her own, using a medical adhesive plaster. Her ability to look gorgeous in makeup has become a legend in artistic circles.
Introduction
One day I came across a collector's disc with old black and white Hollywood pictures. Homemade, recorded on a computer, but very valuable. Among others, this disc also included the 1932 film Shanghai Express.
At first I was not impressed by the film. Old tape, not very good sound. Plus a slightly confusing (in my opinion, of course) plot. But then I started watching this film for real. That is, without being distracted, meticulously. And you know, I understood. And I didn’t just understand, I was amazed. Here she is - the great Dietrich. A specially illuminated face (when a narrow strip of light snatches the eyes from the semi-darkness). A flutter of eyelashes. A look that comes out of nowhere. A barely noticeable smile... Marlene is beautiful.
I've watched Shanghai Express ten times. I really regret that I didn’t think of rewriting this film, which was homemade into Russian, (criminally, without asking - I wouldn’t have been allowed anyway). But Dietrich lives, lives – in my memory. And I can't forget her...
After this incident, I changed my mind about throwing away the TV. It will also come in handy...
1. Sedanstrasse 53
December 27, 1901, two days after Catholic Christmas, a girl was born into the family of the Prussian officer von Losch, who was named Maria Magdalena. She was the second child in the family - after her older sister Elizabeth.
The Losch family lived in Berlin at Sedanstrasse 53. Today this street is called Librestrasse. Three years later, von Losch moved to Kolonnenstarsse. In 1907 - on Potsdamstarsse, and a year later - on Akatzienallee. Together with their belongings and their grandmother, the family moved from house to house, trying to make ends meet. The family did not live in poverty, but did not have much income either.
And the area within which the Losches lived, changing apartment after apartment, in those years was the center of the artistic and artistic life of Berlin. And from early childhood, little Maria heard the sounds of music coming from cabarets and operetta theaters. And my mother and grandmother, who were fond of music, taught youngest daughter playing the violin.
She had to stop studying - at the age of seven, Maria Magdalena developed a disease in her left hand after an injury. But a few months later she studied music in a boarding school for girls, where her mother sent her after the sudden death of her father in 1908. Mother married a second time (and also soon became a widow), and then a third. They decided not to traumatize Maria by getting used to the “next dad”...
The future film star Marlene Dietrich (whose childhood name was Maria Magdalena von Losch) remembered her mother and especially her grandmother with great cordiality, calling her mother “a worthy representative of an old, respected family.”
2. I don't have a sister!
Marlene Dietrich does not mention the name of her sister Elizabeth in any of her numerous interviews or in her autobiographical book “Take Only My Life.” Moreover, she claimed (particularly in an interview with Maximilian Schell for his 1983 documentary Marlene) that she was an only child.
Dietrich's memoirs should not be trusted. In the same book, for example, she claimed that she was born five years later and confused facts, circumstances, and names. In fact, this is not a biography at all, but a kind of artistic adaptation of it...
In April 1945, Allied troops occupied one of the most terrible places in Germany - the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. 60 thousand people languished in this camp, 10 thousand of whom were already dead at the time of liberation, and another 20 thousand died of exhaustion in the next two weeks.
Elisabeth and her husband Georg Wil were initially on the list of those released. But then the terrible truth became clear... No, the Vil family was not among the executioners or overseers.
On the territory of the concentration camp they ran... a cafe for Nazi officers. When Dietrich and her daughter Maria saw “Aunt Elizabeth,” the older sister Marlene was a very well-fed lady, wondering what claims the Americans might have against her.
Marlene used her influence to get the commandant of the liberated camp, Englishman Arnold Horwell, to release Elizabeth and her husband in peace, but she herself renounced her sister once and for all. And Elisabeth Wiehl spoke more than once about the “morality of the Third Reich,” without realizing in what monstrous dirt she had soiled her life.
3. Maria and school
Maria Magdalena von Losch spent six years in a boarding school for girls in Charlottenburg (a district of Berlin, and in those days a suburb). Here the pupils not only learned to read, dance, and music, but also lived.
Boarding school with a living mother? But it wasn't such a bad option at all. Staying in a boarding school did not alienate her daughter from Mutti (as the girl affectionately called her), who often visited Maria, walked with her around Berlin, and took her home on weekends.
Maria did not study well - this is evidenced by her decision to leave school without receiving a certificate of maturity, and to forever close the question of further education for herself. However, the girl constantly participated in school theater performances. She sang and danced well. And she was surrounded by the attention of her classmates. The future actress grew up quite outgoing, able to win over those around her. In the future, this quality will help Dietrich make her way in Hollywood - she instantly charmed both men and women. And her appearance on the set (despite her endless whims) charged the group with energy and enlivened the filming.
No, science was not for her. But already at thirteen, Maria knew what she wanted to become. She was crazy about operetta, but loved cinema even more. Maria did not miss a single premiere and tried to escape to the nearest cinema whenever possible.
4. “Happiness comes to the diligent”
It’s hard to say how Maria’s relatives reacted to Maria’s decision to leave school. Probably without much enthusiasm. But the fact that Maria von Losch acted quite consciously is a fact.
There is a well-known entry by Maria, made in the album of a school friend: “Happiness ultimately comes to the diligent.” Agree, for a thirteen-year-old girl the saying is very, very wise...
Up until the age of fifteen, dressed in pink socks and frilly dresses, an aristocrat by birth, young Maria made her way into adulthood. She started earning money very early, not disdaining any work. She danced in cabaret, sang in revues, and starred in stocking commercials. She tried to break free from her mother's care and already in these very immature years set herself difficult tasks. The first thing she wanted was to be an actress. The second is to become a great actress.
By the way, she was not mistaken about her abilities. Moreover, when fate gives her that one chance, she admits to the creator of her screen image, director Joseph von Sternberg, that she does not know how to act on stage at all. But he, thank God, will believe his own eyes more than the sad revelation of Mary Magdalene...
Exactly at this early period chaotic wandering, searching for herself and her own place in the sun, Maria met and became friends with the Russian dancer Tamara. Later, she will introduce Tammy into her own family, making her a servant, governess, daughter’s teacher, and at the same time her husband’s long-term mistress (and not only her husband’s, but also her own).
5. Henny Porten
Just a girl who dreamed of an artistic career, Maria could not do without idols. And the main one was, not without Tamara’s influence, Isadora Duncan. Maria tried not to miss a single film with her participation. I watched and learned stage behavior, the ability to be beautiful and sexy.
And then Henny Porten appeared, a German silent film star who lived in Berlin, where at that time all the artistic bohemia of Germany gathered.
Having somehow found out the actress’s address, Maria began to come to her house every evening. I stood under the windows, waiting at the entrance to at least catch a glimpse of Henny. And then, realizing that her efforts were in vain and that Porten was somehow eluding the hordes of fans crowded under her windows next to Maria, the future Marlene took the bull by the horns. One day she appeared under the windows of a film star with a violin in her hands (and she played very well, although she had not completed the full course of music training), played and sang a heart-warming serenade. Once, twice.
On the third, the desperate actress called the police. Maria fled from the “battlefield”, without, however, abandoning her violin...
6. And the tappers are against it!
What did she have to do in her youth! She both worked and studied (at the theater “academy” - at amateur skill courses for aspiring actors). Very often I lost a place, but easily found the next one.
One day she got a job in a cinema - in the orchestra that played during the demonstration of silent films. She played the violin well, and therefore coped well with her duties as a musician. And yet, the conductor of the small orchestra soon fired her. It turned out that Maria was distracting the musicians... with her feet. The musicians were indignant, but this did not save Maria.
Having lost her place, she found new job- in a tiny night cabaret. Maria went on stage, lay down on her back and “twisted her bicycle.” A dubious show, but the young beauty’s legs were wonderful. Soon after the cabaret, she got a job in an advertising bureau and - thank her legs - began advertising tights...
At the age of eighteen she acted in films for the first time. In total, Marlene Dietrich played in thirteen (or so) silent films. The films turned out to be so insignificant that they (unlike the films of Greta Garbo) are not included in the list of her personal filmography. Only the painting “Little Napoleon” (alternative title “Such are Men”) from 1922 became more or less successful. Dietrich herself claimed that this was her first film. But this is not so, there were other, earlier works, which she, apparently, was embarrassed about.
7. Million Dollar Legs
Her appearance on the film sets of Berlin film studios was accompanied by tiny scandals. Maria shocked the cinematic public by spreading rumors about her own bisexuality (which was true), often dressing in men's suits, experimenting with cosmetics and being deliberately casual. She walked around the studio like a queen and was never shy about opening her skirt so that everyone could see her charming legs. The length of her legs and thin ankles were a source of pride for her.
Around the same time - in 1920-1922 - a rumor spread around Berlin that Maria had insured her legs for a million marks. Considering that hyperinflation soon broke out in the country, the amount does not seem so significant. But it was just gossip. In those years, Fraulein Losch had no money not only for the insurance premium, but also for housing. She lived in the same room with her friends, changing both addresses and her roommates with the same ease as changing jobs. Of course, not from a good life or character traits...
When in 1930, already in Hollywood, Marlene Dietrich achieved her first success, she actually insured her legs at Lloyd's for a million - but not in depreciated stamps, but in full dollars. The legend, personally and very carefully constructed by Marlene Dietrich, required practical confirmation.
8. The secret of the pseudonym
When did Maria Magdalena von Losch turn into Marlene Dietrich? In her autobiography, the actress herself claimed that Dietrich was her real name, and not her stage name. However, this is not true.
The pseudonym appeared between 1918 and 1919. Maria took both of her names and merged them together, becoming Marlene. The flow is flawless, considering the German and English pronunciation. In the German style, the name sounded with a charming fricative “r” in the middle, which gave the aspiring actress charm. And in English (especially in American pronunciation) the sound “r” disappeared completely. And it turned out “Ma’len”. (By the way, the actress was fluent in English, however, retaining a soft, non-harassing German accent for the rest of his life.)
And the surname Dietrich is translated from German as “excellent”...
It is curious that the most absurd rumors circulated around the new name. Dietrich's German ill-wishers, angry at her refusal to return to Hitler's Germany and her demonstrative acceptance of American citizenship, said that she was a communist. And that her name is made up of two surnames - Marx and Lenin. Complete nonsense, of course, but the fact itself is remarkable. The name of the actress, who was quite far from politics, acquired a political connotation - which, by the way, surprised Marlene Dietrich herself.
9. Rudolf Sieber
In 1920, Marlene (we will call her that - she refused the name Maria Magdalena herself) met the young film director Rudolf Sieber.
This nondescript and inconspicuous man became the first and only official husband of Marlene Dietrich. Moreover, he became her greatest affection. Their love lasted only five years. But even then Dietrich did not leave her Rudi with care and attention. She took him with her to Hollywood. She settled in her house. She constantly returned to him “to pamper him with something tasty” and live next to him for a week or two. Throughout her life, she took touching care of Sieber and did not even allow him to spend his own money, forcing him to write out bills in her name. She supported the whole family - as long as she could. By the way, the family did not reciprocate. In her old age, Marlene had to climb out of the approaching poverty on her own. Note that Sieber was no longer alive at that time - he died in 1976...
This love arose on the set. Sieber shot one picture after another.
The films brought neither fame nor money. But was that really the point? He photographed young Marlene, sincerely admired her and eventually fell in love with her.
And she turned Sieber into the likeness of a deity. She deified all the men she loved, which, however, did not stop her from falling in love with others and being sincerely surprised when her former lovers made claims against her. Can a person love one person all his life? And... does this prevent you from maintaining a tender relationship with your old lover?
With Rudolf Sieber.
10. Daughter
The entire life of this extraordinary married couple (Sieber in no way interfered with his wife’s bisexual hobbies) shows that Rudolf turned out to be a gentle, kind and devoted person. Was it not easy for him with the eccentric Marlene? It's very difficult. However, it was he who raised Marlene’s only child, the daughter she gave birth to in 1924. And the girl, who received the name Maria in honor of her mother, called her mother... the maid Tamara, the same Tammy, a friend of Marlene’s youth. This woman appeared in the Sieber and Dietrich family in 1925 and did not leave them until the end of their lives...
The relationship between the daughter and Marlene is a special topic. Dietrich considered herself a bad mother. While she was wandering around film sets, having love with one celebrity or another, singing at concerts, recording records and earning serious money so that her family would not need anything, Maria grew up in her father’s house under the tutelage of a strange woman and heard about the mother is saying things that the child is not supposed to hear.
But years have passed. Maria herself became the mother of four sons (Dietrich adored her grandchildren). And shortly before the death of the famous mother, she wrote a book about her. Maria was so merciless to Marlene that she most likely hastened her death...
There is another opinion: Dietrich herself dictated to her daughter over the phone (Maria lived in America, Marlene lived in France) the most scandalous fragments of her book. This version is confirmed by one of Dietrich’s grandchildren.
11. "Hairy Potato"
Seeing herself on screen in the 1922 film Little Napoleon, Dietrich was upset. “God, I look like a hairy potato!” - she exclaimed.
In fact, Dietrich was not at all as beautiful as we imagine. Marlene’s image is the result of a lot of work she has done on herself. And the result of this “alteration” is noticeable only from the age of 28–29. In the meantime, 20-year-old Dietrich looked rustic and even awkward.
She had an imperfect figure. After giving birth (she nursed Maria herself), the shape of her breasts changed. Already in Hollywood, Marlene will use the most incredible devices - a transparent corset, specially cut clothes and even tape - to tighten her breasts and give them more curvaceous shape. It’s surprising if you remember that it was Dietrich’s breasts that were always considered ideal.
Her cheekbones stuck out, making her face round and large. The trouble seemed minor, but Marlene had small and expressionless eyes. Prominent cheekbones visually made them smaller.
And the biggest disappointment was her nose - large and with a fleshy tip, which Dietrich herself compared to a duck tail.
Plastic surgery in the 1920s it simply did not exist. It was impossible to change her appearance the way Dietrich wanted... But this is not the biggest problem. Despite the fact that she actively filmed and performed on stage, Marlene believed that she could neither act nor sing. And that she doesn't have an outstanding voice at all.
12. Claire Waldoff
Luckily for Marlene, fate brought her together with cabaret actress Claire Waldoff. An older friend with whom Marlene (remember, a married lady and mother) fell in love. But Waldoff taught young Dietrich not only lessons about same-sex love, but also artistic skill. It was she who turned the inexpressive voice of Marlene Dietrich into an exciting, low, exciting voice. It was she who showed Marlene how to perform on stage in order to turn vocal shortcomings into undoubted advantages...
What is a pop female voice? The differences from the operatic soprano are obvious. But why, why are we so concerned about the voice of Edith Piaf, who clearly could not have performed in opera? Why does Greta Garbo's performance haunt you? And why did Marlene Dietrich's voice become one of the most memorable voices of the twentieth century?
The point, of course, is not about vocal abilities. If we approach their assessment from an academic point of view, then even Piaf had very little chance of breaking into the professional stage. Now compare the fate of Edith Piaf and the fates of hundreds of gifted people opera singers, whose names have irrevocably sunk into oblivion. They sang correctly and had excellent voices. But their singing did not touch the hearts of millions. And the whole planet cried over Piaf’s songs...
One and a half octaves is the range of Marlene Dietrich’s voice. Insignificant for a professional singer. And more than enough for... a great singer. Dietrich knew how to sing with her heart. It sounds banal, but nothing else can explain her phenomenal success.
13. Cabaret
Fame at any cost - then you will have your own audience. This is one of the life maxims discovered by Marlene Dietrich herself.
She shocked the public by appearing in the company of Claire Waldoff in black men's trousers and a blouse with a bow tie. Sometimes she wore a tailcoat, and her eyes were adorned with a thin, shiny monocle. People were whispering around Marlene, shaking their heads skeptically, looking after her... But that’s what she wanted!
And then she went on stage at the cabaret in which Claire performed. And she sang.
Her records (she recorded her first in 1927) sold millions of copies around the world during her long career. Dietrich today remains a great singer, the queen of chanson, and a unique pop phenomenon. And much of the credit goes to Claire Waldoff, who taught Marlene lessons in stage behavior. The main commandment is to be beautiful. Be very beautiful. Different, unusual, mysterious. But definitely beautiful.
A woman of mystery. Woman-desire. Woman-love. All this would come to Dietrich later, during her rise as a film actress. But she laid the first bricks into the foundation of the monument named Marlene in the 1920s in Berlin - on the stage of an unknown cabaret...
She could read music fluently, could play the violin and some other instruments (for example, the piano), danced confidently, and was very musical. All this will be useful to her in Hollywood, because the period of filming in silent films will remain in the past - in Germany. And in America, Marlene was waiting for sound cinema, where voice and music play as important a role as a delightfully beautiful face.
14. Leni Riefenstahl
In the house of Leni Riefenstahl, a former dancer (Leni left the stage after a ligament rupture), film actress and future documentary director, Marlene Dietrich was a frequent and welcome guest. In November 1929, Leni celebrated her triumph. A film by two talented directors – Arnold Fanck and Georg Wilhelm Pabst – has just been released on screens in Germany and France. Riefenstahl took part in editing the French version of the film. This picture became one of the last German film masterpieces of the silent film era. The premiere took place on November 15, 1929 at the UFA studio cinema in Berlin. The success was not just huge, it was landslide, deafening, universal...
Leni, who herself was looking for her path in art during these years, seemed to Marlene very successful person. They turned out to be almost the same age - Leni was born a year later than Marlene. Who, if not Leni, could Dietrich, stuck in mediocre silent films, ask for advice?
Fate destined Bertha Helen Amalia Riefenstahl to become the greatest documentary filmmaker of the twentieth century. This beautiful, energetic woman was also a good friend. Having just met director Josef von Sternberg, who was preparing to shoot the sound film “The Blue Angel” and was looking for actresses to play roles in this film, Leni could have saved this useful acquaintance for herself – as an actress. But she acted as a friend and director - she advised Marlene not to refuse Sternberg if he approached her with an offer. And Leni was simply sure that he would not resist.
15. Joseph von Sternberg
And yet she refused... Intrigued by Leni’s stories, Sternberg went to the film studio to see Marlene himself. He found her in the cafeteria, where she was drinking coffee during a break between filming. The actress did not make much of an impression on the director. She, too, glanced at his face with an indifferent glance and looked away.
Sternberg approached, introduced himself and invited Marlene to dinner to discuss some business. Marlene smiled and said nothing. In the evening she did not show up at the appointed time.
The next day Sternberg repeated the invitation. History repeated itself - Marlene did not come to the meeting.
On the third day, Sternberg, already seriously angry, went to the actress’s home. She opened it herself, without inviting the famous director to come through. He asked the reason for her refusal. And Marlene, fluttering her eyelashes, cooed indifferently:
– What did you want to talk to me about?
At that moment, Joseph von Sternberg realized that Marlene Dietrich would perform main role in his new film...
The film was shot in Berlin. Sternberg looked closely at Marlene and constantly changed something - in her acting, in her image, in her appearance. And she obeyed him. Marlene has long been looking for a person who could help her realize herself and teach her what she did not yet know how to do.
The Blue Angel was Dietrich's first major success. The 13th picture eclipsed all her previous attempts. Marlene Dietrich became a famous actress. Moreover, it is famous not only in Germany.
16. Image of Marlene
The European success of Sternberg's film was also noticed overseas. An invitation followed - from the Hollywood studio Paramount. The conditions were very attractive. Sternberg was offered to direct the film “Morocco”, and at the same time prepare an English-language version of “The Blue Angel” adapted for American distribution. At the same time, the producers entrusted the selection of actors to von Sternberg himself. And he, having already realized Dietrich’s potential, invited her to go overseas with him. Marlene agreed, putting forward only one condition - her family (husband, daughter and maid) would go with them...
en.wikipedia.org
Biography
Marlene Dietrich was born on December 27, 1901 in the Schöneberg district of Berlin in the family of police officer Louis Erich Otto Dietrich and his wife Wilhelmina Felsing. Until 1918 she attended high school in Berlin. At the same time, she studied violin with Professor Dessau. In 1919-1921 she studied music in Weimar with Professor Robert Reitz; In Berlin she entered the Max Reinhardt acting school.
Since 1922, she performed minor roles in various Berlin theaters; in the same year she first appeared on screen.
On May 17, 1923, she married film production administrator Rudolf Sieber, and in December 1924 they had a daughter, Maria. In 1925, Marlene resumed work in theater and cinema. In 1928, the first recordings of songs on records took place together with the ensemble of the revue “It’s in the Air.” A year later, Joseph von Sternberg saw her in the revue Two Ties and invited her to play the role of Lola Lola in the film The Blue Angel.
Career in Hollywood
After the success of the film "The Blue Angel", in February 1930, Marlene Dietrich signed a contract with the Hollywood company Paramount and on April 1, 1930, the day of the premiere of "The Blue Angel", she left Berlin.
The six films she made in Hollywood with Sternberg brought her worldwide fame. The Devil is a Woman (1935) was their last collaboration.
In 1936, Joseph Goebbels offered her 200,000 Reichsmarks for each film made with her participation in Germany, as well as a free choice of subject, producer and director. But the actress refused the minister. In 1937, during her last visit to Germany, she again rejected proposals from the National Socialists. On June 9, 1939, Marlene Dietrich received American citizenship.
In March 1943, she interrupted her acting career and for three years performed concerts with Allied troops in North Africa, Italy and France.
In 1947-1950 Marlene Dietrich was awarded the U.S. War Department's highest civilian decoration, the Medal of Freedom, as well as the French orders Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and Officer of the Legion of Honor.
From 1946 to 1951 she again regularly acted in films. In addition, she hosted radio shows and wrote articles for glamor magazines. In 1953, in Las Vegas, she began a new successful career as a singer and entertainer. Marlene Dietrich appeared on screen less and less, while choosing roles herself and starring in small scenes for large fees.
In 1960, she came on tour to Germany, where she was denied hospitality due to her position during the Second World War.
In 1963, her concerts in Moscow and Leningrad were a huge success.
In 1975, as a result of an accident in Australia (a femoral neck fracture), she ended her career.
The last film in which Marlene Dietrich appeared, “Beautiful Gigolo - Poor Gigolo,” was filmed in 1978.
Personal life
As the wife of Rudolf Sieber (despite the fact that the couple lived together only for the first 5 years of marriage, they never divorced), Marlene Dietrich started romance novels. Dietrich's most famous love relationships were with the German writer Remarque and the French actor Gaben.
Marlene Dietrich had many years of correspondence with the American writer Ernest Hemingway, which was published 15 years after her death.
Dietrich spent the last 13 years of her life in her apartment in Paris, maintaining contact with the outside world only through the telephone. In 1979, her book “Marlene Dietrich ABC” was published in Germany, which was immediately translated into several languages (in Russia the book was published under the title “The ABC of My Life”). In 1982-1983, Maximilian Schell recorded a multi-hour interview with her, which he later used in his documentary film “Marlene”.
Marlene Dietrich died on May 6, 1992 in her apartment in Paris as a result of impaired heart and kidney function.
Memory
On July 24, 2008, an official memorial plaque was installed at Leberstrasse 65 in the Schöneberg district, where Marlene Dietrich was born.
Filmography
* 1922 Such are men (So sind die Manner, Catherine)
* 1923 The Tragedy of Love (Tragodie der Liebe Lucy)
* 1923 Man on the Road (Der Mensch am Wege, Kramechstochter)
* 1923 Leap into Life (Der Sprung ins Leben, Madchen am Strand)
* 1926 Manon Lescaut
* 1926 Dubyrry today (Eine Dubyrry von heute, Kokotte)
* 1926 Head up, Charlie! (Kopf hoch, Charly!, Edmee Marchand)
* 1926 Madame does not want children (Madame wunscht keine Kinder, Dancer (Uncredited))
* 1926 The Joker (Der Juxbaron)
* 1927 His greatest deception (Sein gro?ter Bluff, Yvette)
* 1927 Cafe Electric, Erni
* 1928 Princess Olala (Prinzessin Olala, Chichotte de Gastone)
* 1928 I kiss your hand, Madame (Ich kusse Ihre Hand, Madame, Laurence Gerard)
* 1929 The Ship of the Lost (Der Schiff der verlorenen Menschen)
* 1929 The Dangers of the Mating Season (Gefahren der Brautzeit, Evelyne)
* 1930 The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel, Lola Lola)
* 1930 Morocco (Morocco, Amy Jolly)
* 1931 Dishonored, Mary Colverer
* 1932 Shanghai Express (Shanghai Express, Magdalen/Lily Shanghai)
* 1932 Blonde Venus, Helen Faraday
* 1933 Song of Songs, Lily Krzepanek
* 1934 The Bloody Empress (The Scarlet Empress, Catherine II)
* 1935 The Devil is a Woman, Conchita Perez
* 1936 Desire (Desire, Madeleine de Bupré)
* 1936 The Garden of Allah, Domini Enfielden
* 1937 Knight Without Armor, Duchess Alesandra Vladinoff
* 1937 Angel (Angel, Maria "Angel" Baker)
* 1939 Destry Rides Again, Frenchie
* 1940 Seven Sinners (Bijou Blanche)
* 1941 Energy (Manpower, Faye Duval)
* 1942 The Lady Is Willing, Elizabeth Madden
* 1942 The Scoundrels (The Spoilers, Sharrie Malott)
* 1942 Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, Josie "Hunky" Winters)
* 1942 The Flame of New Orleans, Claire LeDoux/Lily
* 1944 Kismet (Kismet, Jamilla)
* 1944 Following the Boys (Cameo)
* 1946 Martin Roumagnac, Blanche Ferrand
* 1947 Golden Earrings (Lydia)
* 1948 A Foreign Affair, Erica von Schlutow
* 1949 Puzzle (Jigsaw, cameo)
* 1950 Stage Fright, Charlotte Inwood
* 1951 There is no highway in the sky (No Highway in the Sky, Monica Teasdale)
* 1951 Rancho Notorious, Altar Kin
* 1956 Around the World in 80 Days, Salon Hostess
* 1957 Monte Carlo (Montecarlo, Maria de Crevecier)
* 1957 Witness for the Prosecution, Christina Helm / Volul
* 1957 Touch of Evil, Tanya
* 1961 Nuremberg Trials (Judgment at Nuremberg, Mrs. Bertholt)
* 1962 Black Fox. The True Story of Adolf Hitler (The Black Fox. The True Story of Adolf Hitler, announcer)
* 1963 Paris in the heat (Paris When It Sizzles, cameo (uncredited))
* 1978 Handsome Gigolo - Poor Gigolo (Schoner Gigolo, armer Gigolo, Baroness von Somering)
* 1984 Marlene (voice-over)
Albums
* 1951: Marlene Dietrich Overseas
* 1954: Live at the Cafe de Paris
* 1959: Dietrich in Rio
* 1960: Wiedersehen mit Marlene
* 1964: Marlene singt Berlin
* 1964: Die neue Marlene
* 1964: Dietrich in London
Collections (selected)
* 1949: Souvenir Album
* 1952: M.D. Live 1932-1952
* 1959: Lili Marlene
* 1969: Marlene Dietrich
* 1973: The Best of Marlene Dietrich
* 1974: Das war mein Milljoh
* 1982: Her Complete Decca Recordings
* 1992: The Marlene Dietrich Album
* 1992: Art Deco Marlene Dietrich
* 2007: Marlene Dietrich with the Burt Bacharach Orchestra
Notes
* 1. Erich Maria Remarque - Marlene Dietrich: Dates and Meetings.
* 2. Marlene Dietrich and Jean Gabin. A love story between war and peace.
* 3. The epistolary novel by Dietrich and Hemingway will be published as a book
* 4. Deutsche Welle
prazdniki.ru
Biography
Marlene Dietrich was born on December 27, 1901 in a small town near Berlin into a military family who participated in the Franco-Prussian War.
Already as a child, she was known as an actress in the school theater, attended music concerts, and played the violin and piano. In the 1920s she began singing in cabaret, and in 1922 she starred in a movie for the first time (the film “Napoleon’s Younger Brother”).
She married in 1924, and although she lived with her husband Rudolf Seiber for only five years, they remained married until his death in 1976.
Marlene had already appeared in a dozen silent films in increasingly significant roles when, in 1929, she was noticed by director and producer Joseph von Sternberg in a Berlin cabaret. Marlene received the role of a cabaret singer in the film "The Blue Angel" (1930) and became the director's mistress.
After the resounding success of this film, von Sternberg took the actress with him to Hollywood and presented her talent to the general public in the film Morocco (1930).
Success followed success, and soon Marlene became one of the highest paid actresses of her time. She starred in the extremely popular Shanghai Express, and then in the equally famous film Blonde Venus with Cary Grant. In subsequent years, she created on the screen a deep and reliable image of a woman without any special moral principles, but wanted to appear on the screen in other roles.
However, the films of the mid-30s with her participation did not have significant success with either critics or the public. The actress returned to Europe, where she starred in the western Destry Rides Again (1939), in which James Stewart played opposite her.
After the war, her dwindling career received a second wind and blossomed rapidly in the aura of numerous articles and productions in brilliant theaters, including performances on Broadway.
Since 1945, she has appeared in one or two films annually. Her last film dates back to 1961. Later she played relatively rarely only on the theater stage.
In 1979, an accident occurred - the actress fell on stage and received a complex leg fracture. Dietrich spent the last 13 years of her life (12 of which were bedridden) in her mansion in Paris, maintaining contact with the outside world only by telephone.
The thirst to live is expressed in different ways. For one, these are the three k - kirche, kinder, keuchen (church, children, kitchen), for another - an endless search for danger, for a third - creativity... You can continue ad infinitum. It is almost impossible to say what exactly was the drive for the great Marlene Dietrich. It seems that she received it in all areas of her life at once. She was an excellent cook - and took care of her husband all her life, although it was difficult to call their relationship standard. She arrogantly refused Hitler, who offered her to become the No. 1 German actress. She endlessly reinvented herself, honing her image as a woman of mystery, turning herself into a work of art as perfect and decadent as, say, Spengler's Decline of Europe.
Looking at the sophisticated vamp woman who was fatal for Hemingway, Remarque (by the way, the main character of the famous novel "Arc de Triomphe" was based on Marlene) and many others, it is difficult to imagine that once - at the dawn of her career - she did not look at all like an angel dying of consumption. The cheerful, athletic German woman whom director Joseph von Stenberg once met did not seem very attractive to him, and she saw in him just another mediocrity. But they were destined to create their masterpieces - together.
For the film "Morocco" the actress radically changed her appearance. The well-fed girl turned into a femme fatale, a vampire woman who casually breaks hearts and destroys lives. Thin half-rings of eyebrows, sunken cheeks, an impeccable wave of blond hair...
The image turned out to be almost mystical - it was not for nothing that later calm American housewives were indignant that films with her participation were destroying their family comfort!
Marlene played perfectly on the fact that most men are just waiting to have their hearts broken. And she broke them...
However, she managed to shock the whole world just as easily. The British were deeply shocked by the ease with which she introduced trousers into her permanent wardrobe - “after all, they are much more comfortable than skirts!”, and in Paris the police literally followed on her heels, which amused her extremely. A little later, Dietrich was one of the first to introduce a costume that is now considered classic - a classic challenge - short shorts, high boots and a white top hat. And what can we say about the famous Marlene dress, which was made from the finest flesh-colored fabric! Thanks to skillful decoration with sparkles, rhinestones and beads, the effect was created as if the actress’s naked body was literally drowning in radiance.
The image she created is still very popular today. They imitate the great Marlene - consciously and unconsciously - in order to create around themselves this aura of fatal mystery, fueled by temptation and challenge, because this is an almost one hundred percent guarantee of success.
Because - yes, that's exactly it - men are just waiting for someone to break their heart.
Nadezhda Weiner
Her beauty was praised by Cocteau and Remarque, her acting talent inspired Joseph von Sternberg and Orson Welles, the most famous and influential men of our century were in love with her, including Adolf Hitler, to whom she categorically refused, and Ernest Hemingway. They imitated her, they fell in love with her, they loved her. Her name, appearance and voice have become a kind of symbol of the fatal power of female charms over the male tribe, which seems to exist only to obey her, femme fatale, - the impenetrable, icy Frau, the long-legged Venus with painted eyebrows and the contemptuous gaze of cold, clear eye.
Even in her youth, she amazed everyone with her exquisite stockings and magnificent shoes with high heels, which were not so easy to get in Berlin in the twenties. Even then, at seven in the morning, she could appear in a boa, with a monocle and in red fox fur - her desire to dictate fashion did not take into account the time and other people's achievements.
Long before plastic surgeons, she personally performed a facelift using a plaster and knew how to look gorgeous in any makeup - because in any image she played herself, Marlene Dietrich. Everyone noted her stunning figure, and yet even under the most weightless dresses there was room for dense celluloid grace, outlining a stunning bust, which she lost immediately after the birth of her daughter - a common thing. But not for Marlene - she struggled all her life.
Her daughter describes dozens of nightgowns, artfully reproducing delightful curves - of course, they were intended for amorous trysts. During the day, adhesive tape was used, which made the breasts look seductive without any bra. That's why all the men, including far from friendly partners, remembered her stunning bust. And her crazy “naked dress” from Jean Louis - it seemed like sequins were sewn directly onto the skin! In fact, there were three dresses - and, damn it, she skillfully presented them, inventing a fan on the ramp that made the thin fabric flutter, a long staircase along the steps of which she walked, carelessly dragging luxurious furs. She aptly dubbed one of the dresses, iridescent, made of black glass beads, “eel.” It was accompanied by a fur coat and a three-meter train, which was filled with the down of two thousand swans. Her luggage could consist of forty-four suitcases and one small box. "Are these your jewels?" - reporters asked. - “This is my stage costume!” She treasured it because the Jean Louis dress worked for the legend. Her fittings lasted eight to ten hours, during which she stood motionless, only changing cigarettes in the mouthpiece, and curtly commanded where to move the glitter. At the end, she once again meticulously examined the work of several seamstresses, wrapped the dress in tissue paper and rushed off for a new portion of glory. “Dietrich was both a nightmare and a holiday,” her tailors and stylists recalled.
She wore only handmade shoes and never wore sandals: open toes are vulgar for plebeians!
She adored a strict style, which she softened with furs. And she loved a challenge - when she found herself in Paris in her famous trousers and the police were on her heels, she was entertained by it.
Marlene Dietrich is not an actress, she is more of a mythical figure! So film academics had a low opinion of Dietrich as an actress, and, having starred in 52 films, she never won an Oscar. Just think! A legend worked for her: when she was asked to present a golden statuette, she asked the tailors who would be wearing what, and amazed everyone. Among fashionable frills and muslin, she appeared in a strictly fitted dress, like an arrowhead. She thought through everything - where to go, what gait to walk, what cut to make so that her famous legs would look from the most advantageous angle. The result: she became the embodiment of an Oscar without having one!
Already old, she mentored her young friend, whom she saw only in the photo - he will write about this in his book about her: “I know that you have no money,” Marlene once said. “But you see, money has nothing.” in common with good taste. You should wear white, black or blue shirts. You will find them in any department store. I am not forcing you to buy from Lanvin! This is the first time in my life that I have been spoken to... Today, all the clothes in my wardrobe are selected. with taste, Marlene taught me this. In the store, I often take a shirt and hang it back, saying to myself: “No, that’s not it. She wouldn't like it."
What does it mean to you to be "elegant"?
- “Elegance” is a somewhat worn-out word. First of all, it is a way of life. If a person meets this understanding, and also knows how to wear clothes, then everything is fine with him.
- Elegance is part of you, does it come from within?
- Yes, obviously, just like beauty. In other words, it is simply a matter of a sense of proportion. But we already talked about all this!
- Let's get back to elegance in clothes... Who do you consider great masters?
- Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior.
- In that order?
- Oh, these three are equal in size, each in their own way.
- Who do you personally like best?
- Balenciaga, without a doubt. One fitting from him is worth five from anyone else. He is an extraordinary cutter. You know, in all Balenciaga's great creations there is something desperate. Very Spanish.
- Like Goya’s paintings?
- Yes, exactly! Goya is a bullfight without gilding. Inner fury, beauty and death... You will probably think that I am crazy, but I sometimes recognized all this in Mr. Balenciaga.
- It's amazing what you say.
- But I am an amazing lady! Don't forget about it!
- You also mentioned Chanel...
- Her jackets and skirts are the ideal uniform for women who have to work a lot. They never go out of style, never lose their shape, and even after sitting on an airplane for eight hours, they don’t require any maintenance! Chanel was a workaholic. She probably had to give up a lot... She couldn’t even sew a handkerchief, but she cut it right on a mannequin, like a sculptor... She invented everything. Chanel was a very healthy person, a peasant woman. I couldn't shake the feeling that she was sculpted from rough, hard clay. She had one drawback: she could not remain silent. And sometimes she spoke complete nonsense.
- What do you think about today's fashion?
- A nightmare, just a nightmare! Nobody dresses women anymore. They are camouflaged. This is symptomatic of our era. Everything is so bad.
- It turns out there is no Haute Couture left?
- There are a few old school couturiers who continue to profess a certain idea that they copy over and over again ad infinitum. There is nothing at the moment. But everything will return soon.
- Why do you think so?
- Because it is absolutely necessary! You can't live surrounded by ugly things."
The uniqueness of Marlene Dietrich’s fate is that fame returned to her in waves, which is extremely rare in the art world.
The first time interest faded was when a new sex symbol of a similar level appeared in the world - Marilyn Monroe. The second was when the cold and mysterious Marlene began to seem more ordinary and understandable after the release of her memoirs and those of her daughter. It seemed that the cold shine of her image had faded forever. However, passions have subsided; enough time has passed since the death of Marlene Dietrich to forgive her human shortcomings and misdeeds and to once again experience admiration for the woman and try to unravel the secret of her age-old success.
However, she did not hide the components of the secret... But it is unlikely that an ordinary woman, or even a not quite ordinary one, will be able to repeat the path she has traversed since childhood. The beginning was laid by Dietrich’s mother: “My mother was a worthy representative of an old respected family, the embodiment of true decency. I always had the greatest respect for her. And therefore it was easy for me to follow her strict, but clear and definite principles of life.” Accept the inevitable with dignity, obey logic, go to bed before midnight - negligence, rashness, and recklessness are excluded. However, Mutti, as Dietrich called her, could come to another city, where Marlene was raised in a boarding school, only to wash her daughter’s hair - she was proud of her hair and wanted her daughter to learn how to keep it in order.
And what about Marlene’s legendary legs? “When you grow up, your ankles should be thin,” her mother said, lacing her high boots tightly. Thin ankles and wrists - signs of "stable", or origin, were of great importance to Marlene. She applied it to her own daughter in a very unique way: when it seemed to her that tiny Maria had crooked legs, she came up with daily torture with hard steel stocks, in which the baby slept for two years.
Marlene Dietrich knew how to go straight to her goal and never knew how to be weak. Even in old age. Until the end of her life, she paid the bills of all her relatives, even when she worked as hard as she could. She was responsible for everything, and therefore had no right to relax. The family instilled in her fidelity to duty, discipline and control over feelings, which Marlene always knew how to keep in check. Self-sufficiency bordering on a certain mystery - this foundation of the legend was firmly laid since childhood.
As a girl, she wrote in her diary, which she kept throughout her life: “Happiness always comes to the diligent.” Diligence, discipline and patience are the three secrets of her success.
She worked like a horse on stage and on camera, but in Germany they began to consider her a star only after thirteen films, and then she finally got to Hollywood, where under the card number “P-1167” her worldwide fame began.
The main director in her life, Joseph von Sterenberg, about whom Marlene said: “You are God, you! Without you, I am nothing!”, argued that it is better to lock yourself in a telephone booth with a frightened cobra than with Dietrich...
But he sculpted her and she obeyed him, because she understood that he was sculpting a star of unprecedented radiance and worked without sparing herself.
She was a plump girl who loved barley soup and cakes - he told her to lose weight, and since then Epsom salts in hot water (by the glass!), cigarettes and coffee became her daily diet. He found the light that made her stunning appearance perfect, and taught her to understand the nuances of light that brought world fame to her unique face. He revealed to her the secrets of mastery, and she became an example of a professional.
Once on set, she had to suck a fish head over and over again - after the next series of takes, she simply put her fingers in her mouth to free her stomach for the next series.
She learned the power of detail, and even if she grumbled about shoes that were not visible in the frame, she was not lazy in coming up with their styles and trying them on for hours. Her gloves were made from a cast of her hands, and her shoes were made only according to individual measurements. She could go through a hundred veils so that the light would fall perfectly on her cheeks and nose.
Hitchcock, for whom she starred only once, believed that “she is a professional actress, a professional cameraman and a professional fashion designer.” Everyone who worked with her was delighted with her energy, efficiency and ability to delve into details. She knew everything about lenses and spotlights, was her own person in the editing room and props room, skillfully used gesture and invariably created masterpieces when she played subtext, hint, understatement.
She herself came up with the legendary name, combining Mary and Magdalene, the names given to her at birth. It was only later that Cocteau would write about her: “Marlene Dietrich... Your name at first sounds like a caress, but then you can hear the crack of a whip in it!”
Andre Malraux said that a star is a creature possessing the necessary minimum of dramatic talent, whose face expresses, symbolizes and embodies a certain mass instinct.
She had a philosophical, overly philosophical concept of beauty - “- I never considered beauty to be my profession, unlike many other actresses. I had to be beautiful to play the roles that were offered to me, and I was like that. However, there are many ugly actresses , who have successfully made a career. Beauty comes from within. If nothing can make your eyes shine, the camera will not help. It is otherwise called cuteness, sex appeal, but it has nothing to do with beauty. And as far as I understand, real beauty. the obstacle is being famous."
She blew out the candle long before her physical death. In a 1962 radio interview, Marlene said: “The end of my life will not be like Sunset Boulevard. Even if I stop working, I will find something to do. Those who go into their own memories are second-class citizens.” Thirty years later, her speech would be peppered with the words "disgrace, disgrace, disgrace." This word also included the despair with which she looked at the world. She no longer recognized him. It was a world from which she had to flee, because she experienced the torment of a drowning man who fears and at the same time longs for the abyss. In isolation, she no doubt saw her last chance, a masterfully executed “final curtain.”
But even there, behind this curtain, she continued to build the legend of Dietrich, just as Proust, whom she could not stand, wrote volumes of “In Search of Lost Time” with the obsession of a patient who knows that his days are numbered.
She disapproved of any talk about health. As a last resort, you can lie about it. Many old people lie to gain pity. Dietrich lied so as not to be pitied. At the end of her book, speaking about the broken femur that left her bedridden forever, she wrote: “Remaining rather stiff in my movements, I try to walk through the “I can’t”... Since then, many men and women have written to me, telling me about my “extreme sadness.” Well, it’s very sad. On the contrary, I don’t feel particularly sad. The limp remains, but it’s not a disease, and those who really love me find my gait very interesting.”
“Most likely, she died after taking a large dose of sleeping pills,” Bosque said. According to her, two days before her death, on May 6, 1992, Marlene Dietrich, who was almost 90 years old, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. “From that moment on, she could no longer stay alone in the apartment, she had to move to a nursing home, but she wanted to avoid this at all costs,” said a friend of the actress.
Based on materials from an article by Elena Kiseleva
Pravda.ru 02/27/2003
Why again about Marlene Dietrich? There are no anniversary dates this year: on May 6, 8 years have passed since her death, and the 100th anniversary of her birth will not be celebrated until December 27, 2001. The point is different. Germany is still trying to find reconciliation in its soul with its great and obstinate daughter - the most famous German actress of the twentieth century...
At first she was a “blue angel” for the Germans - the name of her first sound film, shot in 1930 at the Berlin UFA film studio. Then “this Dietrich” (as they began to talk about her in her homeland) turned in the eyes of the Germans into a fallen angel, a rejected idol, because she refused to return to the Nazi Fatherland, and arrived there only in the spring of 1945, and even in an American military uniform. The unloved angel of Germany also did not hide his feelings and wrote in the book “Dictionary of Marlene Dietrich”: “I hated from 1933 to 1945. It is difficult to live by hating. But if circumstances require it, you have to learn to hate.”
Back in 1960, while touring in West Berlin and the Rhineland, she was greeted with spitting and signs saying “Marlene, go home!” And to this day, in her native Berlin, they still can’t decide which street to name after Marlene Dietrich - and whether to name it at all...
And yet a turning point occurred. Discs with recordings of songs performed by her, films with her participation have conquered Germany, primarily young Germany, which enthusiastically studies Marlene Dietrich’s website on the Internet and even discusses the “magical beauty” of her legs (by the way, in Hollywood she received the nickname The Legs) . The middle generation is not lagging behind either. Recently, the main film prize of Germany, an analogue of the American Oscar, was awarded for the 50th time, and it has already been almost decided that it will be called “Lola” - after the seductive cafe singer from “The Blue Angel”. The Marlene Dietrich Museum is also preparing to open in Berlin, where all the rarities transported from her last apartment on Parisian Rue Montaigne will be presented - letters from friends and fans, theatrical shoes and clothes, awards, press publications. An attempt at absentee reconciliation (albeit not particularly successful) was the film “Marlene”, shot in Hollywood by the German director Josef Vilsmeier, where 39-year-old Katya Flint managed to achieve a striking external resemblance to the prototype (this was described in No. 20 of “EP” for 2000) .
But perhaps the most remarkable thing in the story of “Marlene Dietrich’s return to Germany” is the many publications about the life of the movie star with previously unknown details. Der Spiegel magazine writes about “the eternal myth of Marlene Dietrich, which surpasses any fashion.”
The life of this woman was indeed woven from contradictions, sometimes innocent and funny (“My name is Marlene Dietrich, and this is not a pseudonym, as was often written,” the actress states in the book “Take My Life...”, although for certain It is known that at the age of 13, Maria Magdalena von Losch came up with the name Marlene, made up of two real ones), and often shocking ones. So those around her and those close to her emphatically repeated in their memories the title of Dietrich’s film: “The Devil is a Woman.” Perhaps the most terrible example in terms of clarity was the book of actress Maria Riva “My Mother Marlene” (excerpts from it were published in No. 10 of “EP” for 1993, then the memoirs were published in Russian).
The article in Der Spiegel, written by the German publicist Helmut Karazek, seems to be composed of the titles of films where the credits open with Marlene’s name: “The Blue Angel”, “Dishonored”, “Blonde Venus”, “The Devil is a Woman”, “Desire” , “Foreign Novel”, “Stage Fright”, “Nuremberg Trials”, “Witness for the Prosecution”...
In 1968, the great Joseph von Sternberg (he was a great joker!), whose name in all film reference books was redone in the American style - Joseph, but who , however, retained all the sophistication of the origins from the high society of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the bohemianism of the “golden twenties” from the life of the Weimar Republic.
“I was with a film crew from Hesse Television in Frankfurt,” recalls Helmut Karazek, “we were to make a film about the fair, and I had a clear agreement on the place and timing of an interview with the director of The Blue Angel.” Von Sternberg welcomed us with emphatic politeness, he fulfilled the request of the cameraman and lighting designer in an extremely friendly manner - after all, he was... the greatest magician of cinema lighting. In short, everything went without the slightest interference, until, with the camera turned on for direct transmission, I began my first question: “Mr. von Sternberg, you are together with Marlene Dietrich..." I was unable to finish the question, because von Sternberg barked straight into the camera: "Don't come at me with this damn woman!" I choked on my saliva, and the interview ended there. To Von Sternberg - he died in December 1969 from a heart attack - he had only a little time to live more than a year, and yet he became so furious at the mere mention of the name of the actress whom he created for world cinema..."
And she? How did she feel about him and what did she say about him? Let me remind you of a passage from my daughter’s memoirs: “Every day now at the family dinner table there is an American director (it is 1929, filming of “The Blue Angel” began. - Author’s note). He turned out to be a short, stocky man, with a large, downward-sloping mustache and inexpressibly sad eyes. I was disappointed. Apart from his long coat of camel hair, gaiters and an elegant cane, there was nothing significant about him. But his voice was amazing - soft and deep, just silk and velvet... And. his mother considered him a deity. Hanging his coat in the wardrobe, she stroked the fabric as if it had some kind of magical power. She prepared only his favorite dishes, poured them into a glass first for him and only then for his father, who seemed to be in complete agreement with this. And when von Sternberg spoke about his film - seriously, passionately, assertively, my mother listened, enchanted."
Dietrich treated von Sternberg like a deity until her death. “His advice was law for me and was carried out unconditionally,” she said in an interview with Alain Bosquet, a publicist for the French newspaper Le Figaro, a year before her death. The actress called the director “her Pygmalion,” herself, of course, “his Galatea,” and if we continue the mythology, the role of the goddess Aphrodite, who brought the beautiful statue to life, was played by the cinematography itself. But with the creator’s love for his creation, life was not the same as in the legend: “Yes, I created Marlene Dietrich from nothing, raised her from earth to heaven,” von Sternberg writes in his autobiography. “And she never stopped declare that I taught her everything in life. However, I did not teach her a lot, and above all, not to mumble about me at all corners..."
What kind of Pygmalion and Galatea are there! It is no coincidence that Dietrich much more often called von Sternberg “her Svengali” and herself “his Trilby” - after the names of the characters in the novel English writer George du Maurier's "Trilby" (1894), where a stern magician, using hypnosis, endows a simpleton girl in love with him with a magical voice, which, however, leaves the singer immediately after the death of the sorcerer. However, the real Trilby - Marlene Dietrich - did not lose her magical voice after parting with “her Svengali” and even after his death.
Well, what was Pygmalion’s work on Galatea (Svengali on Trilby) in cinema? “The actress owes her legendary fame primarily to the magical combination of light and celluloid film,” notes Helmut Karazek. The director, whom Dietrich met in 1929 in Berlin and with whom she then starred in perhaps seven of her most famous films, was truly a wizard of light in cinema. With his usual bile, von Sternberg notes in his autobiography that before meeting him, Dietrich was “a simple-minded, rather plump Berlin housewife, who in photographs looked as if she was trying hard to look like a Woman.” There is some truth here, because in the 1922 film “That’s How Men Are,” where Dietrich plays a maid, she really looks well-fed, she has a round muzzle, an upturned, fleshy nose (later she always insisted that her “nose looks like a duck’s butt”) , protruding cheekbones in which small eyes drown.
In The Blue Angel, von Sternberg makes excellent use of these, frankly speaking, not ideal cinematic data, emphasizing one thing in the plump simpleton and completely relegating another to the shadows. He raises her eyebrows at an angle, illuminates her high cheekbones favorably, uses makeup to shape her lips (the lower one is too fleshy) into an elegant heart, again with light and shadow turns her somewhat wide nose into a semblance of butterfly wings, and even forces the poor thing to rip out four molars so that her cheeks are not were round and the face was somewhat elongated. The “housewife” was put on a diet, as a result of which she lost 15 kilograms. It must be said that the famous furs in which the movie star gracefully wrapped herself, and the dresses that hugged her figure, not to mention the top hat and tails with a bow tie - this whole movie look was also the director’s invention.
Marlene turned out to be a very capable student of the Master. Even in such a specific area as the use of light. At her villa in Beverly Hills, she arranged all the lamps in such a way that the guests who attended her receptions perceived the appearance of the mistress of the house in front of them as if on a movie screen. She herself arranged the lighting on the set, appearing there long before her co-stars. “Marlene is the most talented lighting designer in cinema since Josef von Sternberg,” said his cinematographer Billy Wilder after Dietrich parted ways with her director. The scandal was deafening, especially since the fugitive went under the protection of von Sternberg's main rival and enemy at Paramount Studios, Ernst Lubitsch.
However, here we are talking about a special aspect of this event. “Of all the arts, cinema is the most important for us.” Although this phrase was said in another country and at another time, it characterizes the attitude towards cinema in Nazi Germany. Even musical comedies, in which the incomparable Marika Rokk shone, ultimately worked for Hitler’s propaganda. All the stars who remained at the UFA film studio were engaged in the service of “the Fuhrer, the people and the Reich”: Sarah Leander, Lilian Harvey, Johannes Heesters, Heitz Rymann. Here is what the modern German critic Karsten Witte writes about the famous Lilian Harvey (her name in this description can easily be replaced by both Marika Rokk and Sarah Leander): “The UFA film studio mercilessly exploited the appearance of the actress who was her most large capital. A pretty charmer with a touch of nervous sass, Lilian Harvey was the German answer to the challenge of her American rivals. Her appearance “reconciled” the tomboyish girl with the shy Gretchen. Her heroines flirted recklessly and shot their eyes, but when their first love came, they lowered their eyelashes in shame.”
Needless to say, how eager Hitler’s Reich was to return to Germany from the “enemy’s lair” - Hollywood - the most famous German actress, born von Losch, and from a family of Prussian officers! As soon as it became known about Dietrich’s break with von Sternberg, a representative of the German consulate in the United States came to the actress and gave her the text of an editorial, which, on the personal instructions of the Reich Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, appeared in all leading German newspapers. It said: “Our applause to Marlene Dietrich, who finally fired the Jewish director Joseph von Sternberg, who always forced her to play prostitutes and other vicious women, but never offered her a role that would be worthy of this great citizen and representative of the Third Reich ... Marlene should now return to her homeland and take on the role of leader of the German film industry, ceasing to be a tool in the hands of the Hollywood Jews who abuse her fame.”
So, since 1935, the Nazis had been building a golden bridge in front of Marlene, along which the prodigal daughter would have to return to her father’s house. And here all means were good. Dietrich herself later said that, in addition to the German consul with his newspapers, Hitler’s diplomatic representative, Dr. Karl Vollmoeller, the same Vollmoeller who once, on behalf of his acquaintance von Sternberg, remade Heinrich Mann’s novel “Master Gnus” into Screenplay for "The Blue Angel" Now the former screenwriter was one of the leaders of the German community in the United States, and in fact, the leader of the “fifth column” of the Nazis. According to Marlene, he told her for a long time how “the Fuhrer adores her films,” how he watches them every evening at his residence in Berchtesgaden and repeats: “She belongs to Germany!”
Much time later, when World War II was already raging, the actress took advantage of these conversations with Hitler’s envoy to play a brilliant role at one of the Hollywood “parties.” “Who knows,” she said thoughtfully in front of many selected guests, “maybe I should have accepted that offer?” And when there was dead silence, and the silent question “Why?!” was read on all faces, she said: “Maybe I could talk him out of this!” Whom? From what? Yes, Adolf, of course, from the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the attack on Poland, aggression against the USSR...
Of course, it was a small performance for the public. Instead of trying to “dissuade the Fuhrer from doing this,” Marlene immediately interrupted all filming, convened a press conference at Paramount, where the head of the film studio’s PR on behalf of the actress stated that Marlene Dietrich was breaking all ties with Germany and asking the American authorities to provide her US citizenship. “I saw my mother’s eyes at that moment,” recalls her daughter Maria Riva. “They were tear-stained and swollen, and my mother kept turning away so that her face could not be seen.”
Dietrich has always been far from politics. In 1930, she left for America, only following the adored von Sternberg and counting on a good contract with Paramount. She hardly thought about the threat of Nazism at that time. But now, in 1935, she took a conscious step towards political engagement. And four years later, having finally received the long-awaited American passport and leaving France after a vacation on the Cote d'Azur on September 2, 1939, that is, the morning after the outbreak of World War II, she, with the emotionality of an artist and with the discipline of a true Prussian, rushed into the fight against fascism, which was personified by the abandoned her homeland.
Much has been written about this time in the long life of Marlene Dietrich - there is no need to repeat it. But it was the war period, when the confrontation between the famous movie star and her homeland mired in brown barbarism took place so openly and violently, that was the most dramatic for Marlene Dietrich. She stopped being a film actress, becoming a singer and her own entertainer on camp stages, which often served as a jeep, surrounded by crowds of American G-Is. By this time, there were a lot of stories and fables about her love affairs with American military men, famous and unknown, and she herself gladly supported these stories, playing to the public. (“Is it true that while you were on the front line, you slept with General Eisenhower?” they asked her, and she answered serenely: “But Ike was never even on the front line!”)
It was precisely at that time that the deeply negative feeling of the Germans towards the “prodigal daughter of Germany” was laid down. And this despite the fact that at the end of the war, being in the ranks American troops, Marlene Dietrich sang the famous “Lili Marlene” in hospitals where wounded Wehrmacht soldiers lay, and the Germans cried. In general, she had to experience something similar to what Willy Brandt experienced, who, while still Herbert Carl Frahm, fled from the Nazis to Norway, and after the end of the war, with considerable difficulty, won the trust of voters. But if Brandt was already elected as the ruling burgomaster of West Berlin in 1957, then Marlene Dietrich was subjected to spitting and insults there three years later. Why anyway?
Actor and director Maximilian Schell asked her this question in 1982 while filming the documentary “Marlene.” Without any indignation, she responded in her favorite Berlin dialect with an almost childish phrase, which can be translated something like this: “Well, they quarreled with me...” After this they usually say: “Let’s be friends and never get angry!” But no such thing was said. Again - why?
This is what the author of Der Spiegel, Helmut Karazek, thinks, who, by the way, treats Dietrich with obvious reverence: “Marlene has always remained an unloved star in Germany. She would have been unloved here even if she had arrived in her defeated homeland not in the American in a jeep and not in an American uniform. She was a woman for whom everything she did, played, and imagined turned out to be a challenge, a provocation. And her pathos and passions were cold, rational. Even after reaching the age of 90, she? she could hardly imagine that “after death we will all ascend there, to heaven.” Her beauty was captivating, but cold, and her effect on others was sensual, erotic, but invariably under the control of the mind. Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe was never like Greta Garbo, Anna Karenina or the Lady of the Camellias. She never managed to be a winner, but she turned out to be too proud to suffer defeats.
And therefore, in her voice one hears something that cannot be reproduced musically, but which sounds like mockery, like a feeling of superiority. This voice! Thanks to him, she ended her career. Her famous and beloved "Tell me where all the flowers have gone..." Such a sentimental song can only be sung by an unsentimental woman like her..."
In 1991, a year before the actress's death, Karazek spoke with her on the phone. The fact that Dietrich was living in poverty alone in his Parisian apartment was told to Karazek by the author of “Disappearing Flowers,” Max Colpet, who lived in Munich at that time and knew Dietrich in the 1920s in Berlin. Through the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Karazek tried to obtain an honorary pension for the actress, but in this office he was told that a year after the release of Dietrich’s last film, “Beautiful Gigolo - Unhappy Gigolo” (1978), she announced her refusal to have any contact with the public, and therefore Even the German embassy in Paris is unable to speak with her.
On behalf of the editors of Der Spiegel, Karazek nevertheless sent a letter to Dietrich, and - lo and behold! - she called the magazine, but did not find the author of the letter - he had already gone home. She got through there too, saying in her characteristic mocking voice, albeit a little slowly: “Imagine, the night attendant at the editorial office didn’t want to give me your home phone number! Me!..” At first, Helmut’s ten-year-old daughter answered the phone, and you had to see how the child with an incredible sparkle in his eyes and an embarrassed smile, he said: “Dad, Marlene Dietrich is calling you...”
“Then, in 1991, I talked to her on the phone five times,” recalls Karazek. “Twice she was cheerful, talkative, friendly, on other occasions she was harsh and distrustful. In the fifth conversation, she even tried to portray the matter as if it wasn’t Marlene Dietrich on the phone. But Dietrich’s voice gave her away! Then she quickly hung up the phone and felt confusion and loneliness.”
Actually, one could not expect anything different. The daughter later gave a brutal and apparently realistic description of her mother's days: “Her legs are shriveled and do not work. In an alcoholic stupor, she cuts her hair with nail scissors and dyes it pink, leaving dirty white strands. Her ears droop. , and the teeth, which she was always so proud of, for they were her own, have become blackened and brittle. The once transparent skin has become parchment-like. It smells of whiskey and bodily decay.
After such evidence, I immediately want to watch a film with Marlene Dietrich again, or at least “Morocco,” where her handsome lover Harry Cooper stomps barefoot through the desert after the “damn woman,” to use Sternberg’s language.
However, the conversation about the relationship between the German woman Maria Magdalena von Losch and her compatriots still hangs in the air. Moreover, Karazek draws attention to another important detail from the star’s biography. In an interview with Maximilian Schell for his documentary, Marlene said that she was an only child. However, she had an older sister, Elizabeth, although since the end of the war the actress tried in every possible way to keep quiet or even deny this fact.
The fact is that in the spring of 1945, Elisabeth and her husband Georg Wil showed up in one of the most terrible Nazi concentration camps - Bergen-Belsen. When the British entered the camp in April, out of a list of 60 thousand prisoners, there were 10 thousand corpses in the barracks, and another 20 thousand died within a couple of weeks after liberation. And what about the Vil spouses? No, they were not prisoners, although they were not overseers in the camp. They simply ran a cafe where both Nazi executioners from Bergen-Belsen and Wehrmacht soldiers dined. Quiet and respectable citizens of the Reich. That’s why Maria Riva was surprised when, knowing that her aunt Elizabeth had left the concentration camp, she saw a healthy, well-fed lady!
Such a relationship was completely inappropriate for Dietrich, and she rushed to the camp, to the commandant, senior lieutenant of the British army Arnold Horwell. The conversation was made easier by the fact that the Englishman turned out to be a Berlin Jew who managed to move to London in the 1930s. In addition, a waterfall of illustrious names from among the friends of Marlene Dietrich - generals Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley - fell upon him. In general, the matter was hushed up. However, Elisabeth herself did not fully understand the complexity of the situation for her sister and more than once publicly spoke out about “the high morality of the Third Reich, which, despite all its shortcomings, still tried to defend German honor.” It is not surprising that Marlene decided to remain the only child of her parents...
And to the question of Der Spiegel magazine, which was posed by Marlene Dietrich in her last interview on June 17, 1991 - “What was your anti-fascism based on?”, she answered briefly and disarmingly: “On a sense of decency!”
Maybe reconciliation between the great German Marlene Dietrich and Germany did take place?
Alexey Grigoriev
"ECHO OF THE PLANET" ITAR-TASS 2000
"Marlene Dietrich is a professional actress, a professional cameraman and a professional fashion designer." Alfred Hitchcock
“The sculpture of Dietrich’s face is almost three-dimensional, there is not the slightest flaw, as if it were carved from ivory. Something new appears - a beautiful face of such regularity that its further improvement seems unthinkable.” K.Y. Sembach
The Great Dietrich is an unattainable magnitude. She was always more than just a star, actress or singer - she was a cultural symbol and icon, setting the tone for style and fashion, lifestyle and attitude. An idol of millions, Marlene Dietrich has become a standard of beauty and a preacher of sexual freedom since the early 20s. She boldly violated gender boundaries, went against conventions and stereotypes, be it her personal life (there are still legends about Dietrich’s countless lovers and mistresses) or her social and civic position (a German who emigrated to America, lived in Paris, she openly despised Hitler and spoke about it publicly). The form of her feminine perception of the world was inaccessible to women of that time, but Dietrich’s daring free-thinking softened her incredible sense of self-esteem, which made her a cold, ephemeral goddess, whose aloofness took all evaluative characteristics beyond the boundaries of generally accepted morality.
Marlene Dietrich is often called “art incarnate” - her personality almost completely merged with her artistic image. That is why, when it comes to one of the main people of the 20th century - Marlene Dietrich, what comes to mind is not so much her musical or film works, but the historical significance of this person as the main world icon of style, the creator of legendary images and archetypal models.
The greatest mystifier, Dietrich understood perfectly well that simplicity and completeness can destroy any stellar story. Among the many myths about iconic women in the history of the twentieth century, the legends of Marlene Dietrich stand apart. Much is known about her life - but without exception, the information is contradictory and ambiguous. She never hid one thing - the fact that by endlessly inventing the mythical Marlene and honing her image of a woman of mystery, she with her own hands created a perfect decadent work of art, an art project named after herself.
The star's real name is Maria Magdalene von Losch. She was born on December 27, 1901 in Berlin in the family of a Prussian officer and the daughter of a wealthy jeweler. In her youth, the girl studied music in Weimar with Professor Robert Reitz; and also studied at the Max Reinhardt acting school. At the same time, she moved in the bohemian circles of decadent Berlin in the 20s, even then trying to emphasize her originality with a man’s tailcoat and a monocle dangling from a chain. She received her first theatrical engagements and screen tests in 1922, but all the roles of that period were secondary and characterless.
In 1927, Dietrich appeared on stage in the entertaining revue "It's in the Air", performing a comic song of dubious content. The provocative image did not go unnoticed - she was offered to record her first record. In 1928, the first recordings of songs took place, and a year later, director Joseph von Sternberg saw her in the revue “Two Ties” and invited her to play the role of Lola in the film “The Blue Angel.” The picture became a triumph for Dietrich - in February 1930, Marlene signed a contract with the American studio Paramount and on April 1, 1930, on the day of the premiere of The Blue Angel, she left Berlin and went to Hollywood, where, together with Sternberg, she presented her work in the film to the public. "Morocco" (1930). The incredible success of the tandem of director and actress resulted in a fruitful and long-term collaboration - in Hollywood, von Sternberg and Dietrich made six joint films, which became bestsellers and gave the world several imperishable images - variations on the theme of femme fatale.
Being the main woman in the entire creative and personal life of Maestro Sternberg, Marlene allowed him to love herself and carefully sculpt her image. He fell in love with her immediately and for the rest of his life and did everything for Marlene that a major director could do for an actress. He spent a lot of effort so that the audience saw her as she was for him - it was not for nothing that the actress admitted: “I was created by von Sternberg from beginning to end!” This statement was not an exaggeration - before meeting the maestro, Marlene was full brown-haired, lively and energetic, and after meeting him she became an ephemeral thin blonde, an inaccessible goddess in clouds of penumbra and cigarette smoke. He made her lose weight, change her name and hair color, remove two molars to give her face dramatic sunken cheekbones, teach her to understand the nuances of angles and find the light that made her look perfect. The famous “perfect symmetry” of Marlene Dietrich’s face is a real discovery of the art of photography. Soft light shadows created the volume of the cheekbones, the depth of the eye socket, and the relief of the cheeks. It seemed as if her face had been snatched out of the darkness by moonlight.
Dietrich complemented the secrets of Sternberg's mastery with her signature sense of style - and the incredibly magnetic photographs of a languid, sculpted face with arched eyebrows, contoured lips and misty eyes acquired a special piquancy thanks to carefully selected accessories, the finest veils, French couturier hats and handmade gloves.
Marlene Dietrich became the absolute standard of beauty and one of the highest paid actresses of her time. Realizing that the whales of her professional success became diligence and discipline, she was distinguished by fanatical hard work and continued to torture herself with diets and carefully thinking through her image. Her perfectionism knew no limits - Dietrich understood the power of detail, and even if her shoes were not visible in the frame, she continued to come up with their styles. Her gloves were made from casts of her hands, her shoes were made only according to individual measurements, and she could go through hundreds of veils for hours until the light fit perfectly on her face. Her fittings lasted ten hours - tailors and stylists recalled with horror Dietrich’s pickiness and inflexibility in creating her own style.
Shocking and fatal, she introduced women's wardrobe a men's suit, a silk top hat and signs of androgynous style, which became the first gesture of emancipation in the history of the twentieth century. In addition, she identified a new fetish - playing with a cigarette, which became an incredible figurative tool in her hands. Androgyny was an important part of Marlene Dietrich’s image - for example, in the 50s, she was the first to sing songs dedicated to women from a male perspective: “One For My Baby (And One More For the Road)”, “I”ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face" and "Makin` Whoopee". Her ambiguous image - a woman with a perfect face, perfect hair, in a tailcoat and with a cigarette - became one of the most striking images of the past century.
Marlene gave every item she introduced into her wardrobe the status of a symbol. She was organic both in a la garçon outfits and in flowing ultra-feminine outfits strewn with iridescent sparkles. Dietrich knew a lot about sophisticated sexual attractiveness. She cultivated understatement, knowing full well that this was the main element in eroticism. This is what experts explain her fierce passion for veils.
The role of Marlene Dietrich in the history of world fashion can hardly be overestimated - at the age of 85 she won the award of the American Association of High Fashion. After the star's death, her colossal wardrobe moved to the Paris Fashion Museum. Dresses, suits, swimsuits, robes, slippers and hats can be divided into 3 main styles: boyish, unisex and femme fatale. One of the highlights is, of course, the famous swan-down outfit in which she began her career as a singer: the “revealing” dress that Dietrich wore under a robe of swan feathers, thanks to elaborate appliqués of rhinestones, sequins, beads and pearls on flesh-colored fabric created the effect of a naked body drowning in the starlight.
Marlene's tips:
Clothes: Basic rule: never run after the latest fashion - fashion victims look funny. Do not buy green, red and other bright clothes - give preference to black, blue and gray suits... Do not trust those sellers who say that it is better to buy five dresses than one for the same price... Do not buy cheap materials , even if a dress made from them seems attractive, it’s better to save up for a good suit. If you have a gray suit, you need to buy two dark dresses, one black wool skirt, black and gray pullovers to feel decently dressed all year. It is appropriate to soften a strict style with furs and accessories.
Shoes: The most important part of the toilet, even more important than clothes. Good shoes add elegance to your appearance. It is better to buy one pair of good expensive shoes instead of three pairs of cheap ones. Never wear very high heels with a casual suit. Avoid wearing open-toed shoes after dinner if you want to appear elegant. These shoes can be paired with a summer dress when the sun is shining! It is better to refuse white shoes - they make your feet larger and heavier. Patent leather shoes often instill a sense of carefreeness, but they are not at all elegant. The same can be said about red shoes, which only go with a summer dress.
Hats: can bring a lot of joy and put a woman in a good mood. Anyone who chuckles ironically has no idea of the importance of this little thing...
Nail polish: Dark colors are inelegant. Natural pastel colors and elongated shape will make your fingers graceful and feminine.
She was the queen of the screen and the goddess of love. Many men and women fell in love with her, she gave her love to a select few.
First lover
In the 1920s, Berlin was a city of den, debauchery and vice. When Marlene reached a dangerous age for a young Mädchen, her mother sent her to study music in provincial Weimar. There, something happened that Josephine tried to protect her daughter from.
It’s about first love: “Love comes from the joy of loving, and not just from the joy of owning a beloved heart.”
Professor Reitze was married and had children, but this did not stop him from showing attention to his seductive students. Of all the students, the most seductive was Marlene Dietrich. The professor not only taught her to play the violin perfectly, but also taught her her first lessons in love.
First role
Returning to Berlin, Marlene entered the Max Reinhardt School of Dramatic Art, but dreamed of trying her hand at cinema. The dream came true in 1922, when she first appeared on screen in the film Little Napoleon.
The episodic role of the maid did not bring fame, money, or success, but Marlene made her choice - from now on her life was connected with cinema.
Only husband
She fell in love with Rudi Sieber at first sight. He was handsome, tall, blond and worked as an assistant on director Joe Maya's film "The Tragedy of Love." But Rudy didn't pay any attention to her - he was engaged to Joe's daughter. And she decided that this man would become her husband. And she did everything to make him become one.
One fine day, Rudy regained his sight and saw in front of him a gentle, soft and seductive woman. After six months of a passionate affair, Rudy forgot about Eva and married Marlene. And I never regretted it.
It's about a man: "He wants to be a prince, ride a horse and protect all women. The image that a man creates when thinking about an ideal woman is similar to the image that a woman creates when thinking about an ideal man."
Eve, having lost her "Adam", shot herself in the heart.
Director and his actress
All his life, the famous American director Joseph von Sternberg was looking for an actress who could bring his grandiose cinematic fantasies to life on the screen. The director found his actress in Berlin - Marlene was sensual, mysterious, erotic. He directed her in the film "The Blue Angel". Marlene not only played in it, but also sang. Her voice was mesmerizing, her beauty was enchanting.
Joseph left for America, conquered by Marlene - as a man and as an artist. After some time, he called her to Hollywood. Sternberg gave her a chance to conquer the whole world. And without hesitation, she left Rudy and her daughter and crossed the ocean.
"The hour of parting has struck..."
In America, everything was going well, but at first she was very homesick for her family and Berlin. Joseph tried as best he could to dispel her melancholy. Riza Sternberg could not stand it and filed for divorce. But Marlene had no intention of divorcing Rudy. She preferred to change lovers rather than husbands, although Rudy had long lived with the Russian dancer Tamara Matul, and she, besides Joseph, had other hobbies.
Her most famous lovers: Harry Cooper, Douglas Farnbacks Jr., Frank Sinatra, Yul Brynner, Burt Bacharach.
Sternberg's film "Morocco" made her the most famous actress in the world, but her romance with the director was steadily moving towards an end. Joseph sought to completely subjugate her. Marlene resisted, defending her self. Soon the quarrelsome genius was forced to leave Paramount Studios. As he left, he declared: “Miss Dietrich and I have done everything possible. The hour of parting has struck.”
He was obsessed with the idea of creating her into an actress according to his ideal of an artist-creator. He created an actress out of Marlene, but lost her as a Woman.
Her most famous films: "The Blue Angel" (1930), "Morocco" (1930), "The Devil is a Woman" (1935), "Witness for the Prosecution" (1958), "The Nuremberg Trials" (1961).
"Arc de Triomphe"
The Nazis burned books by Erich Maria Remarque at the stake. Films featuring Dietrich were banned. He was a refugee, she was a defector. They met in Venice - a famous writer and famous actress. He was amazed by her intelligence - Marlene recited Rilke by heart. She was fascinated by his talent - all of Europe was reading the novel “All Quiet on the Western Front.” He called her to Paris, and she, leaving everything behind, went with him. She invited him to Hollywood, and he, leaving all his affairs, followed her.
Everyone vied with each other to talk about Remarque’s best novel - the novel with Marlene. They settled in Beverly Hills and never left each other for a minute. In America, he began writing the love story of an emigrant doctor and singer Joan Madu. It was no secret to anyone who was hiding behind the main characters. Remarque will dedicate the Arc de Triomphe to Marlene Dietrich. He will end the affair when their love ends.
Although most often she had to play fatal women, thieves, and prostitutes, in reality she was a sister of mercy and a housewife who loved to cook and help everyone.
Billy Wilder
French macho
Gabin forced Remarque out of her life. The French actor both in films and in life played the same role - a real man. But in fact, Gaben was a big child, and in America, where he fled from German-occupied Paris and where no one knew him, he found no place and felt like a helpless child. Marlene replaced Jean's mother, sister, and friends - she became more than his mistress, she became his beloved.
They separated in the spring of 1943 in Norfolk and met in 1945 in Paris. They started acting in films, but life together did not go well. Gabin was stubborn, suspicious and jealous. He was jealous of her with or without reason. But there were more reasons - both American General James Gavin and Gerard Philip...
It's about jealousy: "Uncontrollable passion, the Siamese twin of love."
It all ended when Marlene went to Hollywood. Gabin married Dominique Fourier, who bore him two daughters and a son.
Marlene made more than once attempts to return him, but if Jean Gabin said “no” once, then it was forever. She loved Jean until his death, and after his death she called herself his widow.
Accident
In her “well over 60” Marlene continued to act in films, give solo concerts and tour around the world. She managed to preserve her image, her charm, her beauty. She was a myth, a living legend and remained an earthly woman who had not lost her human passions. And she continued to attract men to her like a magnet.
It's about femininity: "The triumph of a woman, her magnetic field that attracts men."
While performing in Sydney, she met journalist Hugh Curnow. He was the most ordinary womanizer, but he pretended to be cool guy. He pressed her for an interview, and she gave in as an actress. He managed to charm her, and she yielded like a woman. He was 40 years younger than her. They agreed that he would help her write a book. She took him into her bed, and he began to tell everyone how she “loved to love.” He didn’t care about Marlene’s feelings; she was not a goal for him, but a means. When Marlene realized her mistake, she packed his bags and sent Hugh to his wife and children.
Curnow died during her next visit to Australia. When he was doing a photo report for the editors, his head was cut off by a helicopter blade.
Accident…
Last tango in Paris
She spent the last years of her life in an apartment on Avenue Montaigne. The last film where she played herself was Maximillian Schell's documentary Marlene. The last song she recorded was called "If I Could Wish for Anything."
It is about life: “It consists not only of holidays. Those who think differently will miss many holidays.”
She passed away a great actress and a great woman in May 1992. The funeral service took place in a church in the center of Paris. The coffin was covered with an American flag, transported to Berlin and buried in the ground in the cemetery, where her mother's ashes found peace.
Victor Gorn
Women's magazine Superstyle 12/22/2009
Biography
Real name: Maria Magdalena von Losch.
Marlene Dietrich was born on December 27, 1901 in Berlin in the family of a Prussian officer and the daughter of a wealthy jeweler. She died on May 6, 1992 in Paris.
As a child, she studied the violin, but due to a hand disease, she was forced to forget about her musical career.
In 1920, adopting the pseudonym Marlene Dietrich, she performed in the revue “Tilscher’s Girl,” and a year later began attending Max Reinhardt’s studio school. Dietrich came to the set to earn money, but gradually she became fascinated by film work. True, the debutante’s personal successes were very modest, until in 1930 the American director Joseph von Sternberg assigned her a role in the film “The Blue Angel.” This 18th film in the actress’s creative biography was, in essence, the beginning of her long and successful career on the screen. Spectators went to cinemas to enjoy the art of their favorite Emil Jannings, and came out captivated by the thrilling spectacle, the soul of which was a little-known actress with very free manners and a low, exciting voice.
Sternberg showed the film in Hollywood, and soon Dietrich received an invitation from the Paramount film company, whose owners intended to make a new Greta Garbo out of this German woman. Before releasing Marlene Dietrich onto the set, American specialists made a serious correction to her appearance. The new look of the actress, who appeared in the film “Morocco” (1930), amazed everyone who knew her before. A carefully styled wave of platinum hair, thin semicircles of raised eyebrows, a shimmering sparkle in her eyes, and sunken cheeks gave Dietrich’s face an expression of mournful and mysterious surprise. In this new look of the actress it was difficult to discern the former plump German woman. And although in Hollywood Marlene Dietrich continued to create images of singers, fallen women, they were sculpted from a different - more refined and fragile matter, representing a new variation on the theme of the mysterious femme fatale suffering from love and making others suffer.
The American public appreciated the new star. Marlene Dietrich was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Morocco.
Their best movies in Hollywood (“Dishonoured”, 1931; “Blonde Venus”, 1932; “Shanghai Express”, 1932; “Song of Songs”, 1933; “The Devil is a Woman”, 1935) Dietrich created under the direction of Sternberg. Their collaboration continued until 1935, when, due to disagreements with management, Sternberg was forced to leave Paramount. But Marlene’s further career continued along the path he had planned, and only in the comedy “Angel” (1937) and the western “Destry is Back in the Saddle” (1939) did the actress manage to move away from her usual image.
Marlene Dietrich in the late 30s - early 40s became one of highly paid stars world cinema, a role model for thousands of women. They tried to copy her hairstyle, makeup, jewelry, and dressed in pantsuits, which were worn with such grace by the most elegant woman in Hollywood. Echoes of this glory reached the borders of Germany.
In 1937, Marlene Dietrich received an invitation from Goebbels to return to her homeland and take the throne of the “Queen of the German film industry,” but she refused and in 1939 accepted American citizenship.
When the Second World War began, Marlene flew to Europe as part of a troupe of artists. She performed on all fronts where the Americans fought. For which she received the American Medal of Freedom, the French orders “Chevalier of the Legion of Honor” and “Officer of the Legion of Honor”.
Marlene Dietrich returned to America in 1947. Now she more often got minor or even episodic roles. However, it was during this period of creativity that she created two images, without which the idea of the power of her dramatic talent would be incomplete. In the film “Witness for the Prosecution” (1957), Dietrich impressively showed on the screen the drama of a woman who saved her husband from prison and learned that she had been vilely deceived by him. In The Nuremberg Trials (1961), she played the widow of a fascist general, who never came to terms with the defeat that befell Germany.
The actress does not spare her heroine, revealing fanaticism and commitment to Nazi ideology, carefully hidden behind a sophisticated shell and elegant manners.
Participation in the troupe of front-line artists contributed to the development of her talent as a singer. Marlene Dietrich's pop career began in 1953 in a cabaret in Las Vegas. The core of the repertoire consists of songs from the films “The Blue Angel”, “Morocco”, “The Devil is a Woman”, “Lili Marlene”, as well as modern hits “Where did those flowers go”, “Only the wind knows the answer”, etc.
With her show, Marlene traveled to all continents and was a resounding success everywhere.
In 1972, while touring in Australia, Dietrich tripped over a cable and fell, breaking her leg. This accident confined the actress to a wheelchair, which did not stop her from starring in the film “Beautiful Gigolo - Poor Gigolo” in 1978.
In 1983, the name of the actress again attracted the attention of viewers when the full-length documentary film “Marlene”, directed by M. Schell, was released.
Dietrich was married to Rudolf Sieber for fifty years, but lived separately from him, preferring connections with famous contemporaries.
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