Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend

672 Pages·2011·37.44 MB·English

by  Steven Bach

M A R L E N E
D I E T R I C H
Marlene before The Blue Angel in The Woman One Longs For, 1929.
M A R L E N E
D I E T R I CH
LIFE AND LEGEND
S T E V EN B A C H
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRES S
Minneapolis
London
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint photographs in this book from the following
sources. The four galleries of eight pages each in the book are not numbered but are numbered here,
left to right, top to bottom.
Frontispiece. Danish Film Museum, Copenhagen (Den).
First gallery. 1-2: Deutsche Institute fur Film-kunde, Frankfurt (DIF). 3: Ullstei n Bilderdienst, Ber-
lin (Ullstein). 4: author's collection. 5: Siiddeutsche Verlag Bilderdienst, Munich (SV). 6-8: Stiftung
Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin (SDK). 9: author's collection, courtesy Hasso Felsing. 10-11: SDK. 12:
author's collection. 13: Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (AUS). 14: Den. 15: AUS. 16: au-
thor's collection, courtesy Hasso Felsing. 17: author's collection. 18: DIF. 19-20: SDK. 21: SV 22: DIF.
23-24: SV 25: Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life magazine, copyright Time Warner, Inc.
Second gallery. 26: DIF. 27-30 (scene sketches by Fritz Maurischaat) and 31: SDK. 32: SV 33-34: DI
35: SDK. 36: author's collection, copyright Die Dame. 37: Alfred Eisenstaedt , Life magazine, copyright
Time Warner, Inc. 38: SDK. 39: Magnum, Manuel Moses Collection (MM). 40-41: The Kobal Collec
tion (Kobal). 42: author's collection. 43-47: SV 48: courtesy John Pommer. 49-50: SV 51: George East-
man House, Rochester, New York (GEH). 52: SDK. 53: AUS. 54-55: DIF. 56-58: author's collection,
frame blowups courtesy Stadtmuseum, Munich.
Third gallery. 59-60: Archive Photos Stock Photo Library (Archive). 61: courtesy Barry Paris. 62: GEH.
63-67: Kobal. 68: David O. Selznick Archives, University of Texas at Austin. 69: GEH. 70: Bayerische
Staatabibliothek, Munich. 71: AUS. 72: DIF. 73: SV 74: MM. 75-78: SV 79: Kobal. 80-81: DIF. 82:
Kobal. 83: SV 84: MM. 85-86: DIF.
Fourth gallery. 87: SDK. 88: Kobal. 89: photograph by Earl Theisen, copyright Look. 90-91: Kobal. 92:
Archive. 93-94: Kobal. 95: Archive. 96: courtesy Bernard Hall. 97: Archive. 98-99: Kobal. 100: Archive.
101-3: SV 104: copyright Eve Arnold/Magnum. 105-8: MM. 109: copyright Anthony Armstrong-Jones/
Camera Press.
Song credits appear on page 626.
Originally published as Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend (New York: William Morrow and Company,
Inc., 1992).
First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2011
Copyright 1992 by Outpost Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trans-
mitted, in any form or by any means , electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bach, Steven.
Marlene Dietrich : life and legend / Steven Bach,
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-8166-7584-5 (pbk.)
1. Dietrich, Marlene. 2. Entertainers—Germany—Biography. I. Title.
PN2658.D5B32011
791.43'028'092-dc22
[B] 2010054347
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunit y educator and employer.

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Else and Werner Rohr
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CONTENTS
A Note from the Author ix
OVERTURE
A Visit to the Theater: 1929 3
I BERLIN
One. Beginnings: 1901-1918 13
Two. Weimar and Back: 1919-1921 29
Three. The Sorcerer's Apprentice: 1922-1923 46
Four. The Perfect Couple: 1923-1927 64
Five. Breakthrough: 1928-1929 80
Six. The Blue Angel: 1929 97
II HOLLYWOOD
Seven. Fame: 1930-1931 125
Eight. Empress of Desire: 1931-1932 141
Nine. Apotheosis: 1933-1934 162
Ten. Tribute and Farewell: 1934-1935 185
Eleven. Saving Dietrich: 1935-1936 200
Twelve. Exile: 1937-1939 230
Thirteen. Phoenix: 1939-1941 248
Fourteen. Home Front: 1942-1943 268
Fifteen. Lili Marlene: 1944-1945 288
Sixteen. Survivor: 1946-1947 309
Seventeen. Pro: 1947-1950 326
Eighteen. Star Quality: 1950-1952 344
III LEGEND
Nineteen. Solo: 1952-1954 361
Twenty. Back in Business: 1954-1958 374
Twenty-one. Helen of Troy: 1959-1960 390
Twenty-two. Odyssey: 1960-1967 405
Twenty-three. "Queen of the World": 1967-1975 422
Twenty-four. Monstre Sacré: 1976-1982 443
IV EXIT MUSIC
Coda: "Allein in Einer Grossen Stadt": 1983-1992 469
Appendix A. Theater Chronology 479
Appendix B. Filmography 490
Appendix C. Discography 520
Acknowledgments 529
Source Notes 533
Bibliography 589
Index 611
A N O TE
FROM THE AUTHOR
I
spoke intermittently but at length with Marlene Dietrich while research-
ing and writing this book. She did not "cooperate" with it (and at one
point tried legally to stop it), though because I had known and been a
student of her great director, Josef von Sternberg, she gave me the oppor-
tunity to experience her as a generous, intelligent, sympathetic, shrewd,
and witty woman, sometimes difficult, often very funny, unfailingly out-
spoken, if not always candid.
She deplored "biographers," and always spoke the word in indignant

quotation marks. Partly she felt vivid resentment that they were some-
how appropriating what had been, after all, her life. More importantly,
she understood Legend and wanted the world to remain unconfused by
facts.