National Post (National Edition)
Blue angel or A DEVIL?
The anti-Semitic, nymphomaniac Hollywood star who turned her husband into a butler
If Marlene Dietrich went out of her way to suppress feelings of common humanity and ordinary kindness, it's because being a great star requires an all-consuming monstrosity. She was never spontaneously warm. She never laughed — glacial stares were more her speciality. She never once stood in line, even for a passport. She was always amazed, when seeing normal people in crowded places, such as airports or hotel lobbies, at just how ugly they were: “No wonder they pay us so much money.”
Though Dietrich was an egomaniac — who, as her daughter once reported, “rarely talked with anyone. That would have required a certain interest in another's opinion” — we can still appreciate the unique artistry, the legend that remains Marlene: “the shimmering look, the incredible body, the hypnotic gaze from beneath those famous hooded lids,” as her daughter put it, in classic films such as The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express and The Devil Is a Woman.
She was not a relaxed or natural performer, however. Her daughter, Maria Riva, was right to describe the effect as a “manufactured flamboyance” — the beads and sequins, egret feathers, silk stockings, white chiffon and full-length ermine coats. Dietrich's hair would be backlit, to give it a halo. None who heard it forgot the world-weary lisping Teutonic voice, so sad, so full of yearning. And so camp.
In her films and, latterly, concerts, Dietrich embodied an erotic languor, a moody exasperation. Often dressed up in top hat, white tie and tails, and men's trousers, she achieved the look of transgender fluidity long before it became fashionable.
This was all part of her very modern seductiveness, her belief that “glamour is assurance. It is a kind of knowing that you are all right in every way, mentally, physically and in appearance. Whatever the occasion or the situation, you are equal to it.”
She was born in 1901 in Berlin, the daughter of a Prussian officer, Louis Otto Dietrich, who was killed on the Eastern Front. The actress had a solid bourgeois background, with servants to leave the house gleaming. Her mother, Josephine, was, says Riva, “a cold woman, set in her ways, given to commands.”
Dietrich was obviously a chip off the old block, though admittedly more artistic. At boarding school, playing a Handel sonata, she was pounced upon by the music professor, as “the urge to touch his lovely pupil was so overwhelming.”
Despite Josephine deeming everyone in showbusiness “shiftless, tambourine-playing thieves,” Dietrich moved to the Max-Reinhardt Acting Academy. She flashed her long legs in plays and cabarets, and particularly enjoyed donning the elaborate costumes — a fantasy world to be contrasted with the prevailing poverty and inflation of the Weimar Republic, where “the bread was made of turnips, the meat rations bones and offal.”
In 1923, aged 22, the actress married Rudolf Sieber. He took an immediate back seat, condoning his wife's innumerable affairs and doing the shopping. They never divorced, but he was eventually exiled to a chicken ranch in the San Fernando Valley. His long-term secret companion, Tamara Matul, was compelled to undergo abortions to ensure no scandal sullied the pure image of Dietrich's marriage.
The list of lovers, nevertheless, is extensive. No wonder Dietrich's most precious possession was a do-it-yourself contraception kit called the Ice Water and Vinegar Douche, which resembled a rubber bagpipe. Heinz white vinegar was bought by the case, to purge herself after bouts with Maurice Chevalier, Frank Sinatra, Michael Wilding, numerous Kennedys, Yul Brynner, and Edward, Prince of Wales. “I can do it better than Wallis Simpson,” Dietrich boasted.
When she met George-Bernard Shaw she sank down on her knees in front of him (“Of course I had to do it before we could talk,” she explained to Sieber) which must have blown the old vegetarian's Jaeger socks off. The sculptor Giacometti received similar homage.
In the Berlin studios, Dietrich encountered Josef von Sternberg, who directed her in seven films, starting with The Blue Angel. He saw her as his scarlet empress, who was simultaneously raunchy and aloof. Sternberg whipped Dietrich through dozens of exhausting takes, and they formed a sadomasochistic bond. “As though his overcoat had magic powers,” recalls Riva, her mother “fondled it before hanging it up” — and Sternberg was openly at the house for most of his meals, including breakfast. Sieber was by now a sort of butler.
After the success of The Blue Angel in 1930, Dietrich was invited to Hollywood and took the trappings as her due: first-class travel by Pullman car and ocean liner, steamer trunks lined with padded damask, the marble lobbies encrusted with golden scallop shells, staterooms of shining chrome and tablecloths of Chantilly lace. The art deco mansions in Beverly Hills were piled high with Sevres porcelain and Baccarat crystal goblets. Gold cutlery was commonplace — “the sterling silver was for lunch.”
Nevertheless, she had her quirky little ways. Dietrich was phobic about germs and personally scoured lavatories and sinks with powerful detergents. She didn't like presentation fruit baskets or fancy foods, and never lost her taste for Germanic snacks, hunks of pumpernickel loaded with goose fat, dill pickles and raw sauerkraut.
Though she became an American citizen in 1939, Dietrich's manner was always that of a Nazi — and Hemingway (another lover) called her “The Kraut.” She was appallingly racist, and decreed she “did not like the colour black, except in clothes.” When in hospital, she refused to be treated by black or Puerto Rican nurses. She was also anti-Semitic. “I gave up my country for them, and now what do I get? The stores are closed for Yom Kippur.” During the war, she entertained the American troops — all too literally. She slept with the GIs and caught crabs.
In 1953, Dietrich began her career as a Las Vegas nightclub singer. When she subsequently toured the world to acclaim, she did so with 40 pieces of luggage. It was a contractual demand that 12 extra-large bath towels were in readiness, in case the star wanted to wash her hair.
Behind the scenes, however, Dietrich's health broke down. Smoking gave her advanced arteriosclerosis. She was crippled from a series of falls. The situation was exacerbated by alcoholism and a dependence on pain killers. The public never knew of the operations and treatments she underwent. “No human flaw must ever be permitted to mar the perfection of the legend that was Marlene Dietrich,” was her credo.
She ended up a toothless, bedridden recluse in Paris. When drunk, she had a habit of attacking her own hair with a pair of scissors. It's nevertheless completely in keeping that Dietrich, who died in 1992, should have turned into a creature out of a pungent gothic novel, as she always seemed like one of Freud's hysterical patients, or a nightmare waxwork in a fairy tale.