Marlene Dietrich
by Maria Riva
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
I had to read this account of the woman seen through her daughter's eyes. I knew this was no trashy Mommie Dearest act of vengeance, having pored over mainstream reviews. I found Maria Riva's efforts commendable. Marlene was something else, onscreen and off. Imagine a night on the tiles with her, Berlin, circa 1920-something.
Born in 1901 in Schöneberg, now a district of Berlin, Dietrich studied violin, becoming interested in theatre and poetry as a teenager. Her first job, in 1922, was playing violin in a pit orchestra accompanying silent films. She was fired after four weeks.
She instead became a chorus girl, touring with vaudeville-style revues. Also playing small roles in dramas, she initially attracted no special attention. Her film debut comprised a bit part in The Little Napoleon (1923). By the late 1920s, Dietrich was playing sizable screen roles.
In 1929 came her breakthrough role of cabaret singer Lola Lola in The Blue Angel (1930), which introduced her signature song 'Falling in Love Again'. A success, she moved to the U.S. for Paramount Pictures as a German answer to MGM's Swedish Greta Garbo. The rest, as they say, is legend.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Dietrich the ninth-greatest female star of all time. Among my favourites of her films were Witness for the Prosecution and Stage Fright. Marlene's middle years were of great interest to this baby boomer:
Approached by the Nazis to return to Germany, she famously turned them down flat. Staunchly anti-Nazi, she became an American citizen in 1939. Dietrich became one of the first celebrities to raise war bonds. She toured the US for most of 1942 and 1943, reportedly selling more bonds than any other star.
During 1944 and 1945, she performed for Allied troops in Algeria, Italy, Britain and France, entering Germany with Generals Gavin and Patton. When asked why she did so despite the obvious dangers, she replied, 'aus Anstand' ('out of decency').
Awarded the US Medal of Freedom in 1945, she said this was her proudest accomplishment. She was also awarded the French government's Légion d'honneur for her wartime work.
Dietrich performed on Broadway twice in the late 1960s, winning a special Tony Award in 1968. In 1972 she received $250,000 to film I Wish You Love, a version of her Broadway show An Evening With Marlene Dietrich, in London. Unhappy with the result, she need not have been.
I have live recordings of her 1960s and 1970s concerts, and what a performer she was. She had no need to sing as such; she was simply a supreme artiste who held audiences around the planet mesmerised.
In her later years, Dietrich's health declined. She survived cervical cancer and suffered from poor leg circulation. A 1973 stage fall injured her left thigh, requiring skin grafts.
'Do you think this is glamorous?' she said in a 1973 interview. 'That it's a great life and that I do it for my health? Well it isn't. Maybe once, but not now.'
After fracturing her right leg in 1974, her live performance career largely ended when the following year she again fell off stage, this time in Sydney, Australia, breaking her thigh.
Her last film appearance was a cameo role in Just a Gigolo (1979), starring David Bowie, in which she sang the title song. That same year her autobiography, Nehmt nur mein Leben (Take Just My Life), was published.
Dependent on painkillers and alcohol, Dietrich withdrew to the seclusion of her Paris apartment to spend her dotage mostly bedridden. For more than a decade she became a prolific letter-writer and phone-caller, before dying aged 90 in 1992.
It is perhaps unnecessary to hear from Maria Riva about her mother's many affairs and sexual fetishes. Fortunately, this does not lower the book's tone, just pads it out needlessly. That is my only criticism.
A good, solid documentation of a screen legend's ways by her frank and not at all nasty daughter.
No comments:
Post a Comment