Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

A stunning and sexy B/w photo signed lengthways in pink.


Marlene Dietrich Trade mark was her Low and sensual voice.

Won a Special Tony Award in 1968.

Was named #9 Actress on The AFI 50 Greatest Screen Legends.

She was voted the 43rd Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Chosen in 1995 by Empire magazine as #60 of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history.

She sucked lemon wedges between takes to keep her mouth muscles tight.

Never worked without a mirror on the set so she could constantly check her makeup and hair.

Her make-up man said she kissed so hard that she needed a new coat of lipstick after every kiss.

She demanded that Max Factor sprinkle half an ounce of real gold dust into her wigs to add glitter to her tresses during filming.


Personal quotes:

"On The Blue Angel (1930), I thought everything we were doing was awful. They kept a camera pointed here [groin]. I was so young and dumb."

"I'm not an actress -- I'm a personality."

"In Europe, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman - we make love with anyone we find attractive." - "Sex is much better with a woman, but then one can't live with a woman!"

She prided herself on the fact that she had slept with three men of the Kennedy clan - Joseph P. Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. and John F. Kennedy.


Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
She entranced moviegoers for more than three decades, and was every bit as enigmatic offscreen as the leggy femmes fatales she essayed on-screen. She had a carefully developed skill for anticipating how her every move would photograph, and she took great pains not only with her makeup and costuming, but also with her lighting and the staging of her scenes. Her numerous affairs with both men and women were ill-kept secrets, yet she managed to avoid scandal with more success than most, and was content to have her private persona shaped by her public one. A gifted child whose talent with the violin was rendered useless by a wrist injury, she studied acting with the distinguished stage impresario Max Reinhardt. In 1923 she landed her first screen role, as a maid, in The Little Napoleon (aka Men Are Like This She next played the monocled mistress of Emil Jannings in Tragedy of Love (also 1923), striking a defiant note already. Over the next few years she worked in both plays and films; among the latter were The Joyless Street, Manon Lescaut (both 1926), A Modern Du Barry, The Imaginary Baron (both 1927), Cafe Electric and I Kiss Your Hand, Madame (both 1928), and The Ship of Lost Souls (1929). Then Jannings, who had returned to Germany from a sojourn in Hollywood, convinced director Josef von Sternberg (himself a Hollywood émigré) to make another film with him. The director saw Dietrich on-stage and was entranced; he subsequently cast her as Lola-Lola, the seductive singer who brings ruin to an aging teacher (Jannings) in The Blue Angel (1930)-which, filmed in both German- and English-language versions, was an international smash. Her husky-voiced rendition of the song "Falling in Love Again" became a Dietrich trademark.

When von Sternberg returned to Paramount later that year he brought Dietrich with him; they collaborated on six more films that virtually defined exotic romanticism on-screen: Morocco (1930) Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus (both 1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), and The Devil Is a Woman (1935). Mysterious and alluring, Dietrich mesmerized audiences even as she shocked them by wearing men's clothing, doing nude swimming scenes, performing in a gorilla suit (in the "Hot Voodoo" number in Blonde Venus a Dietrich classic), and suggesting various and sundry sexual excesses. (During this time she also appeared in 1933's Song of Songs directed by Rouben Mamoulian, which featured a rather detailed nude statue of the actress.) Eventually the von Sternberg-Dietrich relationship ran its course, both personally and professionally, but she continued to play exotic roles in Desire, The Garden of Allah (both 1936), Angel and Knight Without Armour (both 1937), albeit to diminishing returns. She made a "comeback" of sorts in a comedic Western, Destry Rides Again (1939), in which, playing the saloon girl Frenchy, she successfully kidded her own image (and made a hit out of the song "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have").

Dietrich made several costume and action films over the next few years, occasionally opposite John Wayne, with whom she was once linked; among them were Seven Sinners (1940), The Flame of New Orleans, Manpower (both 1941), The Spoilers, Pittsburgh (both 1942, both costarring her with Wayne and Randolph Scott), and Kismet (1944, in the latter performing a seductive dance in harem garb and gold paint). When Hitler importuned her to come back to Germany and make pro-Nazi films, she not only refused but went back to Europe, entertaining American troops with the USO! Her postwar work was sporadic, but its high points included a gypsy in Golden Earrings (1947), an ex-Nazi entertainer in A Foreign Affair (1948), aging stars in Stage Fright (1950, in which she sang "La Vie en Rose") and No Highway in the Sky (1951), another saloon singer in Rancho Notorious (1952, the performance later spoofed by Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles the wife of a murder suspect in Witness for the Prosecution (1957), a gypsy fortune-teller in Touch of Evil (1958), and a German aristocrat in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). During this time, conscious about her advancing age, Dietrich was more prominent as a cabaret entertainer, often performing songs in an unusual spoken/singing style. Her final film appearances were cameos in Paris When It Sizzles (1964) and Just a Gigolo (1979).

In 1984 her old friend Maximilian Schell made a superb documentary of her life, Marlene she agreed to provide commentary but refused to appear on camera. She spent the last years of her life in Paris; when she died, her request to be buried in her native Germany was resisted by huffy bureaucrats who'd never forgiven her anti-Nazi stance, but they eventually relented. Even in death, Dietrich ruffled feathers as almost no other movie personality could. Almost immediately following her death several biographers prepared lengthy, revealing portraits of this fascinating woman; perhaps the definitive (and most shocking) was the one written by her daughter, Maria Riva. Her son, incidentally, is production designer J. Michael Riva.

Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin