January 2002 - Nr. 1
Remembering Screen Legend Marlene Dietrich
Dietrich spanned the distance between Berlin and Hollywood with consummate ease. She made her stage debut at age 21 and continued singing and acting in Berlin theatres until 1930, when her performance as femme fatale Lola in The Blue Angel (1930) catapulted her to fame. She left for America the night the film premiered, appearing the same year in the Hollywood movie Morocco. Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels tried to lure her back to Germany, but Dietrich refused. Instead she became an American citizen in 1937 and entertained troops near the front during World War II. For the rest of her life, Dietrich struggled with her relationship to her native country. "America took me into her bosom when I no longer had a native country worthy of the name," she once said, "but in my heart I am German-German." Dietrich died in Paris in 1992 and was buried in Berlin, her birthplace.
Members of the Berlin senate laid a wreath on Dietrich’s grave on December 27, and the Film Museum Berlin screens movies from her personal estate for the first time. The museum’s first major exhibit of items from the Dietrich estate, purchased by the state of Berlin in 1993, continues until February 17. The screen star left behind more than 16,000 photographs, 45,000 pages of correspondence, 3,000 costumes and 400 hats. At a gala celebration in Berlin’s Friedrichstadtpalast on December 28, theatre stars such as Ute Lemper performed songs from The Blue Angel, Destry Rides Again and other classic Dietrich films.
U.S. events honouring the Dietrich centennial began earlier this month at the German embassy in Washington D.C. On December 4, Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, joined 100 other prominent guests at the embassy for an evening of film clips and cabaret songs. On December 29 and 30, the films Marlene, The Scarlet Empress and Blonde Venus will be shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. A television documentary, Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song, will premiere on the cable channel Turner Classic Movies on Dietrich’s birthday.
