June 2002 - Nr. 6
Marlene – Again
by Lucille de Saint Andre
During the Hot Docs 2002 National Spotlights amidst the exciting and provocative German films I saw the documentary Marlene Dietrich - Her Own Song
Lovingly directed by Marlene’s grandson, J. David Riva, the film shows the life of a complicated intelligent woman, gifted with unusual beauty and a unique throaty voice, not really a singing voice but an unusual talent and charm to put over a song, a woman who had the misfortune to be born into one of Europe’s turbulent eras, who could have succumbed to the Nazis and returned to her native Germany from her early Hollywood successes.
Leni Riefenstahl remained in Germany and made her much acclaimed Triumph of the Will, the most powerful propaganda film ever made, but suffered world-wide condemnation, was jailed by the French after World War II and never made another film. Actress Dita Parlo, starred in L’Atalante and Grand Illusion, returned to Germany from the French Camp de Gurs where she had been interned as a German citizen, and her career fizzled. The Nazis had banned Grand Illusion, they thought it unsuitable for Germans. Too pacifist!
The list goes on.
Not
so Marlene. She married a young Czech production assistant, Rudolf Sieber
and had a daughter, Maria. They never divorced but lived apart as friends
for the next four decades. She was cast by Josef von Sternberg as Lola Lola,
the seductive vamp in the classic The Blue Angel, with Emil Jannings
as the besotted professor. She left Germany for Hollywood in 1930, leaving
her husband and daughter behind and quickly rose to sweetheart/femme fatale
stardom. One of the MGM writers of one of her most successful films,
Destry Rides Again, was my mentor, Henry Myers.
But then anti-German sentiment threatened to torpedo Marlene’s career. She received urgent entreaties and offers from Nazi agents and from Hitler himself to return to Germany but turned the offer down and her films were banned in Germany. She became an ardent anti-fascist and filed for U.S. citizenship, an act considered traitorous by the German government but endearing by the American public.
She joined the USO, and entertained American and Allied troops on the frontlines, giving of herself unstintingly, and painfully aware that her actions could endanger her mother and relatives in Berlin. In fact, when she returned to Berlin in 1960 she got a hostile reception. But others acclaimed her as she gave a concert to tumultuous applause. She vowed never to return to the city before she died and finished her last days in Paris. She received the Medal of Freedom and was named Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour.
Combining fascinating archival footage, never-before-seen home movies, personal documents, and interviews with friends, relatives, fellow artists such as the late Hildegard Kneff and Rosemary Clooney, and veterans from both sides of the war, the Dietrich film gives us a glimpse of an extraordinary life marked by political intrigue, passions, artistic struggles, disappointments and triumphs and monumental integrity. Now, ten years after her death, the government of Berlin, where she is buried, has made her an honorary citizen.
