BERLIN (dpa) – Elegant, glamorous, cool, mysterious – the late Marlene Dietrich still has a huge hold on people in her native Germany as it marks the 100th anniversary of her birth.
Countless press articles and broadcasts have paid diverse homage to Dietrich as documentaries and retrospectives of her most popular movies play during the Christmas and new Year holidays that include her December 27 birthday.
Highlights have been “The Blue Angel,” the film that sent her on the way to international fame, “Judgement in Nuremburg,” “Witness for the Prosecution,” “Kismet,” “Blonde Venus,” “Shanghai Express,” and “Seven Sinners.” All have been getting public network airings.
The pay TV channel, “Studio Universal” available on the Premiere World platform is airing 21 Dietrich movies in prime time during December under the slogan “Marlene Forever,” climaxed by 24 hour tribute to her on December 27.
Besides showing classics such as “Morocco” and “The Blue Angel,” the channel will present background information about Germany’s greatest Hollywood star. Likewise scheduled for TV release is the full length feature “Marlene,” an opulent biopic starring Katje Flint.
Dietrich was born on December 27, 1901 in Berlin’s Schoeneberg district, the daughter of an officer in the Royal Prussion Police, who died when she was still a child. She was christened Maria Magadelene. But at the age of 13, the rebelious “maedchen” from a conservative, upper middle class home, changed it to Marlene, combining her two first names, which she kept during her long show business career.
Hoping to become a musician, Dietrich took violin lessons during her teens, an ambition that ended with a wrist injury and replaced the concert hall dream with ideas of becoming an actress. Her performing career began when she joined the chorus line of a touring musical revue in 1921.
A year later, she was accepted in stage producer and director Max Reinhard’s drama school. A series of small roles on stage and bit parts in movies followed, including a supporting role in the film “Tragedy of Love” in which she met her future husband, Czech production assistant, Rudolf Sieber.
They were married in 1924 and Marlene gave birth to their daughter Maria a year later. Although they never divorced, the couple lived apart for four decades.
Sieber died in California in 1976. Her daughter became an actress as well performing under the name of Maria Riva. When she gave birth to a son in 1948, the press dubbed Marlene “the world’s most glamorous grandmother.”
While Dietrich had enjoyed a moderate success on both stage and screen during the silent film era in the 1920s, her recognition was confined to the German speaking territories.
It was only when she was discovered by the American director Josef von Sternberg that her career began to take on international dimensions.
The Vienna-born von Sternberg, who learned his trade in Hollywood, was engaged by UFA to direct the German production company’s first talkie, “Der blaue Engel.” Looking for an actress that could play the part of the seductive vamp “Lola” in the 1930 movie, von Sternberg discovered her when she was performing on a Berlin stage. “The Blue Angel” was a tremendous international success, and resulted in a contract with the Hollywood major production company, Paramount.
In Hollywood, Dietrich formed a working relationship with von Sternberg, who directed six movies starring the actress during a five year period in the 1930s. Some critics opine that von Sternberg’s Hollywood films with Dietrich, “Morocco,” “Dishonored,” “Shanghai Express,” “Blonde Venus,” “The Scarlet Empress,” and “The Devil is a Woman,” formed the pinnacle of his own career, not to mention the lasting fame it brought to the Berlin actress, whose English had only a slight trace of a German accent.
At von Sternberg’s suggestion, Dietrich wore a top hat and tails in “Angel,” the first of a number of unconventional costumes, which included military uniforms and caps, for her various roles. And it was Dietrich who started the vogue for women to wear slacks.
After the collaboration with von Sternberg ended, Dietrich went on to make a number of successful films with directors like Billy Wilder (“A Foreign Affair” and “Witness for the Prosecution) and Ernst Lubitsch (“Angel”), and leading men like Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, John Wayne, James Stewart, and Randolph Scott.
Dietrich became an American citizen in 1939 and entertained American troops during World War II, often in uniform near the front, participated in war bond drives, and made anti-Nazi propaganda broadcasts in German.
For her activities supporting the war effort, Dietrich was awarded America’s “Medal of Freedom” and was named a “Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.”
In the 1950s, her film career on the wane, Dietrich became a cabaret and nightclub entertainer, performing to sold-out houses in London, Paris, New York, Moscow, and Las Vegas, as well as in Berlin, where she had received a surprisingly warm reception. But her homecoming in 1960, her first appearance in Germany for 30 years, was marred elsewhere by a combined reaction of faint praise and shouts of “Marlene go home.” Deeply hurt, Dietrich vowed not to return to Germany till after her death, saying that “the Germans and I no longer speak the same language.”
Her last film appearance was in a cameo role in “Just a Gigolo” in 1979 at the age of 77. She died in 13 years later 1992, living out the remainder of her life as a recluse in her Avenue Montaigne apartment, refusing to receive visitors or give interviews.
After her death, her body was returned to Germany where she was buried in at the State Cemetery in Berlin near her mother’s grave. Perhaps as a gesture of reconciliation, she bequeathed all her vast memorabilia collection to the city.
