Background

Marie Magdalene Dietrich was born on December 27, 1901 in Schöneberg locality of Berlin, Germany. She was a daughter of Louis Erich Otto Dietrich, a police lieutenant, and Wilhelmina Elisabeth Josephine (maiden name Felsing), issued from a prosperous family of jewelry business owners. Dietrich's elder sister's name was Elisabeth.

Marlene Dietrich lost her father, a Royal Prussian police officer, at the age of six. Her mother married the family's friend Eduard von Losch, a cavalry officer in 1914. The aristocratic first lieutenant didn't officially adopt Marlene and her elder sister, so they never took his surname. Von Losch died at the First World War two years after the marriage.

Education

Born into a rich family, Dietrich got a good education. From 1907 to 1917, she attended Auguste-Victoria School for Girls in the Nürnbergstrasse, Berlin. By the age of twelve, she mastered English and French.

As a teenager, Marlene was passionate about poetry and theatre. In 1919, she entered the Weimar Konservatorium to study the violin. She adored a lot Johann Sebastian Bach's solo sonatas. She served as a violinist in a pit orchestra for silent movies in Berlin cinemas for four weeks.

The dreams of becoming a concert violinist were ruined by the wrist injury, and Dietrich was obliged to find other jobs to support herself. She turned attention to acting and modeling, and first toured with Guido Thielscher's Girl-Kabarett vaudeville-style entertainments and Rudolf Nelson revues as a chorus girl.

In 1922, Marlene Dietrich enrolled at Max Reinhardt's drama school and soon was accepted at his Grosses Schauspielhaus theatre. She took only small parts at first that weren't particularly popular among the audience.

Career

Marlene Dietrich made her screen debut in the Little Napoleon movie in 1923 followed by the appearing in Tragedy of Love that same year. She came into the view of the picture's producer Rudolf Sieber. A casting director at UFA film studios, he provided his future wife with small roles in movies throughout several subsequent years.

From 1922 to 1929, she appeared in minor parts in about 17 silent movies. Her first record of 1926 may be considered as the little but important step that laid the foundation of her career as a singer. The first starring role that Dietrich received in Tourneur's Ship of Lost Souls in 1927 didn't bring her fame. The real success came to the actress two years later with the lead female part of Lola Lola in Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), a talking movie directed by Josef von Sternberg.

The tempting character of a cabaret singer paved for Dietrich the way to Hollywood. She continued the collaboration with Sternberg who provided her with the Paramount Pictures contract. Working on the image of a vamp, the hallmark that later brought her status of an international star, she turned in six more productions by Sternberg till 1935, including Morocco (Academy Award nomination), Dishonored, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress, and The Devil is a Woman. The actress also played in the movies of other directors during this period, including those from Universal and Columbia Pictures. Frank Borzage's romantic comedy-drama Desire and George Marshall's Destry Rides Again are among the examples.

At the outbreak of World War II, during the Third Reich, Marlene Dietrich was invited by Adolf Hitler to live in Germany and to take parts only in the local movies. The United States citizen since 1937, the actress rejected the proposal, and the pictures starring her were forbidden in her homeland for a certain time. Dietrich put herself into the activities on entertaining the war troops, including radio broadcasts for the war effort. From 1943 to 1946, she took part in more than 500 bond tours supporting Allied troops in Algeria, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. In 1943, while in the United Service Organizations tour around North Africa, she presented to the public her version of a famous German love song Lili Marlene.

A Foreign Affair, The Monte Carlo Story, Witness for the Prosecution, and Touch of Evil can be cited among the major on-screen works of Dietrich during the post-war period. The actress's first show as a nightclub singer took place at Hotel Sahara in Las Vegas in 1953. Since then, Marlene Dietrich concentrated more on her career of a singer and toured with concerts and cabaret performances worldwide, including Germany, Israel, Canada, and Russia. In 1967, she appeared before the Broadway audience for the first time coming there back again the following year. She sang songs from the movies that she had turned in as well as the hits of that time.

After the hip fracture caused by her falling from the stage during a show in Sydney, Australia on 29 September 1975, Marlene Dietrich retired largely from the stage and screen. Three years later, she made her last appearance in Just a Gigolo movie. In 1984, she gave her voice to Maximilian Schell's documentary on her life and career titled Marlene. Her own autobiography, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin ("I am, Thank God, a Berliner"), saw the publication in 1987. The English translation of the book came in a couple of years under the title Marlene.

Achievements

• 

  Marlene Dietrich is considered worldwide a consummate actress and singer who had a long and versatile career in the show business. A veritable style icon, glamorous and elegant, she never stopped to reshape herself both professionally and personally.
  
  The personages that she incarnated on the screen attracted the audience by their magic and charisma. Placed on the 9th place in the list of the greatest female actresses of classic Hollywood Cinema by the American Film Institute, she was among the highest-paid performers of her time. Dietrich was nominated for the Academy Award for her role in Morocco.
  
  Dietrich’s contributions in supporting soldiers’ morale during World War II were marked by the Medal of Freedom, the Operation Entertainment Medal, and the Israeli Medal of Valor. She was named the Commander of the Legion of Honor and the Knight of the Order of Leopold as well.
  
  A fashion authority, Dietrich stood at the origins of an American fashion style by using trousers and other elements of men’s wardrobe in her look. Dior was the favorite for the actress. There is a great number of academic literature that has inspected and continue to inspect the actress’s influence on the female image.
  
  Marlene Dietrich’s costumes, recordings, photographs and other items from her life and career were acquainted by the Berlin Film Museum into its permanent collection in 2000.
  
  "Falling in Love Again," "Lili Marleen," "La Vie en rose," and "Give Me the Man" sung by Marlene Dietrich are considered the classics of the time.
  
  Maximilian Schell's 1984 documentary on Dietrich's life and career received a number of prestigious European prizes and was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Documentary.
  
  The special postage stamp with Dietrich’s portrait was issued in Germany in 1997. That same year, Marlene-Dietrich-Platzin Berlin was unveiled to commemorate the actress. Five years later, the actress was named an honorary citizen of the city. There is main-belt asteroid 1010 Marlene.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Paris When It Sizzles

    (Richard Quine directs George Axelrod's acerbic script (ad...)

    1964
  • Touch of Evil

    (This exceptional film noir portrait of corruption and mor...)

    1958
  • Destry Rides Again

    (James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich set the standard for a...)

    1939
  • A Foreign Affair

    (The classic comedy from Billy Wilder that mixes romance w...)

    1948
  • Shanghai Express

    (Set against the backdrop of a Chinese civil war, it is an...)

    1932
  • Stage Fright

    (When witnesses see Jonathan Cooper (Richard Todd) fleeing...)

    1950
  • No Highway in The Sky

    (An aeronautical engineer predicts that a new model of pla...)

    1951
  • Morocco

    (Beautifully directed by Josef von Sternberg, this cinema ...)

    1930
  • The Blue Angel

    (Marlene Dietrich stars as nightclub singer Lola Lola, who...)

    1930
  • The Lady is Willing

    (Bold, eccentric Broadway performer Lisa Madden befuddles ...)

    1942
  • Desire

    (Screen legends Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper star in t...)

    1936
  • Witness for the Prosecution

    (When a wealthy widow is murdered, her married suitor (Tyr...)

    1957
  • Manpower

    (Iconic screen tough guys Edward G. Robinson and George Ra...)

    1941
  • The Scarlet Empress

    (A German peasant is taken to St. Petersburg to marry a pr...)

    1934
  • Dishonored 1931
  • Devil is a Woman 1935
  • Seven Sinners 1940
  • Die Neue Marlene 1965

• music

  • The Legendary Marlene Dietrich

    (A Marlene Dietrich collection in one set.)

    1967
  • Overseas 1951
  • Marlene singt Berlin, Berlin 1965
  • Live at the Café de Paris 1954
  • Dietrich in Rio 1959
  • Wiedersehen Mit Marlene 1960
  • Dietrich in London 1965
  • The Magic of Marlene Dietrich 1970
  • The Blue Angel – The Original Recordings 1990
  • Falling in Love Again 1996
  • Marlene Forever 2002
  • An Evening with Marlene Dietrich 1986

Religion

Marlene Dietrich was raised as a follower of the Lutheran Church. She refused to adhere to the religion after the World War I.

Politics

After the involvement of the United States in the Second World War in 1941, Dietrich was among the first public personalities who agreed to sell war bonds. The number of the sold exemplars was record.

Marlene Dietrich was free to express her political opinion. The actress advocated against Nazism calling Hitler "an idiot". She renounced German citizenship in 1939 after becoming the United States citizen two years earlier. Dietrich's position was perceived by Nazi supporters as betrayal in her homeland. When she toured the country in 1960, her haters scanned "Go home Marlene!"

Dietrich stayed tuned to the political life till the end of her days. Obliged to stay at home due to her health problems with legs, she regularly communicated on the phone with such leaders as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1989, the actress supported the maintenance of the Babelsberg Studios on BBC Radio and expressed her opinion on the fall of the Berlin Wall on TV.

Views

Quotations: "I had no desire to be an film actress, to always play somebody else, to be always beautiful with somebody constantly straightening out your every eyelash. It was always a big bother to me."

"I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men. If I dressed for myself I wouldn't bother at all. Clothes bore me. I'd wear jeans. I adore jeans. I get them in a public store – men's, of course; I can't wear women's trousers. But I dress for the profession."

"Do you think this is glamorous? That this is a great life, and that I do it for my health? Well, it isn't. It's hard work. And who would work if they didn't have to?"

"Glamour is what I sell, it's my stock in trade."

"The weak are more likely to make the strong weak than the strong are likely to make the weak strong."

"America took me into her bosom when I no longer had a native country worthy of the name, but in my heart I am German – German in my soul."

"In America, sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it's a fact."

"Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him."

"The average man is more interested in a woman who is interested in him than he is in a woman with beautiful legs."

"To be completely woman you need a master, and in him a compass for your life. You need a man you can look up to and respect. If you dethrone him it's no wonder that you are discontented, and discontented women are not loved for long."

"Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs."

"I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself."

"There is a gigantic difference between earning a great deal of money and being rich."

Personality

Dietrich's first stage name consists on one half of her birth name, Maria, and of her family nickname, Lene, on the other. She spoke fluent German, French, and Italian.

Marlene Dietrich supported the participants and the victims of the Second World War not only as a performer. She also provided them with humanitarian, financial and even legal assistance. At the end of the 1930s, she, along with director and screenwriter Billy Wilder and other expatriates established a fund that assisted Jews and dissidents in fleeing from Germany.

Physical Characteristics: Marlene Dietrich suffered from cervical cancer and poor circulation in her legs at the end of her life. She was dependent on the pain management medications during the two last decades of her life.

Quotes from others about the person

• "If she had nothing more than her voice she could break your heart with it. But she has that beautiful body and the timeless loveliness of her face. It makes no difference how she breaks your heart if she is there to mend it." - Ernest Hemingway, writer
  
  "She remains what she has been for many years – an absolutely strange delight, whose gift lies outside her achievement as an actress, is not tied to a specific time and does not depend on the taste of the moment, not even on common sense." - Cecil Beaton, photographer
  
  "Whoever knows her and has been able to experience her has experienced perfection itself." - Jean Cocteau, moviemaker, auhor, and designer
  
  "She has sex, but no particular gender. She has the bearing of a man; the characters she plays love power and wear trousers. Marlene's masculinity appeals to women and her sexuality to men." - Kenneth Tynan, theatre critic and writer
  
  "Marlene – with the unambiguous allure of the woman of yesterday and the ambiguous charm of the woman of today who has man not only about her but also within her." - Hanna Schygulla, actress and chanson singer
  
  "Miss Dietrich is the first female star for years with whom Paris society has fallen in love. Apparently she is also the first woman in man's clothing since Christina of Sweden about three hundred years ago on whom the government has again cast a watchful eye." - Janet Flanner, writer and journalist
  
  "The most intriguing woman I've ever known." - John Wayne, actor, director, producer

Interests

• theatre, poetry

• Music & Bands

  Johann Sebastian Bach

Connections

Marlene Dietrich married an assistant director Rudolf Sieber on May 17, 1923. He later occupied the post of an assistant director at Paramount Pictures in France and responded for foreign language dubbing. The family produced one daughter named Maria Elizabeth. She became an actress, mostly appearing in TV productions. Dietrich and Sieber broke up in 1929 but never divorсed officially.

Often incarnating an androgynous image on the stage and screen, Marlene Dietrich was known for her bisexuality. She had lots of affairs both with men and women, even when she lived with Sieber.

Most of the relationships, brief or longstanding, were somehow related to her professional life. That was in the case of Gary Cooper, John Gilbert, and James Stewart. The actors Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Jean Gabin, and Yul Brynner were among her lovers as well. The latter love lasted from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Dietrich's fellows in acting weren't her only sweethearts. The actress had affairs with writers Erich Maria Remarque and Mercedes de Acosta. She also cited Errol Flynn, George Bernard Shaw, John F. Kennedy, Joe Kennedy, Michael Todd, Michael Wilding, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Frank Sinatra as her admirers.

Father:

Louis Erich Otto Edward Dietrich

Mother:

Wilhelmina Elisabeth Josephine Dietrich

Daughter:

Maria Riva

Maria Riva was born in Berlin on December 13, 1924.

husband:

Rudolf Sieber

Grandson:

J. Michael Riva

When John was born on June 28, 1948, Dietrich was named "the world's most glamorous grandmother."

Grandson:

Peter Riva

Peter Riva is known for Voyager's "Round the World Flight Program" and the United Nations' event "Only One Earth".

colleague:

Josef von Sternberg

colleague:

Burt Bacharach

Friend:

Edith Piaf

Partner:

Gary Cooper

Partner:

Yul Brynner

Partner:

Erich Maria Remarque

Partner:

John Gilbert

Partner:

James Stewart

References

• Marlene Dietrich The landmark biography by Dietrich's daughter that tells the full-scale, riveting, and untold story of the actress.
  1993
• Marlene: A Novel A lush, dramatic biographical novel of one of the most glamorous and alluring legends of Hollywood’s golden age.
  2016
• Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend From the stages of Berlin to anti-Nazi efforts and silver-screen stardom, Steven Bach reveals the fascinating woman behind the myth surrounding Marlene Dietrich in a biography that will stand as the ultimate authority on a singular star.
  2011
• Marlene An Oscar nominee for Best Documentary and winner of the 1986 New York Film Critics Circle non-fiction film prize, it is a "portrait of a remarkably strong-willed woman, stage-managing her career right up to the bitter end" (New York Times) that brilliantly lifts the veil on a movie star.
  1984
• Discovering Marlene Dietrich From the Classic Movie Docs library, Discovering celebrates the lives of those who soared the highest.
  2015
• Marlene Dietrich Official Website