Speaker 1: In the early days of Hollywood's Golden Age, German immigrant
Speaker 1: Marlena Dietrich electrified audiences around the world. She defied the
Speaker 1: expectations of traditional women's roles in her films and in
Speaker 1: her life. But it wasn't her acting that led Adolf
Speaker 1: Hitler to label her a traitor to the quote unquote fatherland.
Speaker 1: It was her patriotic support for her adopted homeland. When
Speaker 1: the United States went to war, so did Marlena Dietrich.
Speaker 1: It was the beginning of a lifelong dedication to American
Speaker 1: soldiers that never wavered. I hope you enjoy hearing her story,
Speaker 1: which I recorded for the audio version of my Mobituaries book.
Speaker 1: Marlena Dietrich was one hundred percent. In nine two, the
Speaker 1: German borns Green legend and internationally known cabaret artist, was
Speaker 1: in London rehearsing for a concert. She was seventy years old.
Speaker 1: As with everything related to her image, Dietrich knew exactly
Speaker 1: how she wanted to be lighted. Her trusted longtime lighting designer,
Speaker 1: Joe Davis, was on hand to make sure her expectations
Speaker 1: were met. Dietrich's twenty two year old grandson, Peter Reeva
Speaker 1: was also there. He remembers the scene vividly. I'm standing
Speaker 1: next to her on the London stage with Joe Davis
Speaker 1: and way up in the clouds at the top of
Speaker 1: the theater. There's a guy pointing a spotlight on her face.
Speaker 1: She kept telling him, waving a hand where to move
Speaker 1: the light. The man called down. I think that's perfect,
Speaker 1: Miss Dietrich. Joe Davis called up. Do exactly as Miss
Speaker 1: Dietrich says. Marlena gestured again a few times and then
Speaker 1: turned to Joe and said that's fine. So I asked
Speaker 1: Joe how she knew it was fine. His reply, when
Speaker 1: it begins to burn her eyes, she knows it is
Speaker 1: a dead center. Like Elizabeth Taylor, Marlena Dietrich is today
Speaker 1: remembered by many for her beauty, but Dietrich's persona cool,
Speaker 1: husky voiced at times androgynous, was always more daring. As
Speaker 1: the theater critic Kenneth Tynan wrote, her masculinity appeals to
Speaker 1: women and her sexuality to men. In the Western destri
Speaker 1: Rides again, Dietrich gets into a bar fight, a real
Speaker 1: knockdown drag out with another woman rolling around the floor
Speaker 1: before Jimmy Stewart dumps a bucket of water on both
Speaker 1: of them, then Dietrich attacks him with a bottle, a chair,
Speaker 1: and her fists. Incidentally, this is the movie where she
Speaker 1: sings Boys in the back Room brilliantly parodied by Madeleine
Speaker 1: Khan as I'm Tired in Blazing Saddles. Turns out Dietrich
Speaker 1: wasn't afraid of a good fight in real life. Destric
Speaker 1: came out in ninety nine, the year Hitler's Germany invaded Poland,
Speaker 1: commencing World War Two, and Dietrich stepped right into the
Speaker 1: breach to help her new beloved homeland, the United States
Speaker 1: of America, defeat the country of her birth. I don't
Speaker 1: think she was ever happier, more fulfilled than when she
Speaker 1: was serving the Allied troops, Peter Reeva told me. Perhaps
Speaker 1: that's because she knew well what was at stake. Born
Speaker 1: in Berlin as Marie Magdalena Dietrich, Dietrich lost her father
Speaker 1: when she was just five. While still a girl, she
Speaker 1: came up with the name Marlena by fusing her first
Speaker 1: and second names. It was her first act of self creation.
Speaker 1: She embarked on a career in entertainment as a chorus
Speaker 1: girl in Berlin reviews, and then as an actress in
Speaker 1: the city's vibrant cinema scene. Her breakout performance came as
Speaker 1: a cabaret singer in Joseph von Sternberg's Blue Angel. Immediately,
Speaker 1: Paramount Studios came calling, and Dietrich moved to Hollywood to
Speaker 1: star in a series of six films in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, all directed by Sternberg. She was usually cast
Speaker 1: in the role of a vamp or femme fatale, but
Speaker 1: fast won a reputation for breaking the rules. In n three,
Speaker 1: while sailing from New York to France, she received a
Speaker 1: warning from Paris's chief of police that should she arrive
Speaker 1: in the city wearing men's trousers, she would be arrested,
Speaker 1: and so naturally, she made sure to wear a white
Speaker 1: pant suit when she disembarked. The Paris papers hailed it
Speaker 1: as a revolution in fashion, and the next day the
Speaker 1: chief of police showed up with a bracelet inscribed with
Speaker 1: an apology. During the same years that Dietrich was conquering Hollywood,
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler was coming to power back in Germany. Dietrich
Speaker 1: watched political developments in her home country warily. Although the
Speaker 1: German government had banned Blue Angel in ninety three, Sternberg
Speaker 1: was Jewish. Hitler loved the film. He wanted Dietrich to
Speaker 1: return to Germany to continue her career. As her grandson
Speaker 1: Peter Riva told me more, Lena was staunchly opposed to
Speaker 1: autocrats and fascists. When she got to that position of
Speaker 1: security and fame, she took every opportunity she could to
Speaker 1: oppose the Nazis. German foreign minister von Ribbentroff came to
Speaker 1: visit her in seven at the Lancaster Hotel in Paris,
Speaker 1: bearing a mother's cross to woo Marlena back to Germany.
Speaker 1: It would have essentially made her Queen of Germany with
Speaker 1: the promise of a care free life. She said no
Speaker 1: then and many other times. Hitler never asked again, just
Speaker 1: labeled her a traitor to the fatherland. Instead, Dietrich worked
Speaker 1: with Jewish emigrade director Billy Wilder. Jews had been leaving
Speaker 1: Germany since the Nazis came to power in three, but
Speaker 1: in eight, with Crystal Knocked a nationwide program against Jewish homes, businesses,
Speaker 1: synagogues and schools, the refugee problem became a crisis, Dietrich
Speaker 1: and Wilder started a fund to spawn her refugees, and
Speaker 1: Dietrich s grote her entire salary from Seven's Night Without
Speaker 1: Armor at four hundred and fifty thousand dollars per film.
Speaker 1: She was one of Hollywood's highest paid stars to support
Speaker 1: the cause. And then in ninety nine, this woman, who
Speaker 1: was culturally German to the core, publicly renounced her home
Speaker 1: country and became an American citizen. She made sure the
Speaker 1: cameras were there when she was sworn in. She wanted
Speaker 1: the oath of American citizenship to be captured on film,
Speaker 1: says Riva, in order to send a message to the
Speaker 1: Third Reich and good Germans for them to know she
Speaker 1: was taking that stand. This didn't go over well back home.
Speaker 1: The Nazi newspaper Dark Stormer wrote that she had been
Speaker 1: corrupted from her years spent among the Jews of Hollywood,
Speaker 1: calling her decision a betrayal of the fatherland. Dietrich didn't care,
Speaker 1: but the bombing of Pearl Harbor she went further. In
Speaker 1: two she traveled throughout the United States to promote the
Speaker 1: purchase of war bonds. Some estimates credit her with raising
Speaker 1: a million dollars in sales. I'm delighted to have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to help my country in any way I can,
Speaker 1: she told The New York Times that year. I consider
Speaker 1: it a privilege, not a duty. She also supported the
Speaker 1: government's wartime propaganda, which used German language radio to demoralize
Speaker 1: the Nazi troops, but Dietrich's greatest efforts were for the USO.
Speaker 1: In ninety four and nineteen forty five, she volunteered for
Speaker 1: multiple tours entertaining troops and prisoners of war in Algeria, Italy, France,
Speaker 1: and Germany for eighteen straight months, with more time at
Speaker 1: the front, Billy Wilder said, than General Eisenhower. She earned
Speaker 1: a reputation for abiding the rough conditions a lack of electricity,
Speaker 1: sleeping in tents, and for being willing to tour near
Speaker 1: enemy lines. The closer the better, as far as a
Speaker 1: Dietrich was concerned. Riva recalls Danny Thomas, who was a
Speaker 1: young comic at the time touring with Dietrich, once said
Speaker 1: to me, your grandmother, laughing and shaking his head. She
Speaker 1: tried to get us killed. We were performing our act
Speaker 1: for five guys in a foxhole with Howard Sirs. Firing overhead.
Speaker 1: She performed for as many as half a million troops,
Speaker 1: singing and even playing the saw, which she bowed like
Speaker 1: a violin. As a teenager, she had aspired to be
Speaker 1: a concert violinist, until a severe wrist injury dashed her hopes.
Speaker 1: She did some comic bits too. In one act, she
Speaker 1: purported to be a mind reader. She would call a
Speaker 1: serviceman up on stage and state that she would tell
Speaker 1: the audience his thoughts. After a sly look at the
Speaker 1: young man, she'd quip, oh, think of something else. I
Speaker 1: can't talk about that. Actually, I think Dietrich wanted to
Speaker 1: be a soldier, and you couldn't very well be a soldier,
Speaker 1: so she fought her way, said her daughter, Maria Riva,
Speaker 1: mother of Peter, in British documentary re Maria Riva's acclaimed
Speaker 1: two memoir described Dietrich as not so much a mother
Speaker 1: as a queen with her family as court. But on
Speaker 1: Dietrich's contributions to the war effort, Maria Riva is unstinting.
Speaker 1: She did a magnificent job. Certainly when she was finally overseas,
Speaker 1: she practically was a soldier. She never said I was
Speaker 1: with the U. S O. She was in the army.
Speaker 1: One of Dietrich's more famous paramours, the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Speaker 1: Claimed that she entertained the idea of helping the Allied
Speaker 1: cause in an even grander way by killing Hitler. Dietrich
Speaker 1: biographer Charlotte Chandler quotes Fairbanks is saying that Dietrich toyed
Speaker 1: with plans to seduce and then assassinate the German leader
Speaker 1: back in the thirties, when Hitler still held out hopes
Speaker 1: that Dietrich would return to Germany more. Lena suggested to
Speaker 1: Fairbanks that she might accept the offer on the condition
Speaker 1: that she be granted a private audience with the few
Speaker 1: her Her plan was to gush about Hitler, soften him up,
Speaker 1: and then strike the fatal blow. When Fairbanks expressed skepticism
Speaker 1: about the plan, surely she would be searched before being
Speaker 1: allowed to meet privately with Hitler, she countered that she
Speaker 1: would subject herself to a strip search and use a
Speaker 1: poisoned hairpin as the lethal weapon. She always felt a
Speaker 1: responsibility to do one percent, says Peter Riva. If you
Speaker 1: detest Hitler enough, you're going to give that one percent
Speaker 1: of your effort. After the war, the United States honored
Speaker 1: its adopted citizen with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In Ye,
Speaker 1: France named her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor
Speaker 1: Belgium a Knight of the Order of Leopold. In nine
Speaker 1: sixty five, she became the first German and the first
Speaker 1: woman to receive the Medallion of Valor from the State
Speaker 1: of Israel. She was also honored by the Jewish veterans
Speaker 1: of World War Two, but not everyone honored her. When
Speaker 1: she returned to Germany in nine sixty she encountered threats, protests,
Speaker 1: and chance of Marlena go home from those who still
Speaker 1: felt she had betrayed the nation. For the rest of
Speaker 1: her life, she shared a bond with the young men
Speaker 1: alongside whom she'd served. They were her boys, says Peter Va.
Speaker 1: She felt responsible for them, She felt grateful to them.
Speaker 1: When she sang in Vegas the first time in Ninette
Speaker 1: at the Sahara, many of her boys wore uniforms. She
Speaker 1: called us the next morning, crying, happy that her boys
Speaker 1: remembered and that she was able to thank them once more.
Speaker 1: Every time I saw her perform London, Switzerland, Paris, New York, Jersey,
Speaker 1: it was always the same. She'd ask if any of
Speaker 1: her boys were in the audience. They'd whoop and holler.
Speaker 1: She'd smile, flash a leg and sing provocatively. They were
Speaker 1: hers and she was theirs. She knew their sacrifice, never forgot.
Speaker 1: She loved this country, says Peter Riva. She did loved
Speaker 1: the spirit of can do. When the first space shuttle
Speaker 1: flew in nineteen eight one, she called everyone she knew
Speaker 1: to turn on the TV and watch. It wasn't about
Speaker 1: space travel, it was about the American ability to reach out, explore,
Speaker 1: improve try. She loved that Americans built their lives on trying,
Speaker 1: persevering the real immigrant spirit, and she was an immigrant.
Speaker 1: This special episode of the Mobituaries podcast is also included
Speaker 1: in the audio book edition of Mobituaries. While you just
Speaker 1: heard the surprising history of Marlena Dietrich, the Mobituaries audio
Speaker 1: book is filled with stories you won't hear on the podcast.
Speaker 1: You'll get profiles of presidents who aren't on Mount Rushmore,
Speaker 1: tributes to cars now consigned to the scrap heap of history,
Speaker 1: tales of long gone sports teams, and dragons, Yes, dragons,
Speaker 1: you see, people believed in dragons until well anyway. You
Speaker 1: can download the audiobook edition of Mobituaries wherever you get
Speaker 1: your audio books. Thanks for listening.