WEBVTT - Marlene Dietrich Goes To War | Reviving a Mobit 0:00:02.800 --> 0:00:06.720 In the early days of Hollywood's Golden Age, German immigrant 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:11.879 Marlena Dietrich electrified audiences around the world. She defied the 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:15.840 expectations of traditional women's roles in her films and in 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:19.360 her life. But it wasn't her acting that led Adolf 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:23.360 Hitler to label her a traitor to the quote unquote fatherland. 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:28.040 It was her patriotic support for her adopted homeland. When 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:31.720 the United States went to war, so did Marlena Dietrich. 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.600 It was the beginning of a lifelong dedication to American 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:40.839 soldiers that never wavered. I hope you enjoy hearing her story, 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:45.200 which I recorded for the audio version of my obituary's book, 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:58.720 Marlena Dietrich was one hundred percent. In nineteen seventy two, 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:03.360 the German born screen legend and internationally known cabaret artist 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:07.200 was in London rehearsing for a concert. She was seventy 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:11.560 years old. As with everything related to her image, Dietrich 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:15.520 knew exactly how she wanted to be lighted. Her trusted 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.039 longtime lighting designer, Joe Davis, was on hand to make 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:23.160 sure her expectations were met. Dietrich's twenty two year old 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:28.560 grandson Peter Reva was also there. He remembers the scene vividly. 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:31.840 I'm standing next to her on the London stage with 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:34.640 Joe Davis and way up in the clouds at the 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:37.399 top of the theater. There's a guy pointing a spotlight 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.200 on her face. She kept telling him, waving a hand 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:42.840 where to move the light. The man called down. I 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.679 think that's perfect, Miss Dietrick. Joe Davis called up Doe 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:50.800 exactly as Miss Dietrich says. Marlena gestured again a few 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.919 times and then turned to Joe and said that's fine. 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:57.200 So I asked Joe how she knew it was fine. 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:01.760 His reply, when it begins to burn her eyes, she 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:07.000 knows it is dead center. Like Elizabeth Taylor, Marlena Dietrich 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:10.560 is today remembered by many for her beauty, but Dietrich's 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:15.720 persona cool, husky voiced at times androgynous, was always more daring. 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:20.400 As the theater critic Kenneth Tynan wrote, her masculinity appeals 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:24.160 to women and her sexuality to men. In the Western 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.000 Destrie Rides, again, Dietrich gets into a bar fight, a 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.320 real knockdown drag out with another woman rolling around the 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:34.240 floor before Jimmy Stewart dumps a bucket of water on 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:37.760 both of them, then Dietrich attacks him with a bottle, 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:41.720 a chair, and her fists. Incidentally, this is the movie 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.639 where she sings Boys in the back Room brilliantly parodied 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:48.560 by Madeline Kahn as I'm Tired in Blazing Saddles. Turns 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:52.160 out Dietrich wasn't afraid of a good fight in real life. 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:56.320 Destri came out in nineteen thirty nine, the year Hitler's 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:01.280 Germany invaded Poland, commencing World War Two, and Dietrich stepped 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:04.320 right into the breach to help her new beloved homeland, 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:08.079 the United States of America, defeat the country of her birth. 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:11.880 I don't think she was ever happier, more fulfilled than 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:14.920 when she was serving the Allied troops, Peter Reva told me. 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:19.000 Perhaps that's because she knew well what was at stake. 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:24.160 Born in Berlin as Marie Magdalena Dietrich in nineteen oh one, 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.160 Dietrich lost her father when she was just five. While 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:30.760 still a girl, she came up with the name Marlena 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.520 by fusing her first and second names. It was her 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:38.600 first act of self creation. She embarked on a career 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:42.240 in entertainment as a chorus girl in Berlin reviews and 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:45.560 then as an actress in the city's vibrant cinema scene. 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.960 Her breakout performance came as a cabaret singer in Joseph 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:54.640 von Sternberg's Blue Angel. Immediately, Paramount Studios came calling, and 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.640 Dietrich moved to Hollywood to star in a series of 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:01.600 six films in the early nineteen thirties, all directed by Sternberg. 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:04.720 She was usually cast in the role of a vamp 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:08.520 or femme fatale, but fast won a reputation for breaking 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:12.040 the rules. In nineteen thirty three, while sailing from New 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:15.480 York to France, she received a warning from Paris's chief 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:18.279 of police that should she arrive in the city wearing 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:22.599 men's trousers, she would be arrested, and so naturally, she 0:04:22.760 --> 0:04:25.599 made sure to wear a white pantsuit when she disembarked. 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:29.040 The Paris papers hailed it as a revolution in fashion, 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:31.760 and the next day the chief of police showed up 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:36.000 with a bracelet inscribed with an apology. During the same 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.920 years that Dietrich was conquering Hollywood, Adolf Hitler was coming 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:44.159 to power back in Germany. Dietrich watched political developments in 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:48.160 her home country warily. Although the German government had banned 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.240 Blue Angel in nineteen thirty three, Sternberg was Jewish. Hitler 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.799 loved the film. He wanted Dietrich to return to Germany 0:04:55.839 --> 0:05:00.440 to continue her career. As her grandson Peter Reva told me, 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:05.719 Marlena was staunchly opposed to autocrats and fascists. When she 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:08.680 got to that position of security and fame, she took 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:12.679 every opportunity she could to oppose the Nazis. German foreign 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:15.919 minister von Riebintroff came to visit her in nineteen thirty 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:20.000 seven at the Lancaster Hotel in Paris, bearing a mother's 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:23.880 cross to woo Marlena back to Germany. It would have 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:26.919 essentially made her Queen of Germany with the promise of 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:30.000 a care free life. She said no then and many 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.719 other times. Hitler never asked again, just labeled her a 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:39.000 traitor to the fatherland. Instead, Dietrich worked with Jewish emigrat 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:43.160 director Billy Wilder. Jews had been leaving Germany since the 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:46.240 Nazis came to power in nineteen thirty three, but in 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:53.120 nineteen thirty eight, with Krystelnacht, a nationwide pogrom against Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues, 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:57.919 and schools. The refugee problem became a crisis. Dietrich and 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:02.839 Wilder started a fund to spawn refugees, and Dietrich escrote 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:06.520 her entire salary from nineteen thirty seven's Night Without Armor 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:09.560 at four hundred and fifty thousand dollars per film, she 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:13.280 was one of Hollywood's highest paid stars to support the cause. 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:17.440 And then in nineteen thirty nine, this woman, who was 0:06:17.520 --> 0:06:22.040 culturally German to the core, publicly renounced her home country 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:26.040 and became an American citizen. She made sure the cameras 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:29.120 were there when she was sworn in. She wanted the 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:33.080 oath of American citizenship to be captured on film, says Reva, 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:35.920 in order to send a message to the Third Reich 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.080 and good Germans for them to know she was taking 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:43.360 that stand. This didn't go over well back home. The 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:47.200 Nazi newspaper Dar Stormer wrote that she had been corrupted 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:50.599 from her years spent among the Jews of Hollywood, calling 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:55.279 her decision a betrayal of the fatherland. Dietrich didn't care, 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:58.919 but the bombing of Pearl Harbor she went further. In 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:02.680 nineteen forty two, she traveled throughout the United States to 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.480 promote the purchase of war bonds. Some estimates credit her 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:10.200 with raising a million dollars in sales. I am delighted 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:12.760 to have the opportunity to help my country in any 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.200 way I can, she told The New York Times that year. 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:19.239 I consider it a privilege, not a duty. She also 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:23.920 supported the government's wartime propaganda, which used German language radio 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:29.200 to demoralize the Nazi troops, but Dietrich's greatest efforts were 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:33.000 for the USO. In nineteen forty four and nineteen forty five, 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:37.600 she volunteered for multiple tours entertaining troops and prisoners of 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:42.840 war in Algeria, Italy, France, and Germany for eighteen straight months, 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:46.000 with more time at the front, Billy Wilder said, than 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:51.320 General Eisenhower. She earned a reputation for abiding the rough conditions, 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:55.160 a lack of electricity, sleeping intents, and for being willing 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:58.440 to tour near enemy lines. The closer the better, as 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:03.400 far as Dietrich was concerned. Riva recalls Danny Thomas, who 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:05.800 was a young comic at the time touring with Dietrich, 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:09.600 once said to me, your grandmother, laughing and shaking his head. 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.640 She tried to get us killed. We were performing our 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:15.720 act for five guys in a foxhole with howitzer as 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:19.920 firing overhead. She performed for as many as half a 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:23.560 million troops, singing and even playing the saw, which she 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.440 bowed like a violin. As a teenager, she had aspired 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:30.440 to be a concert violinist, until a severe wrist injury 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:34.080 dashed her hopes. She did some comic bits too. In 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:37.040 one act, she purported to be a mind reader. She 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.880 would call a serviceman up on stage and state that 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:42.720 she would tell the audience his thoughts. After a sly 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:45.480 look at the young man, she'd quip, oh, think of 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:49.600 something else. I can't talk about that. Actually, I think 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:52.280 Dietrich wanted to be a soldier, and you couldn't very 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.000 well be a soldier, so she fought her way, said 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:58.520 her daughter Maria Riva, mother of Peter, in a nineteen 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:03.320 ninety six British documentary. Maria Riva's acclaimed nineteen ninety two 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:07.079 memoir described Dietrich as not so much a mother as 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:10.280 a queen with her family as court. But on Dietrich's 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:14.480 contributions to the war effort. Maria Riva is unstinting. She 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:18.400 did a magnificent job. Certainly when she was finally overseas, 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.280 she practically was a soldier. She never said I was 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:25.440 with the USO. She was in the army. One of 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:30.480 Dietrich's more famous paramours, the actor Douglas Fairbanks Junior, claimed 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:34.000 that she entertained the idea of helping the Allied cause 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:39.199 in an even grander way by killing Hitler. Dietrich biographer 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.800 Charlotte Chandler quotes Fairbanks as saying that Dietrich toyed with 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:48.320 plans to seduce and then assassinate the German leader. Back 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:50.960 in the thirties, when Hitler still held out hopes that 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:55.000 Dietrich would return to Germany, Morlena suggested to Fairbanks that 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.720 she might accept the offer on the condition that she 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:01.559 be granted a private audience with the fear. Her plan 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:04.920 was to gush about Hitler, soften him up, and then 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:10.000 strike the fatal blow. When Fairbanks expressed skepticism about the plan, 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:12.920 surely she would be searched before being allowed to meet 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.360 privately with Hitler, she countered that she would subject herself 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:19.240 to a strip search and use a poisoned hair pen 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:23.679 as the lethal weapon. She always felt a responsibility to 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:27.240 do one hundred percent, says Peter Riva. If you detest 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.120 Hitler enough, you're going to give that one hundred percent 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:34.400 of your effort. After the war, the United States honored 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.840 its adopted citizen with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:41.520 nineteen forty seven, France named her a Chevalier of the 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:45.319 Legion of Honor, Belgium a Knight of the Order of Leopold. 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.200 In nineteen sixty five, she became the first German and 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:52.480 the first woman to receive the Medallion of Valor from 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:55.320 the State of Israel. She was also honored by the 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:59.280 Jewish veterans of World War II, but not everyone honored her. 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:04.240 When she returned to Germany in nineteen sixty she encountered threats, protests, 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:08.080 and chants of Marlena go home from those who still 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.240 felt she had betrayed the nation. For the rest of 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:13.760 her life, she shared a bond with the young men 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:18.280 alongside whom she'd served. They were her boys, says Peter Reva. 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:22.040 She felt responsible for them, She felt grateful to them. 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:24.920 When she sang in Vegas the first time in nineteen 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:28.520 fifty three at the Sahara, many of her boys wore uniforms. 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.160 She called us the next morning, crying, happy that her 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:34.800 boys remembered and that she was able to thank them 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:39.600 once more. Every time I saw her perform London, Switzerland, Paris, 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:43.040 New York, Jersey, it was always the same. She'd ask 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:46.200 if any of her boys were in the audience. They'd 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:50.640 whoop and holler. She'd smile, flash a leg and sing provocatively. 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:55.320 They were hers and she was theirs. She knew their sacrifice. 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:59.640 Never forgot she loved this country, says Peter Reva. She 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:02.920 did loved the spirit of can do. When the first 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:06.160 space shuttle flew in nineteen eighty one, she called everyone 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:08.800 she knew to turn on the TV and watch. It 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:12.000 wasn't about space travel, it was about the American ability 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:17.520 to reach out, explore, improve try. She loved that Americans 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:22.439 built their lives on trying, persevering, the real immigrant spirit, 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:27.080 and she was an immigrant. This special episode of the 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:32.439 Mobituaries podcast is also included in the audiobook edition of Mobituaries. 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:36.199 While You Just Heard the Surprising History of Marlena Dietrich. 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:40.360 The Mobituary's audiobook is filled with stories you won't hear 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:45.040 on the podcast. You'll get profiles of presidents who aren't 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:49.400 on Mount Rushmore, tributes to cars now consigned to the 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:53.480 scrap heap of history, tales of long gone sports teams, 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:58.400 and dragons, Yes, dragons, you see, people believed in dragons 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:02.120 until well. Anyway, you can download the audiobook edition of 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:06.480 Mobituaries wherever you get your audio books. Thanks for listening.