0:02

In the early days of Hollywood's Golden

0:04

Age, German immigrant Marlena

0:07

Dietrich electrified audiences

0:09

around the world. She defied

0:11

the expectations of traditional women's

0:14

roles in her films and in her life.

0:17

But it wasn't her acting that led Adolf

0:19

Hitler to label her a traitor to

0:21

the quote unquote fatherland. It

0:24

was her patriotic support for her adopted

0:26

homeland. When the United States

0:29

went to war, so did Marlena

0:31

Dietrich. It was the beginning of

0:33

a lifelong dedication to American

0:35

soldiers that never wavered.

0:38

I hope you enjoy hearing her story,

0:41

which I recorded for the audio version

0:43

of my Mobituaries book. Marlena

0:54

Dietrich was one hundred percent.

0:57

In nine two, the German

0:59

borns Green legend and internationally

1:02

known cabaret artist, was in London

1:04

rehearsing for a concert. She was

1:06

seventy years old. As

1:08

with everything related to her image,

1:11

Dietrich knew exactly how she wanted

1:13

to be lighted. Her trusted

1:15

longtime lighting designer, Joe Davis,

1:17

was on hand to make sure her expectations

1:20

were met. Dietrich's twenty

1:22

two year old grandson, Peter Reeva

1:24

was also there. He remembers

1:27

the scene vividly. I'm

1:29

standing next to her on the London stage

1:31

with Joe Davis and way up in

1:33

the clouds at the top of the theater. There's

1:35

a guy pointing a spotlight on her face.

1:38

She kept telling him, waving a hand where

1:40

to move the light. The man called down.

1:42

I think that's perfect, Miss Dietrich. Joe

1:45

Davis called up. Do exactly

1:47

as Miss Dietrich says. Marlena

1:49

gestured again a few times and then

1:51

turned to Joe and said that's fine.

1:54

So I asked Joe how she knew it was

1:56

fine. His reply, when

1:59

it begins to burn her eyes, she

2:01

knows it is a dead center. Like

2:04

Elizabeth Taylor, Marlena Dietrich

2:07

is today remembered by many for her beauty,

2:09

but Dietrich's persona cool, husky

2:12

voiced at times androgynous, was

2:14

always more daring. As the theater

2:16

critic Kenneth Tynan wrote, her

2:19

masculinity appeals to women and

2:21

her sexuality to men. In

2:23

the Western destri Rides again, Dietrich

2:26

gets into a bar fight, a real knockdown

2:28

drag out with another woman rolling around

2:31

the floor before Jimmy Stewart dumps

2:33

a bucket of water on both of them, then

2:35

Dietrich attacks him with a bottle,

2:37

a chair, and her fists. Incidentally,

2:41

this is the movie where she sings Boys in the back

2:43

Room brilliantly parodied by Madeleine

2:45

Khan as I'm Tired in Blazing

2:47

Saddles. Turns out Dietrich

2:49

wasn't afraid of a good fight in real life.

2:52

Destric came out in ninety nine,

2:55

the year Hitler's Germany invaded Poland,

2:58

commencing World War Two, and

3:00

Dietrich stepped right into the breach

3:02

to help her new beloved homeland, the

3:04

United States of America, defeat

3:06

the country of her birth. I

3:09

don't think she was ever happier, more fulfilled

3:11

than when she was serving the Allied troops,

3:13

Peter Reeva told me. Perhaps

3:16

that's because she knew well what

3:18

was at stake. Born

3:20

in Berlin as Marie Magdalena

3:22

Dietrich, Dietrich

3:25

lost her father when she was just five.

3:27

While still a girl, she came up with the name

3:30

Marlena by fusing her first and second

3:32

names. It was her first

3:35

act of self creation. She

3:37

embarked on a career in entertainment

3:39

as a chorus girl in Berlin reviews,

3:42

and then as an actress in the city's vibrant

3:44

cinema scene. Her breakout performance

3:46

came as a cabaret singer in Joseph

3:49

von Sternberg's Blue Angel. Immediately,

3:52

Paramount Studios came calling, and

3:54

Dietrich moved to Hollywood to star

3:56

in a series of six films in the early

3:58

nineteen thirties, all directed by

4:00

Sternberg. She was usually

4:03

cast in the role of a vamp or femme

4:05

fatale, but fast won a reputation

4:07

for breaking the rules. In n three,

4:10

while sailing from New York to France,

4:13

she received a warning from Paris's chief

4:15

of police that should she arrive in the

4:17

city wearing men's trousers, she

4:19

would be arrested, and so naturally,

4:22

she made sure to wear a white pant suit

4:24

when she disembarked. The Paris

4:26

papers hailed it as a revolution in fashion,

4:29

and the next day the chief of police showed

4:31

up with a bracelet inscribed with an apology.

4:35

During the same years that Dietrich was conquering

4:37

Hollywood, Adolf Hitler was coming

4:39

to power back in Germany. Dietrich

4:42

watched political developments in her home

4:44

country warily. Although the

4:46

German government had banned Blue Angel

4:48

in ninety three, Sternberg was

4:51

Jewish. Hitler loved the film.

4:53

He wanted Dietrich to return to Germany

4:55

to continue her career. As

4:58

her grandson Peter Riva told me more,

5:01

Lena was staunchly opposed to autocrats

5:03

and fascists. When she got

5:05

to that position of security and fame, she

5:08

took every opportunity she could to oppose

5:10

the Nazis. German foreign minister

5:13

von Ribbentroff came to visit her in seven

5:16

at the Lancaster Hotel in Paris, bearing

5:19

a mother's cross to woo

5:21

Marlena back to Germany. It

5:23

would have essentially made her Queen of Germany

5:26

with the promise of a care free life. She

5:28

said no then and many other times.

5:31

Hitler never asked again, just labeled

5:33

her a traitor to the fatherland. Instead,

5:36

Dietrich worked with Jewish emigrade

5:39

director Billy Wilder. Jews

5:41

had been leaving Germany since the Nazis

5:43

came to power in three, but

5:46

in eight, with Crystal Knocked

5:48

a nationwide program against Jewish

5:51

homes, businesses, synagogues and

5:53

schools, the refugee problem

5:55

became a crisis, Dietrich and

5:57

Wilder started a fund to spawn

6:00

her refugees, and Dietrich

6:02

s grote her entire salary from Seven's

6:05

Night Without Armor at four hundred

6:07

and fifty thousand dollars per film. She was

6:09

one of Hollywood's highest paid stars

6:12

to support the cause. And

6:14

then in ninety nine, this woman,

6:17

who was culturally German to the core,

6:19

publicly renounced her home country

6:22

and became an American citizen. She

6:24

made sure the cameras were there when she was

6:27

sworn in. She wanted the

6:29

oath of American citizenship to be captured

6:31

on film, says Riva, in order

6:33

to send a message to the Third Reich

6:36

and good Germans for them to know

6:38

she was taking that stand. This

6:40

didn't go over well back home. The

6:43

Nazi newspaper Dark Stormer wrote

6:46

that she had been corrupted from her years

6:48

spent among the Jews of Hollywood, calling

6:50

her decision a betrayal of the fatherland.

6:54

Dietrich didn't care, but the bombing

6:56

of Pearl Harbor she went further. In

6:59

two she traveled throughout the United

7:01

States to promote the purchase of war bonds.

7:05

Some estimates credit her with raising a

7:07

million dollars in sales. I'm

7:09

delighted to have the opportunity to help

7:11

my country in any way I can, she told

7:14

The New York Times that year. I consider

7:16

it a privilege, not a duty.

7:18

She also supported the government's wartime

7:20

propaganda, which used German

7:23

language radio to demoralize the Nazi

7:25

troops, but Dietrich's

7:28

greatest efforts were for the USO. In

7:30

ninety four and nineteen forty five,

7:33

she volunteered for multiple tours

7:35

entertaining troops and prisoners of war

7:38

in Algeria, Italy, France,

7:40

and Germany for eighteen straight

7:42

months, with more time at the front,

7:44

Billy Wilder said, than General Eisenhower.

7:48

She earned a reputation for abiding the rough

7:50

conditions a lack of electricity,

7:52

sleeping in tents, and for being

7:54

willing to tour near enemy lines. The

7:57

closer the better, as far as a Dietrich was concerned.

8:00

Riva recalls Danny Thomas,

8:03

who was a young comic at the time touring

8:05

with Dietrich, once said to me, your

8:07

grandmother, laughing and shaking his head.

8:09

She tried to get us killed. We were

8:11

performing our act for five guys in a

8:14

foxhole with Howard Sirs. Firing

8:16

overhead. She performed

8:18

for as many as half a million troops,

8:21

singing and even playing the saw, which

8:23

she bowed like a violin. As

8:26

a teenager, she had aspired to be a concert

8:28

violinist, until a severe wrist injury

8:30

dashed her hopes. She did some comic

8:32

bits too. In one act, she purported

8:35

to be a mind reader. She would call a

8:37

serviceman up on stage and state

8:39

that she would tell the audience his thoughts. After

8:42

a sly look at the young man, she'd quip,

8:44

oh, think of something else. I can't talk

8:46

about that. Actually,

8:49

I think Dietrich wanted to be a soldier,

8:51

and you couldn't very well be a soldier, so she

8:53

fought her way, said her daughter, Maria

8:56

Riva, mother of Peter, in

8:59

British documentary re Maria

9:01

Riva's acclaimed two memoir

9:04

described Dietrich as not so much

9:06

a mother as a queen with her family

9:08

as court. But on Dietrich's contributions

9:11

to the war effort, Maria Riva is

9:13

unstinting. She did a magnificent

9:15

job. Certainly when she was finally

9:17

overseas, she practically was a soldier.

9:20

She never said I was with the U. S O. She

9:22

was in the army. One

9:25

of Dietrich's more famous paramours,

9:27

the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Claimed

9:30

that she entertained the idea of

9:32

helping the Allied cause in an

9:34

even grander way by killing

9:37

Hitler. Dietrich biographer

9:39

Charlotte Chandler quotes Fairbanks

9:41

is saying that Dietrich toyed with plans

9:44

to seduce and then assassinate

9:46

the German leader back in the thirties,

9:49

when Hitler still held out hopes that Dietrich

9:51

would return to Germany more. Lena suggested

9:53

to Fairbanks that she might accept the

9:56

offer on the condition that she be granted

9:58

a private audience with the few her Her

10:01

plan was to gush about Hitler, soften

10:03

him up, and then strike the fatal

10:06

blow. When Fairbanks expressed

10:08

skepticism about the plan, surely

10:10

she would be searched before being allowed to meet

10:12

privately with Hitler, she countered

10:14

that she would subject herself to a strip search

10:17

and use a poisoned hairpin as the

10:19

lethal weapon. She always

10:22

felt a responsibility to do one percent,

10:24

says Peter Riva. If you detest

10:27

Hitler enough, you're going to give that one

10:29

percent of your effort. After

10:32

the war, the United States honored its

10:34

adopted citizen with the Presidential

10:36

Medal of Freedom. In Ye, France

10:39

named her a Chevalier of the Legion

10:41

of Honor Belgium a Knight

10:44

of the Order of Leopold. In

10:46

nine sixty five, she became the first

10:48

German and the first woman to receive

10:50

the Medallion of Valor from the State

10:52

of Israel. She was also honored

10:55

by the Jewish veterans of World War Two,

10:57

but not everyone honored her. When

11:00

she returned to Germany in nine sixty she

11:02

encountered threats, protests, and

11:04

chance of Marlena go home from

11:07

those who still felt she had betrayed the nation.

11:10

For the rest of her life, she shared a bond

11:13

with the young men alongside whom she'd

11:15

served. They were her boys, says

11:17

Peter Va. She felt responsible

11:19

for them, She felt grateful to them.

11:22

When she sang in Vegas the first time in Ninette

11:25

at the Sahara, many of her boys

11:27

wore uniforms. She called us

11:29

the next morning, crying, happy

11:31

that her boys remembered and that she was

11:33

able to thank them once more. Every

11:36

time I saw her perform London, Switzerland,

11:39

Paris, New York, Jersey, it

11:41

was always the same. She'd ask if

11:43

any of her boys were in the audience.

11:45

They'd whoop and holler. She'd smile,

11:48

flash a leg and sing provocatively.

11:51

They were hers and she was theirs.

11:53

She knew their sacrifice, never

11:56

forgot. She loved this country,

11:58

says Peter Riva. She did loved

12:00

the spirit of can do. When the first

12:03

space shuttle flew in nineteen eight one, she

12:05

called everyone she knew to turn on the TV

12:07

and watch. It wasn't about space

12:09

travel, it was about the American ability

12:11

to reach out, explore, improve

12:14

try. She loved that Americans

12:17

built their lives on trying, persevering

12:20

the real immigrant spirit, and

12:23

she was an immigrant. This

12:25

special episode of the Mobituaries

12:27

podcast is also included in the

12:30

audio book edition of Mobituaries.

12:32

While you just heard the surprising history

12:35

of Marlena Dietrich, the Mobituaries

12:37

audio book is filled with stories

12:39

you won't hear on the podcast. You'll

12:42

get profiles of presidents

12:44

who aren't on Mount Rushmore, tributes

12:47

to cars now consigned to

12:49

the scrap heap of history, tales

12:51

of long gone sports teams,

12:54

and dragons, Yes, dragons,

12:56

you see, people believed in dragons until

12:58

well anyway. You can download

13:00

the audiobook edition of Mobituaries

13:03

wherever you get your audio books. Thanks

13:05

for listening.