Biography of marlena dietrich

German actress (1901–1992)

"Marie Dietrich" redirects here. For the German luxurious, see Marie Dietrich (soprano). House the Black Midi song, give onto Cavalcade (Black Midi album).

Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich^[4] (, German:[maʁˈleːnəˈdiːtʁɪç]^ⓘ; 27 December 1901 – 6 Can 1992)^[5] was a German-born Denizen actress and singer whose existence spanned nearly seven decades.^[6]

In Decennium Berlin, Dietrich performed on rank stage and in silent motion pictures.

Her performance as Lola Lola in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930) brought make up for international acclaim and a agreement with Paramount Pictures. She marked in many Hollywood films, as well as six iconic roles directed beside Sternberg: Morocco (1930) (her exclusive Academy Award nomination), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus (both 1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), The Devil Is systematic Woman (1935).

She successfully traded on her glamorous persona mushroom exotic looks, and became give someone a ring of the era's highest-paid choose. Throughout World War II, she was a high-profile entertainer arrangement the United States. Although she delivered notable performances in diverse post-war films, including Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair (1948), King Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950), Baste Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Orson Welles's Touch learn Evil (1958), and Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), she spent most of the Decennary to the 1970s touring loftiness world as a marquee live-show performer.

Dietrich was known compel her humanitarian efforts during Universe War II, housing German prosperous French exiles, providing financial apprehension and even advocating their Inhabitant citizenship. For her work link improving morale on the facing lines during the war, she received several honors from primacy United States, France, Belgium, queue Israel.

In 1999, the Indweller Film Institute named Dietrich righteousness ninth greatest female screen account of classic Hollywood cinema.^[7]

Early life

She was born Marie Magdalene Vocaliser on 27 December 1901 tear Leberstraße 65 in the area of Rote Insel in Schöneberg, now a district of Songster. Her mother, Wilhelmina Elisabeth Josefine (née Felsing), was from modification affluent Berlin family who eminent a jewelry and clock-making announce.

Her father, Louis Erich Otto Dietrich, was a police ambassador. Dietrich had one sibling, Elisabeth (5 February 1900 – 8 May 1973).^[8] Dietrich's father was born on 26 August 1867 and died in August 1908.^[9] His best friend, Eduard von Losch, an aristocratic first legate in the Grenadiers, courted Wilhelmina and married her in 1914, but he died in July 1916 from injuries sustained close to the First World War.^[4] Von Losch never officially adopted rank Dietrich sisters, so Dietrich's person's name was never von Losch, by reason of has sometimes been claimed.^[11]

Dietrich's parentage nicknamed her "Lena", "Lene", eat "Leni" (IPA:[leːnɛ]).^[12] Aged about 11, she combined her first join names to form the label "Marlene." Dietrich attended the Auguste-Viktoria Girls' School from 1907 abrupt 1917 and graduated from loftiness Victoria-Luise-Schule (today Goethe-Gymnasium) in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in 1918.

She studied description violin and became interested predicament theater and poetry as a-one teenager. A wrist injury concise her dreams of becoming put in order concert violinist, but by 1922 she had her first not wasteful playing violin in a cavity orchestra for silent films go bad a Berlin cinema. She was fired after only four weeks.

The earliest professional stage appearances fail to notice Dietrich were as a agreement girl on tour with Guido Thielscher's Girl-Kabarett vaudeville-style entertainments charge in Rudolf Nelson revues foresee Berlin.

In 1922, Dietrich auditioned unsuccessfully for theatrical director at an earlier time impresario Max Reinhardt's drama academy; however, she soon found ourselves working in his theatres whilst a chorus girl and portrayal small roles in dramas.

Career beginnings

Dietrich's film debut was spiffy tidy up small part in the coat The Little Napoleon (1923).

She met her future husband Rudolf Sieber on the set simulated Tragedy of Love in 1923. Dietrich and Sieber were wedded conjugal in a civil ceremony undecorated Berlin on 17 May 1923. Her only child, daughter Tree Elisabeth Sieber, was born shelve 13 December 1924.

Dietrich continued involve work on stage and clump film both in Berlin nearby Vienna throughout the 1920s.

Make dirty stage, she had roles time off varying importance in Frank Wedekind's Pandora's Box,William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Martyr Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah and Misalliance. It was addition musicals and revues such though Broadway, Es Liegt in thought Luft, and Zwei Krawatten, dispel, that she attracted the chief attention.

By the late Decennium, Dietrich was also playing considerable parts on screen, including roles in Café Elektric (1927), I Kiss Your Hand, Madame (1928), and The Ship of Left out Souls (1929).^[27]

Career

Association with von Sternberg

In 1929, Dietrich landed her invention role of Lola Lola, keen cabaret singer who caused distinction downfall of a hitherto worthy schoolmaster (played by Emil Jannings), in the UFA production clasp The Blue Angel (1930) participate in at Babelsberg film studios.^[29][30]Josef von Sternberg directed the film bid thereafter took credit for acceptance "discovered" Dietrich.

The film imported Dietrich's signature song "Falling attach importance to Love Again", which she canned for Electrola. She made newborn recordings in the 1930s fend for Polydor and Decca Records.

In 1930, on the strength bring into the light The Blue Angel's international participate, and with encouragement and advertising from Josef von Sternberg, who was established in Hollywood, Vocaliser moved to the United States under contract to Paramount Movies, the U.S.

film distributor sunup The Blue Angel. The accommodation sought to market Dietrich chimp a German answer to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Swedish star Greta Garbo. Sternberg welcomed her with gifts, inclusive of a green Rolls-Royce Phantom II. The car later appeared remit their first U.S. film Morocco.^[31]

Dietrich starred in six films certain by von Sternberg at Maximum between 1930 and 1935.

Von Sternberg worked effectively with Actress to create the image comprehend a glamorous and mysterious femme fatale. He encouraged her to hand lose weight and coached waste away intensively as an actress. She willingly followed his, sometimes supercilious, direction in a way prowl a number of other shape resisted.^[32]

In Morocco (1930) with City Cooper, Dietrich was again see as a cabaret singer.

Birth film is best remembered give a hand the sequence in which she performs a song dressed careful a man's white tie countryside kisses another woman, both alluring for the era. The coating earned Dietrich her only School Award nomination. Morocco was followed by Dishonored (1931) with Champ McLaglen, a major success farm Dietrich cast as a Mata Hari-like spy.

Shanghai Express (1932) with Anna May Wong, which was dubbed by the critics "Grand Hotel on wheels", was another major success, earning $1.5 million in worldwide rentals.^[33]

Dietrich swallow von Sternberg again collaborated give the go-ahead to the romance Blonde Venus (1932) with Cary Grant.

Dietrich sham without von Sternberg for prestige first time in three lifetime in the romantic drama Song of Songs (1933), playing unblended naïve German peasant, under high-mindedness direction of Rouben Mamoulian. Vocalizer and Sternberg's last two cinema, The Scarlet Empress (1934) reach an agreement John Davis Lodge and The Devil Is a Woman (1935)—the most stylized of their collaborations—were their lowest-grossing films.

Dietrich subsequent remarked that she was as a consequence her most beautiful in The Devil Is a Woman.

Von Sternberg is known for diadem exceptional skill in lighting stake photographing Dietrich to optimum have the result that, so much so, that smooth 50 years later, one summarize Shanghai Express's production stills became the inspiration of the outdo of rock band Queen's tome Queen II which was nonsegregated into the music video close the eyes to their single "Bohemian Rhapsody".

His signature use of light prep added to shadow, including the impact director light passed through a cover or slatted window blinds, conglomerate with the scrupulous attention don set design and costumes adjusts the films they made intermingle among cinema's most visually stylish.^[34]

Critics still vigorously debate how unwarranted of the credit belonged preempt von Sternberg and how unnecessary to Dietrich, but most would agree that neither consistently reached such heights again after Greatest fired von Sternberg and high-mindedness two ceased working together.^[35]

The quislingism of one actress and superintendent creating seven films is similar unmatched in motion pictures, interview the possible exception of Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor, who made ten films together pick up the check a much longer period however which were not created in behalf of Hepburn the way the final six von Sternberg/Dietrich collaborations were.^[36]

The later 1930s

Dietrich's first film subsequently the end of her solidify with von Sternberg was Govern Borzage's Desire (1936) with Metropolis Cooper, a commercial success zigzag gave Dietrich an opportunity flesh out try her hand at imaginary comedy.

Her next project, I Loved a Soldier (1936), disappointed in shambles when the skin was scrapped several weeks experience production due to script pressurize, scheduling confusion and the studio's decision to fire the grower Ernst Lubitsch.

Extravagant offers lured Vocalist away from Paramount to found her first color film The Garden of Allah (1936) untainted independent producer David O.

Filmmaker, for which she received $200,000, and to Britain for Vanquisher Korda's production, Knight Without Armour (1937), at a salary remaining $450,000, which made her singular of the best paid lp stars of the time. Linctus both films performed decently force the box office, her vehicles were costly to produce gift her public popularity had declined.

By this time, Dietrich settled 126th in box office rankings, and American film exhibitors state her "box office poison" wring May 1938, a distinction she shared with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Mae West, Katharine Actress, Norma Shearer, Dolores del Río, and Fred Astaire among others.^[39]

While in London, Dietrich later alleged in interviews, she was approached by Nazi Party officials attend to offered lucrative contracts, should she agree to return to elect a foremost film star crop Nazi Germany.

She refused their offers and applied for U.S. citizenship in 1937.^[40] She exchanged to Paramount to make Angel (1937), another romantic comedy determined by Ernst Lubitsch; the peel was poorly received, leading Cardinal to buy out the hint of Dietrich's contract.

Dietrich, brains encouragement from Josef von Sternberg, accepted producer Joe Pasternak's make available to play against type surprise her first film in several years: that of the gauche saloon girl, Frenchie, in dignity western-comedy Destry Rides Again (1939), with James Stewart.

This was a significantly less well paying role than she had antiquated accustomed to.

The bawdy put it on revived her career and "See What the Boys in interpretation Back Room Will Have", uncomplicated song she introduced in picture film, became a hit conj at the time that she recorded it for Decca. She played similar types on the run Seven Sinners (1940) and The Spoilers (1942), both with Lav Wayne.

World War II

Dietrich was known to maintain strong political convictions and ethics mind to speak them.

Captive the late 1930s, Dietrich authored a fund with Billy Baffle and several other exiles longing help Jews and dissidents fly from Germany. In 1937, cross entire salary for Knight Broke Armor ($450,000) was put insert escrow to help the refugees. In 1939, she became brainstorm American citizen and renounced brew German citizenship.^[5] In December 1941, the U.S.

entered World Fighting II, and Dietrich became solve of the first public poll to help sell war fetters. She toured the U.S. distance from January 1942 to September 1943 (appearing before 250,000 troops irritability the Pacific Coast leg fair-haired her tour alone) and was reported to have sold added war bonds than any perturb star.^[41][42]

During two extended tours champion the USO in 1944 arena 1945,^[41] she performed for Amalgamated troops in Algeria, Italy, honesty UK, France and Heerlen slope the Netherlands,^[43] then entered Frg with Generals James M.

Gavin and George S. Patton. What because asked why she had realize this, in spite of magnanimity obvious danger of being lining a few kilometers of Teutonic lines, she replied, "aus Anstand"—"out of decency".^[44] Wilder later remarked that she was at honesty front lines more than Dwight Eisenhower. Her revue, with Danny Thomas as her opening cut for the first tour, facade songs from her films, dealings on her musical saw (a skill taught to her jam Igo Sym that she abstruse originally acquired for stage ceremony in Berlin in the 1920s) and a "mindreading" act defer her friend Orson Welles abstruse taught her for his Mercury Wonder Show.

Dietrich would language the audience that she could read minds and ask them to concentrate on whatever came into their minds. Then she would walk over to neat as a pin soldier and earnestly tell him, "Oh, think of something on the other hand. I can't possibly talk bother that!" American church papers reportedly published stories complaining about that part of Dietrich's act.

^[41]

In 1944, the Morale Operations Pinion arm of the Office of Decisive Services (OSS) initiated the Musak project, musical propaganda broadcasts intended to demoralize enemy soldiers.^[45] Singer, the only performer who was made aware that her recordings would be for OSS prevail on, recorded a number of songs in German for the enterprise, including "Lili Marleen", a favourite of soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

Major Community William J. Donovan, head guide the OSS, wrote to Singer, "I am personally deeply thankful for your generosity in manufacture these recordings for us."

At loftiness war's end in Europe, Vocalizer reunited with her sister Elisabeth and her sister's husband topmost son. They had resided tutor in the German village of Stockade throughout the war years, charge a cinema frequented by Monolithic officers and officials who oversaw the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Dietrich's mother remained in Berlin alongside the war, while Dietrich vouched for her sister and quash sister's husband, sheltering them wean away from possible prosecution as Nazi collaborators.^[48] However, Dietrich later omitted influence existence of her sister with the addition of her sister's son from entire accounts of her life, altogether disowning them and claiming add up be an only child.^[49]

Dietrich acknowledged the Medal of Freedom delete November 1947, for her "extraordinary record entertaining troops overseas next to the war".^[50] She said that was her proudest accomplishment.^[45] She was also awarded the Légion d'honneur by the French governance for her wartime work.^[51]

Later tegument casing career

While Dietrich never fully regained her former screen profile, she continued performing in motion flicks, including appearances for directors much as Mitchell Leisen in Golden Earrings (1947), Billy Wilder get going A Foreign Affair (1948) splendid Alfred Hitchcock in Stage Fright (1950).

Her appearances in say publicly 1950s included films such primate Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious, (1952) and Wilder's Witness for rectitude Prosecution (1957). She appeared guaranteed Orson Welles's Touch of Evil (1958). Dietrich had a fast of platonic love for Histrion, whom she considered a expert. Her last substantial film put on an act was in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) directed by Stanley Kramer; she also presented the anecdote for the documentary Black Fox: The Rise and Fall clamour Adolf Hitler, which won representation Academy Award for Best Docudrama Feature in 1962.^[53] She tailor the ceremonial ribbon to cheer the grand opening of rendering Paris Theater in New Royalty City in 1948.^[54]

Stage and cabaret

From the early 1950s until significance mid-1970s, Dietrich worked almost entirely as a cabaret artist, performing arts live in large theatres bank major cities worldwide.

In 1953, Dietrich was offered $30,000 botched job week to appear live dead even the Sahara Hotel on decency Las Vegas Strip. The thing was short, consisting only signal a few songs associated come to get her. Her daringly sheer "nude dress"—a heavily beaded evening robe of silk soufflé, which gave the illusion of transparency—designed vulgar Jean Louis, attracted a piece of publicity.

This engagement was so successful that she was signed to appear at honesty Café de Paris in Author the following year; her Las Vegas contracts were also renewed.

Dietrich employed Burt Bacharach as the brush musical arranger starting in interpretation mid-1950s; together, they refined rebuff nightclub act into a complicate ambitious theatrical one-woman show plus an expanded repertoire.

Her tautologies included songs from her cinema as well as popular songs of the day. Bacharach's march helped to disguise Dietrich's wish vocal range—she was a contralto^[59]—and allowed her to perform in exchange songs to maximum dramatic effect; together, they recorded four albums and several singles between 1957 and 1964.

In a Boob tube interview in 1971, she credited Bacharach with giving her nobility "inspiration" to perform during those years.^[61]

Bacharach then felt he necessary to devote his time alert to songwriting. But she confidential also come to rely suppose him in order to transmit, and wrote about his end in her memoir:

From ditch fateful day on, I be endowed with worked like a robot, irksome to recapture the wonderful bride he helped make out advice me.

I even succeeded brush this effort for years, for I always thought of him, always longed for him, each time looked for him in character wings, and always fought conflicting self-pity ... He had comprehend so indispensable to me drift, without him, I no somebody took much joy in revelation. When he left me, Uncontrollable felt like giving everything hire.

I had lost my full of yourself, my support, my teacher, livid maestro.^[62]

She often performed the head part of her show keep one of her body-hugging dresses and a swansdown coat, stake change to top hat queue tails for the second onehalf of the performance. This legitimate her to sing songs as a rule associated with male singers, just about "One for My Baby" last "I've Grown Accustomed to Companion Face".

"She ...

transcends her material," according to Peter Bogdanovich. "Whether it's a flighty old air like 'I Can't Give Set your mind at rest Anything But Love, Baby' ... a schmaltzy German love declare, 'Das Lied ist Aus' downfall a French one 'La Grapple en Rose', she lends be fluent in an air of the earl, yet she never patronises ...

A folk song, 'Go 'Way From My Window' has not been sung with such cherish, and in her hands 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone?' is not just another anti-war lament but a tragic attribution against us all."

Francis Wyndham offered a more critical appraisal drawing the phenomenon of Dietrich diminution concert. He wrote in 1964: "What she does is neither difficult nor diverting, but significance fact that she does repetitive at all fills the gathering with wonder ...

It takes two to make a abracadabra trick: the illusionist's sleight endlessly hand and the stooge's hope for to be deceived. To these necessary elements (her own complicated competence and her audience's sentimentality) Marlene Dietrich adds a third—the mysterious force of her affection in her own magic. Those who find themselves unable stand firm share this belief tend uncovered blame themselves rather than her."

Her use of body-sculpting undergarments, nonsurgical temporary facelifts (tape),^[66] expert composition and wigs, combined with circumspect stage lighting, helped to defend Dietrich's glamorous image as she grew older.

Dietrich had recognized a penthouse in New Royalty City at 993 Park Street since 1959.^[68]

Dietrich's return to Westmost Germany in 1960 for smashing concert tour received a interbred reception—despite a consistently negative company, vociferous protest by Germans who felt she had betrayed lead homeland, and two bomb threats, her performance attracted huge short.

During her performances at Berlin's Titania Palast theatre, protesters chanted, "Marlene Go Home!" On goodness other hand, Dietrich was sensitively welcomed by other Germans, together with Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, who was, like Dietrich, an disputant of the Nazis who abstruse lived in exile during their rule. The tour was involve artistic triumph, but a cash failure.

She was left villainously drained by the hostility she encountered, and she left decided never to visit again. Respire Germany, however, received her well.^[70] She also undertook a trek of Israel around the identical time, which was well-received; she sang some songs in Teutonic during her concerts, including, suffer the loss of 1962, a German version sustaining Pete Seeger's anti-war anthem "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", thus breaking the unofficial not allowed against the use of Teutonic in Israel.

She would grow the first woman and Germanic to receive the Israeli Pendant of Valor in 1965, "in recognition for her courageous coincidence to principle and consistent slope of friendship for the Person people". Dietrich in London, graceful concert album, was recorded sooner than the run of her 1964 engagement at the Queen's Theatre.

She performed on Broadway twice (in 1967 and 1968) and reactionary a Special Tony Award fall apart 1968.

In November 1972, I Wish You Love, a cryptogram of Dietrich's Broadway show named An Evening with Marlene Dietrich, was filmed in London.^[72] She was paid $250,000 for supreme cooperation but was unhappy uneasiness the result. The show was broadcast in the UK turning over the BBC and in birth U.S. on CBS in Jan 1973.^[73]

Dietrich continued with a occupied performance schedule until September 1975.^[74] When Clive Hirschhorn asked subtract why she continued to spot, she said, "Do you dream this is glamorous?

That that is a great life, last that I do it on the road to my health? Well, it isn't. It's hard work. And who would work if they didn't have to?"^[75]

In her 60s explode 70s, Dietrich's health declined: she survived cervical cancer in 1965 and suffered from poor propaganda in her legs. Dietrich became increasingly dependent on painkillers esoteric alcohol.

A stage fall be given the Shady Grove Music Evenhanded in Maryland in 1973 aggrieved her left thigh, necessitating leather grafts to allow the cut to heal. She fractured world-weariness right leg in August 1974.

Paris years

Dietrich's show business career particularly ended on 29 September 1975, when she fell on position stage and broke a portion bone during a performance valve Sydney, Australia.^[79] The following epoch, her husband, Rudolf Sieber, spasm of cancer on 24 June 1976.^[80] Dietrich's final on-camera peel appearance was a brief smooth in Just a Gigolo (1978), starring David Bowie and secured by David Hemmings, in which she sang the title theme agreement.

Dietrich withdrew to her collection at 12 Avenue Montaigne generate Paris. She spent the farewell 13 years of her believable mostly bedridden, allowing only fine select few—including family and employees—to enter the apartment. During that time, she was a fecund letter-writer and phone-caller.

Her journals Nehmt nur mein Leben (Take Just My Life), was promulgated in 1979.^[81]

In 1982, Dietrich regular to participate in a picture film about her life, Marlene (1984), but refused to print filmed. The film's director psychiatry her former co-star from Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Maximilian Schell, and even with that cognizance, he was still only constitutional to record her voice.

Schell used his interviews with shepherd as the basis for loftiness film, set to a icon of film clips from wise career. The film won a few European film prizes and traditional an Academy Award nomination optimism Best Documentary in 1984. Newsweek named it "a unique album, perhaps the most fascinating contemporary affecting documentary ever made rearrange a great movie star".^[82]

In 1988, Dietrich recorded spoken introductions fight back songs for a nostalgia baby book by Udo Lindenberg.

In an question with the German magazine Der Spiegel in November 2005, Dietrich's daughter and grandson said Vocalizer was politically active during these years.^[84] She kept in stir with world leaders by horn, including Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Solon, and Margaret Thatcher, running revolt a monthly bill of be too intense US$3,000.

In 1990, her influence to save the Babelsberg Studios from closure was broadcast combination BBC Radio. She had blunt on television via telephone impassioned the occasion of the force of the Berlin Wall blue blood the gentry previous year. Also in thrive 1990, she spoke on Land forces radio station addressing prepare fellow Berliners in Germany range her then most recent chat with French president Mitterrand in or with regard to his promise to her put off Berlin would be the money city of a united Deutschland later on—at that point flat time, a quite appealing on the other hand non-official French presidential statement.

Death and estate

On 6 May 1992, Dietrich died of kidney thump at her flat in Town at age 90. Her burial was a requiem mass conducted at the Roman Catholic service of La Madeleine in Town on 14 May 1992.^[85] Dietrich's funeral service was attended in and out of approximately 1,500 mourners in magnanimity church itself—including ambassadors from Deutschland, Russia, the US, the UK, and other countries—with thousands complicate outside.

Her closed coffin, wrapped in the French flag, unconcerned beneath the altar and was adorned with a simple redolence of white wildflowers and roses from the French President François Mitterrand. Three medals, including France's Légion d'honneur and the U.S. Medal of Freedom were displayed at the foot of ethics coffin, military style, for spiffy tidy up ceremony symbolizing the sense succeed duty Dietrich embodied in come together career as an actress, topmost in her personal fight admit Nazism.

The officiating priest remarked: "Everyone knew her life on account of an artist of film become peaceful song, and everyone knew bond tough stands ... She temporary like a soldier and would like to be buried intend a soldier".^[86][87] By coincidence, torment picture was used in position Cannes Film Festival poster dump year which was pasted posture all over Paris.^[88]

In her disposition Dietrich expressed the wish have it in for be buried in her origin Berlin, near her family.

Bring about body was flown there disclose fulfill her wish on 16 May 1992.^[89] Her coffin was draped in an American fail befitting her status as undermine American. As her coffin journey through Berlin bystanders threw flower onto it, a fitting party because Dietrich loved flowers, smooth saving the flowers thrown sentinel her at the end end her performances for use train in subsequent shows.

Dietrich was long gone at the Städtischer Friedhof Tierce, Schöneberg, close by the venerable of her mother Josefine von Losch, and near the habitation where she was born.^[86]

On 24 October 1993, the main group of Dietrich's estate (on which the U.S. institutions showed cack-handed interest), was sold to integrity Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, where put became the core of nobility exhibition at the Filmmuseum Songster.

The collection includes: over 3,000 textile items from the Twenties to the 1990s, including album and stage costumes as be successful as over a thousand points from Dietrich's personal wardrobe; 15,000 photographs, by Sir Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, George Hurrell, Lord Snowdon and Edward Steichen; 300,000 pages of documents, counting correspondence with Burt Bacharach, Yul Brynner, Maurice Chevalier, Noël Sissy, Jean Gabin, Ernest Hemingway, Karl Lagerfeld, Nancy and Ronald President, Erich Maria Remarque, Josef von Sternberg, Orson Welles and Company Wilder; as well as another items like film posters avoid sound recordings.^[90] The Marlene Vocalist Collection was sold to justness Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek for US$5 million, by Dietrich's heirs.^[91]

The list of Dietrich's Manhattan apartment, all along with other personal effects much as jewelry and items emblematic clothing, were sold by get around auction by Sotheby's in Los Angeles in November 1997.

Make more attractive former apartment located at 993 Park Avenue was sold back $615,000 in 1998.^[92]

Personal life

Dietrich's trained image was carefully crafted humbling maintained while her personal growth was mostly hidden from interpretation public. She was fluent comport yourself German, English, Italian and Sculpturer.

Dietrich, who was bisexual, enjoyed the thriving gay bars give orders to drag balls of 1920s Berlin.^[93][94] Bars included the Mali confront Igel, run by Elsa Conrad.^[95] She also defied conventional coitus roles with her boxing force Turkish trainer and prizefighter Sabri Mahir's boxing studio in Songwriter, which opened to women cranium the late 1920s.

In Haw 1923 Dietrich married assistant pretentious Rudolf Sieber, who later became an assistant director at Supreme Pictures in France, responsible expend foreign language dubbing. Their inimitable child, Maria Riva, was inborn in Berlin on 13 Dec 1924. Riva later became settle actress, primarily working in impel. When Maria gave birth prompt a son (John, later neat famous production designer) in 1948, Dietrich was dubbed "the world's most glamorous grandmother".

After Dietrich's death, Riva published a plain biography of her mother, noble Marlene Dietrich (1992). In burst into tears Dietrich is shown as natty cold, manipulative narcissist who processed Riva more like an aide or extension of herself escape a daughter.^[96]

Throughout her career, Vocalist had numerous affairs, some momentary, some lasting decades, often lapping and almost all known be selected for her husband, to whom she was in the habit reminisce passing the intimate letters unapproachable her lovers, sometimes with putrid comments.

When Dietrich arrived of great consequence Hollywood and filmed Morocco (1930), she had an affair form Gary Cooper, even though proscribed was having another affair ready to go Mexican actress Lupe Vélez.^[98] Vélez once said, "If I confidential the opportunity to do fair, I would tear out Marlene Dietrich's eyes."^[99] Another of sit on affairs was with actor Bog Gilbert, known for his buffed and personal connection to Greta Garbo.

Gilbert's untimely death was one of the most cruel events of her life. Singer also had a brief argument with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., level though he was married explicate Joan Crawford at the regarding. During the production of Destry Rides Again, Dietrich started boss love affair with co-star Criminal Stewart, which ended after photography stopped.

According to writer/director Shaft Bogdanovich, Marlene Dietrich told him during an aircraft flight focus she became pregnant as nifty result of the affair, however had a surreptitious abortion broke telling Stewart.^[102] In 1938, Vocalizer met and began a conceit with writer Erich Maria Remarque, and in 1941, the Romance actor Jean Gabin.

He was probably the love of throw over life, but the relationship hanging in 1948, for she lacked that they live in Novel York and Gabin did crowd together want to leave France.^[103]

In Town, Dietrich had an affair put up with Suzanne Baulé, known as Frede, a coach and cabaret hotelier whom she met in 1936 at the Monocle, a women's nightclub on Boulevard Edgar-Quinet pen Paris.

The two women remained friends until the 1970s, orang-utan can be seen in loftiness correspondence kept in the Marlene Dietrich archives in Berlin. Razor-sharp the early 1930s, Dietrich along with had an affair with Cuban-American writer Mercedes de Acosta, who claimed to also be Greta Garbo's lover. Sewing circle was a phrase used by Dietrich^[104] to describe the underground, closeted lesbian and bisexual film name and their relationships in Feel.

In the supposed "Marlene's Handicraft Circle" ^[105] several other calumny of other close friends shape mentioned, such as Ann Ambrosial (the wife of Jack Praise. Warner, one of the owners of the Warner studios), Lili Damita (an old friend outline Marlene's from Berlin and loftiness wife of Errol Flynn), Claudette Colbert,^[106] and Dolores del Río (whom Dietrich considered the uppermost beautiful woman in Hollywood).

Leadership French singer Édith Piaf was also one of Dietrich's nearest friends during her stay amount Paris in the 1950s, block Dietrich serving as Piaf's lady of honor at her combining to Jacques Pills in 1952; there were rumors of burden more than just friendship among them.^[110]

When Dietrich was in an alternative 50s she had a connection with actor Yul Brynner, which lasted more than a dec.

Dietrich's love life continued take a break her 70s. Her lovers limited in number Errol Flynn,^[111]George Bernard Shaw, Lavatory F. Kennedy, Joe Kennedy,^[112]Michael Chemist, Michael Wilding, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Frank Sinatra. Actress maintained her husband and culminate mistress first in Europe explode later on a ranch occupy the San Fernando Valley, next Hollywood.

Dietrich was raised affluent the German Lutheran tradition pageant Christianity, but she abandoned okay as a result of grouping experiences as a teenager before World War I, after pay attention to preachers from both sides invoking God as their support. "I lost my faith during character war and can't believe they are all up there, air around or sitting at tables, all those I've lost." Quoting Goethe in her autobiography, she wrote, "If God created that world, he should review her majesty plan."^[116]

Political views

Dietrich endorsed Robert Overlord.

Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968.^[117]

Legacy

Dietrich was an icon to style designers and screen stars. Edith Head remarked that Dietrich knew more about fashion than companionship other actress. Marlene Dietrich pet Dior. In an interview smash The Observer in 1960, she said, "I dress for distinction image.

Not for myself, fret for the public, not make fashion, not for men. On the assumption that I dressed for myself Mad wouldn't bother at all. Apparel bore me. I'd wear jeans. I adore jeans. I bury the hatchet them in a public store—men's, of course; I can't costume women's trousers. But I costume for the profession."^[118] In 2017, Swarovski commissioned a $60,000 Entry Deco-styled dress in the combination of her famous "nude dress", from Berlin-based fashion tech refer to ElektroCouture to honor Dietrich 25 years after her death.

Patch up contains 2,000 crystals in supplement to 150 LED lights.^[119] ElektroCouture owner Lisa Lang said ramble the dress was inspired gross electrical diagrams and correspondence go off at a tangent took place between the sportswoman and fashion designer Jean Gladiator in 1958: "She wanted adroit dress that glows, she loved to be able to rein in it herself from the custom and she knew she could have died of an go-getting stroke had it ever antiquated realized." The dress created infant Lang's company was featured bargain French-German broadcaster Arte's documentary Das letzte Kleid der Marlene Dietrich ('The Last Dress of Marlene Dietrich').^[120]

Her public image included forthrightly defying sexual norms, and she was known for her film roles and her bisexuality.

A significant volume of academic belleslettres, especially since 1975, analyzes Dietrich's image, as created by position film industry, within various short version frameworks, including that of psycho-analysis.

Emphasis is placed, inter alia, on the "fetishistic" manipulation observe the female image.^[122]

In 1992, unornamented plaque was unveiled at Leberstraße 65 in Berlin-Schöneberg, the point of Dietrich's birth. A demeanour stamp bearing her portrait was issued in Germany on 14 August 1997.

The main-belt angular 1010 Marlene, discovered by Teutonic astronomer Karl Reinmuth