Marlene Dietrich Goes To War | Reviving a Mobit

We’re celebrating the birthday month of the iconic Marlene Deitrich by revisiting a special episode from the "Mobituaries" audiobook. Marlene Dietrich cemented her status as a Hollywood legend with a series of iconic performances that flouted traditional women's roles and ignited the screen. But it's her passionate support for the United States, her adopted homeland, and the troops fighting in World War II that led Hitler to label her a traitor to the "Fatherland." When she could have enjoyed the indulgences of fame, she risked everything. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
In the early days of Hollywood's Golden Age, German immigrant
Marlena Dietrich electrified audiences around the world. She defied the
expectations of traditional women's roles in her films and in
her life. But it wasn't her acting that led Adolf
Hitler to label her a traitor to the quote unquote fatherland.

(00:23):
It was her patriotic support for her adopted homeland. When
the United States went to war, so did Marlena Dietrich.
It was the beginning of a lifelong dedication to American
soldiers that never wavered. I hope you enjoy hearing her story,
which I recorded for the audio version of my obituary's book,

(00:53):
Marlena Dietrich was one hundred percent. In nineteen seventy two,
the German born screen legend and internationally known cabaret artist
was in London rehearsing for a concert. She was seventy
years old. As with everything related to her image, Dietrich
knew exactly how she wanted to be lighted. Her trusted

(01:15):
longtime lighting designer, Joe Davis, was on hand to make
sure her expectations were met. Dietrich's twenty two year old
grandson Peter Reva was also there. He remembers the scene vividly.
I'm standing next to her on the London stage with
Joe Davis and way up in the clouds at the
top of the theater. There's a guy pointing a spotlight

(01:37):
on her face. She kept telling him, waving a hand
where to move the light. The man called down. I
think that's perfect, Miss Dietrick. Joe Davis called up Doe
exactly as Miss Dietrich says. Marlena gestured again a few
times and then turned to Joe and said that's fine.
So I asked Joe how she knew it was fine.

(01:57):
His reply, when it begins to burn her eyes, she
knows it is dead center. Like Elizabeth Taylor, Marlena Dietrich
is today remembered by many for her beauty, but Dietrich's
persona cool, husky voiced at times androgynous, was always more daring.
As the theater critic Kenneth Tynan wrote, her masculinity appeals

(02:20):
to women and her sexuality to men. In the Western
Destrie Rides, again, Dietrich gets into a bar fight, a
real knockdown drag out with another woman rolling around the
floor before Jimmy Stewart dumps a bucket of water on
both of them, then Dietrich attacks him with a bottle,
a chair, and her fists. Incidentally, this is the movie

(02:41):
where she sings Boys in the back Room brilliantly parodied
by Madeline Kahn as I'm Tired in Blazing Saddles. Turns
out Dietrich wasn't afraid of a good fight in real life.
Destri came out in nineteen thirty nine, the year Hitler's
Germany invaded Poland, commencing World War Two, and Dietrich stepped
right into the breach to help her new beloved homeland,

(03:04):
the United States of America, defeat the country of her birth.
I don't think she was ever happier, more fulfilled than
when she was serving the Allied troops, Peter Reva told me.
Perhaps that's because she knew well what was at stake.
Born in Berlin as Marie Magdalena Dietrich in nineteen oh one,

(03:24):
Dietrich lost her father when she was just five. While
still a girl, she came up with the name Marlena
by fusing her first and second names. It was her
first act of self creation. She embarked on a career
in entertainment as a chorus girl in Berlin reviews and
then as an actress in the city's vibrant cinema scene.

(03:45):
Her breakout performance came as a cabaret singer in Joseph
von Sternberg's Blue Angel. Immediately, Paramount Studios came calling, and
Dietrich moved to Hollywood to star in a series of
six films in the early nineteen thirties, all directed by Sternberg.
She was usually cast in the role of a vamp
or femme fatale, but fast won a reputation for breaking

(04:08):
the rules. In nineteen thirty three, while sailing from New
York to France, she received a warning from Paris's chief
of police that should she arrive in the city wearing
men's trousers, she would be arrested, and so naturally, she
made sure to wear a white pantsuit when she disembarked.
The Paris papers hailed it as a revolution in fashion,

(04:29):
and the next day the chief of police showed up
with a bracelet inscribed with an apology. During the same
years that Dietrich was conquering Hollywood, Adolf Hitler was coming
to power back in Germany. Dietrich watched political developments in
her home country warily. Although the German government had banned
Blue Angel in nineteen thirty three, Sternberg was Jewish. Hitler

(04:52):
loved the film. He wanted Dietrich to return to Germany
to continue her career. As her grandson Peter Reva told me,
Marlena was staunchly opposed to autocrats and fascists. When she
got to that position of security and fame, she took
every opportunity she could to oppose the Nazis. German foreign

(05:12):
minister von Riebintroff came to visit her in nineteen thirty
seven at the Lancaster Hotel in Paris, bearing a mother's
cross to woo Marlena back to Germany. It would have
essentially made her Queen of Germany with the promise of
a care free life. She said no then and many
other times. Hitler never asked again, just labeled her a

(05:33):
traitor to the fatherland. Instead, Dietrich worked with Jewish emigrat
director Billy Wilder. Jews had been leaving Germany since the
Nazis came to power in nineteen thirty three, but in
nineteen thirty eight, with Krystelnacht, a nationwide pogrom against Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues,
and schools. The refugee problem became a crisis. Dietrich and

(05:57):
Wilder started a fund to spawn refugees, and Dietrich escrote
her entire salary from nineteen thirty seven's Night Without Armor
at four hundred and fifty thousand dollars per film, she
was one of Hollywood's highest paid stars to support the cause.
And then in nineteen thirty nine, this woman, who was
culturally German to the core, publicly renounced her home country

(06:22):
and became an American citizen. She made sure the cameras
were there when she was sworn in. She wanted the
oath of American citizenship to be captured on film, says Reva,
in order to send a message to the Third Reich
and good Germans for them to know she was taking
that stand. This didn't go over well back home. The

(06:43):
Nazi newspaper Dar Stormer wrote that she had been corrupted
from her years spent among the Jews of Hollywood, calling
her decision a betrayal of the fatherland. Dietrich didn't care,
but the bombing of Pearl Harbor she went further. In
nineteen forty two, she traveled throughout the United States to
promote the purchase of war bonds. Some estimates credit her

(07:06):
with raising a million dollars in sales. I am delighted
to have the opportunity to help my country in any
way I can, she told The New York Times that year.
I consider it a privilege, not a duty. She also
supported the government's wartime propaganda, which used German language radio
to demoralize the Nazi troops, but Dietrich's greatest efforts were

(07:29):
for the USO. In nineteen forty four and nineteen forty five,
she volunteered for multiple tours entertaining troops and prisoners of
war in Algeria, Italy, France, and Germany for eighteen straight months,
with more time at the front, Billy Wilder said, than
General Eisenhower. She earned a reputation for abiding the rough conditions,

(07:51):
a lack of electricity, sleeping intents, and for being willing
to tour near enemy lines. The closer the better, as
far as Dietrich was concerned. Riva recalls Danny Thomas, who
was a young comic at the time touring with Dietrich,
once said to me, your grandmother, laughing and shaking his head.
She tried to get us killed. We were performing our

(08:12):
act for five guys in a foxhole with howitzer as
firing overhead. She performed for as many as half a
million troops, singing and even playing the saw, which she
bowed like a violin. As a teenager, she had aspired
to be a concert violinist, until a severe wrist injury
dashed her hopes. She did some comic bits too. In

(08:34):
one act, she purported to be a mind reader. She
would call a serviceman up on stage and state that
she would tell the audience his thoughts. After a sly
look at the young man, she'd quip, oh, think of
something else. I can't talk about that. Actually, I think
Dietrich wanted to be a soldier, and you couldn't very
well be a soldier, so she fought her way, said

(08:55):
her daughter Maria Riva, mother of Peter, in a nineteen
ninety six British documentary. Maria Riva's acclaimed nineteen ninety two
memoir described Dietrich as not so much a mother as
a queen with her family as court. But on Dietrich's
contributions to the war effort. Maria Riva is unstinting. She
did a magnificent job. Certainly when she was finally overseas,

(09:18):
she practically was a soldier. She never said I was
with the USO. She was in the army. One of
Dietrich's more famous paramours, the actor Douglas Fairbanks Junior, claimed
that she entertained the idea of helping the Allied cause
in an even grander way by killing Hitler. Dietrich biographer

(09:39):
Charlotte Chandler quotes Fairbanks as saying that Dietrich toyed with
plans to seduce and then assassinate the German leader. Back
in the thirties, when Hitler still held out hopes that
Dietrich would return to Germany, Morlena suggested to Fairbanks that
she might accept the offer on the condition that she
be granted a private audience with the fear. Her plan

(10:01):
was to gush about Hitler, soften him up, and then
strike the fatal blow. When Fairbanks expressed skepticism about the plan,
surely she would be searched before being allowed to meet
privately with Hitler, she countered that she would subject herself
to a strip search and use a poisoned hair pen
as the lethal weapon. She always felt a responsibility to

(10:23):
do one hundred percent, says Peter Riva. If you detest
Hitler enough, you're going to give that one hundred percent
of your effort. After the war, the United States honored
its adopted citizen with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In
nineteen forty seven, France named her a Chevalier of the
Legion of Honor, Belgium a Knight of the Order of Leopold.

(10:45):
In nineteen sixty five, she became the first German and
the first woman to receive the Medallion of Valor from
the State of Israel. She was also honored by the
Jewish veterans of World War II, but not everyone honored her.
When she returned to Germany in nineteen sixty she encountered threats, protests,
and chants of Marlena go home from those who still

(11:08):
felt she had betrayed the nation. For the rest of
her life, she shared a bond with the young men
alongside whom she'd served. They were her boys, says Peter Reva.
She felt responsible for them, She felt grateful to them.
When she sang in Vegas the first time in nineteen
fifty three at the Sahara, many of her boys wore uniforms.

(11:29):
She called us the next morning, crying, happy that her
boys remembered and that she was able to thank them
once more. Every time I saw her perform London, Switzerland, Paris,
New York, Jersey, it was always the same. She'd ask
if any of her boys were in the audience. They'd
whoop and holler. She'd smile, flash a leg and sing provocatively.

(11:51):
They were hers and she was theirs. She knew their sacrifice.
Never forgot she loved this country, says Peter Reva. She
did loved the spirit of can do. When the first
space shuttle flew in nineteen eighty one, she called everyone
she knew to turn on the TV and watch. It
wasn't about space travel, it was about the American ability

(12:12):
to reach out, explore, improve try. She loved that Americans
built their lives on trying, persevering, the real immigrant spirit,
and she was an immigrant. This special episode of the
Mobituaries podcast is also included in the audiobook edition of Mobituaries.

(12:33):
While You Just Heard the Surprising History of Marlena Dietrich.
The Mobituary's audiobook is filled with stories you won't hear
on the podcast. You'll get profiles of presidents who aren't
on Mount Rushmore, tributes to cars now consigned to the
scrap heap of history, tales of long gone sports teams,

(12:54):
and dragons, Yes, dragons, you see, people believed in dragons
until well. Anyway, you can download the audiobook edition of
Mobituaries wherever you get your audio books. Thanks for listening.