November 5, 2019 • 13 mins
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. This special episode comes from the audiobook edition of MOBITUARIES. You can learn more here: http://bit.ly/MoAudio.
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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 Mobituaries book.
(00:53):
Marlena Dietrich was one hundred percent. In nine two, the
German borns Green 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 longtime lighting designer,
(01:17):
Joe Davis, was on hand to make sure her expectations
were met. Dietrich's twenty two year old grandson, Peter Reeva
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 on her face.
(01:38):
She kept telling him, waving a hand where to move
the light. The man called down. I think that's perfect,
Miss Dietrich. Joe Davis called up. Do 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. His reply, when
(01:59):
it begins to burn her eyes, she knows it is
a 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 to
(02:20):
women and her sexuality to men. In the Western destri
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 where she
(02:42):
sings Boys in the back Room brilliantly parodied by Madeleine
Khan as I'm Tired in Blazing Saddles. Turns out Dietrich
wasn't afraid of a good fight in real life. Destric
came out in ninety 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, the United States
(03:05):
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 Reeva told me. Perhaps
that's because she knew well what was at stake. Born
in Berlin as Marie Magdalena Dietrich, Dietrich lost her father
(03:26):
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. Her breakout performance came as
(03:47):
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 the rules. In n three,
(04:10):
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
pant suit when she disembarked. The Paris papers hailed it
as a revolution in fashion, and the next day the
chief of police showed up with a bracelet inscribed with
(04:33):
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 ninety three, Sternberg
was Jewish. Hitler loved the film. He wanted Dietrich to
(04:54):
return to Germany to continue her career. As her grandson
Peter Riva told me more, Lena 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 minister von Ribbentroff came to
visit her in seven at the Lancaster Hotel in Paris,
(05:18):
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 traitor to the fatherland. Instead, Dietrich worked
with Jewish emigrade director Billy Wilder. Jews had been leaving
(05:42):
Germany since the Nazis came to power in three, but
in eight, with Crystal Knocked a nationwide program against Jewish homes, businesses,
synagogues and schools, the refugee problem became a crisis, Dietrich
and Wilder started a fund to spawn her refugees, and
Dietrich s grote her entire salary from Seven's Night Without
(06:06):
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 ninety nine, this woman, who
was culturally German to the core, publicly renounced her home
country and became an American citizen. She made sure the
cameras were there when she was sworn in. She wanted
(06:28):
the oath of American citizenship to be captured on film,
says Riva, 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 Nazi newspaper Dark Stormer wrote that she had been
corrupted from her years spent among the Jews of Hollywood,
(06:50):
calling her decision a betrayal of the fatherland. Dietrich didn't care,
but the bombing of Pearl Harbor she went further. In
two she traveled throughout the United States to promote the
purchase of war bonds. Some estimates credit her with raising
a million dollars in sales. I'm delighted to have the
(07:10):
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 for the USO.
(07:30):
In ninety 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 a lack of electricity,
(07:52):
sleeping in tents, and for being willing to tour near
enemy lines. The closer the better, as far as a
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 act
(08:13):
for five guys in a foxhole with Howard Sirs. 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 one act, she
(08:34):
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 her daughter, Maria Riva,
(08:56):
mother of Peter, in British documentary re Maria Riva's acclaimed
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 U. S O. She was in the army.
One of Dietrich's more famous paramours, the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Claimed that she entertained the idea of helping the Allied
cause in an even grander way by killing Hitler. Dietrich
biographer Charlotte Chandler quotes Fairbanks is saying that Dietrich toyed
(09:43):
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 more. Lena suggested to
Fairbanks that she might accept the offer on the condition
that she be granted a private audience with the few
her Her plan was to gush about Hitler, soften him up,
(10:04):
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 hairpin as the lethal weapon. She always felt a
responsibility to do one percent, says Peter Riva. If you
(10:26):
detest Hitler enough, you're going to give that one percent
of your effort. After the war, the United States honored
its adopted citizen with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In Ye,
France named her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor
Belgium a Knight of the Order of Leopold. In nine
sixty five, she became the first German and the first
(10:49):
woman to receive the Medallion of Valor from the State
of Israel. She was also honored by the Jewish veterans
of World War Two, but not everyone honored her. When
she returned to Germany in nine sixty she encountered threats, protests,
and chance of Marlena go home from those who still
felt she had betrayed the nation. For the rest of
(11:11):
her life, she shared a bond with the young men
alongside whom she'd served. They were her boys, says Peter Va.
She felt responsible for them, She felt grateful to them.
When she sang in Vegas the first time in Ninette
at the Sahara, many of her boys wore uniforms. She
called us the next morning, crying, happy that her boys
(11:32):
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. They were
hers and she was theirs. She knew their sacrifice, never forgot.
(11:57):
She loved this country, says Peter Riva. She did loved
the spirit of can do. When the first space shuttle
flew in nineteen eight 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 to reach out, explore,
improve try. She loved that Americans built their lives on trying,
(12:19):
persevering the real immigrant spirit, and she was an immigrant.
This special episode of the Mobituaries podcast is also included
in the audio book edition of Mobituaries. While you just
heard the surprising history of Marlena Dietrich, the Mobituaries audio
book is filled with stories you won't hear on the podcast.
(12:41):
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, and dragons, Yes, dragons,
you see, people believed in dragons until well anyway. You
can download the audiobook edition of Mobituaries wherever you get
(13:04):
your audio books. Thanks for listening.
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 Mobituaries book.
(00:53):
Marlena Dietrich was one hundred percent. In nine two, the
German borns Green 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 longtime lighting designer,
(01:17):
Joe Davis, was on hand to make sure her expectations
were met. Dietrich's twenty two year old grandson, Peter Reeva
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 on her face.
(01:38):
She kept telling him, waving a hand where to move
the light. The man called down. I think that's perfect,
Miss Dietrich. Joe Davis called up. Do 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. His reply, when
(01:59):
it begins to burn her eyes, she knows it is
a 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 to
(02:20):
women and her sexuality to men. In the Western destri
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 where she
(02:42):
sings Boys in the back Room brilliantly parodied by Madeleine
Khan as I'm Tired in Blazing Saddles. Turns out Dietrich
wasn't afraid of a good fight in real life. Destric
came out in ninety 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, the United States
(03:05):
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 Reeva told me. Perhaps
that's because she knew well what was at stake. Born
in Berlin as Marie Magdalena Dietrich, Dietrich lost her father
(03:26):
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. Her breakout performance came as
(03:47):
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 the rules. In n three,
(04:10):
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
pant suit when she disembarked. The Paris papers hailed it
as a revolution in fashion, and the next day the
chief of police showed up with a bracelet inscribed with
(04:33):
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 ninety three, Sternberg
was Jewish. Hitler loved the film. He wanted Dietrich to
(04:54):
return to Germany to continue her career. As her grandson
Peter Riva told me more, Lena 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 minister von Ribbentroff came to
visit her in seven at the Lancaster Hotel in Paris,
(05:18):
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 traitor to the fatherland. Instead, Dietrich worked
with Jewish emigrade director Billy Wilder. Jews had been leaving
(05:42):
Germany since the Nazis came to power in three, but
in eight, with Crystal Knocked a nationwide program against Jewish homes, businesses,
synagogues and schools, the refugee problem became a crisis, Dietrich
and Wilder started a fund to spawn her refugees, and
Dietrich s grote her entire salary from Seven's Night Without
(06:06):
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 ninety nine, this woman, who
was culturally German to the core, publicly renounced her home
country and became an American citizen. She made sure the
cameras were there when she was sworn in. She wanted
(06:28):
the oath of American citizenship to be captured on film,
says Riva, 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 Nazi newspaper Dark Stormer wrote that she had been
corrupted from her years spent among the Jews of Hollywood,
(06:50):
calling her decision a betrayal of the fatherland. Dietrich didn't care,
but the bombing of Pearl Harbor she went further. In
two she traveled throughout the United States to promote the
purchase of war bonds. Some estimates credit her with raising
a million dollars in sales. I'm delighted to have the
(07:10):
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 for the USO.
(07:30):
In ninety 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 a lack of electricity,
(07:52):
sleeping in tents, and for being willing to tour near
enemy lines. The closer the better, as far as a
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 act
(08:13):
for five guys in a foxhole with Howard Sirs. 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 one act, she
(08:34):
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 her daughter, Maria Riva,
(08:56):
mother of Peter, in British documentary re Maria Riva's acclaimed
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 U. S O. She was in the army.
One of Dietrich's more famous paramours, the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Claimed that she entertained the idea of helping the Allied
cause in an even grander way by killing Hitler. Dietrich
biographer Charlotte Chandler quotes Fairbanks is saying that Dietrich toyed
(09:43):
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 more. Lena suggested to
Fairbanks that she might accept the offer on the condition
that she be granted a private audience with the few
her Her plan was to gush about Hitler, soften him up,
(10:04):
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 hairpin as the lethal weapon. She always felt a
responsibility to do one percent, says Peter Riva. If you
(10:26):
detest Hitler enough, you're going to give that one percent
of your effort. After the war, the United States honored
its adopted citizen with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In Ye,
France named her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor
Belgium a Knight of the Order of Leopold. In nine
sixty five, she became the first German and the first
(10:49):
woman to receive the Medallion of Valor from the State
of Israel. She was also honored by the Jewish veterans
of World War Two, but not everyone honored her. When
she returned to Germany in nine sixty she encountered threats, protests,
and chance of Marlena go home from those who still
felt she had betrayed the nation. For the rest of
(11:11):
her life, she shared a bond with the young men
alongside whom she'd served. They were her boys, says Peter Va.
She felt responsible for them, She felt grateful to them.
When she sang in Vegas the first time in Ninette
at the Sahara, many of her boys wore uniforms. She
called us the next morning, crying, happy that her boys
(11:32):
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. They were
hers and she was theirs. She knew their sacrifice, never forgot.
(11:57):
She loved this country, says Peter Riva. She did loved
the spirit of can do. When the first space shuttle
flew in nineteen eight 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 to reach out, explore,
improve try. She loved that Americans built their lives on trying,
(12:19):
persevering the real immigrant spirit, and she was an immigrant.
This special episode of the Mobituaries podcast is also included
in the audio book edition of Mobituaries. While you just
heard the surprising history of Marlena Dietrich, the Mobituaries audio
book is filled with stories you won't hear on the podcast.
(12:41):
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, and dragons, Yes, dragons,
you see, people believed in dragons until well anyway. You
can download the audiobook edition of Mobituaries wherever you get
(13:04):
your audio books. Thanks for listening.
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