Marlene Dietrich (1901 - 1992) was a German-American actress and singer whose career spanned Weimar cabaret, Hollywood cinema and the international concert stage. Her performance as Lola Lola in The Blue Angel (1930) brought her to Hollywood, where she developed one of the most distinctive screen personas of the studio era. [1] She rejected offers from the Nazi regime to return to Germany, took American citizenship in 1939 and spent much of the Second World War entertaining Allied troops, for which she received the Medal of Freedom. [2]
Early life
Marie Magdalene Dietrich was born on 27 December 1901 in the Rote Insel district of Schöneberg, Berlin, the daughter of a police officer. She contracted the name Marlene from her first two names while still a schoolgirl. [1]
She trained seriously as a violinist, including a period of study in Weimar, but abandoned the instrument after a wrist injury. She turned to the stage, attending Max Reinhardt's drama school in Berlin and taking chorus and small theatre parts before moving into silent film in the 1920s. [2]
The Blue Angel and Hollywood
Her breakthrough came when Josef von Sternberg cast her as the cabaret singer Lola Lola in The Blue Angel, shot simultaneously in German and English in 1929 and released in 1930. The film and its song Falling in Love Again made her internationally famous. [3]
Paramount signed her and she moved to the United States, where she and von Sternberg made six further films including Morocco, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus and The Scarlet Empress. Her performance in Morocco brought her an Academy Award nomination, and her androgynous tailoring and the films' elaborate lighting became defining elements of her image. [1]
After a run of commercial failures in the mid-1930s she re-established herself with the western comedy Destry Rides Again in 1939, and later worked with directors including Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and Orson Welles, notably in Witness for the Prosecution and Judgment at Nuremberg. [2]
Wartime service
Dietrich publicly opposed the Nazi government and declined its invitations to work in German cinema. She became a United States citizen in 1939 and during the war sold war bonds, recorded propaganda broadcasts in German and made long front-line tours for the United Service Organizations in North Africa, Italy and Europe. [3]
Her wartime work was honoured with the American Medal of Freedom and with successive grades of the French Legion of Honour. Her recording of Lili Marleen became closely associated with the period. [1]
Concert career and later life
From the early 1950s Dietrich developed a stage act of songs and monologue that toured theatres and cabarets across the world for two decades, with musical arrangements by Burt Bacharach. Her return performances in Germany in 1960 attracted both large audiences and protest. [2]
A fall on stage in 1975 effectively ended her performing career. She withdrew to an apartment in Paris, where she lived in seclusion for her final years, taking part in Maximilian Schell's 1984 documentary Marlene only as a recorded voice. She died in Paris on 6 May 1992 at the age of 90 and was buried in Berlin. [1]
Legacy
Dietrich's estate, including thousands of costumes, photographs and documents, was acquired by the city of Berlin and forms a collection at the Deutsche Kinemathek. [4] The American Film Institute ranked her among the greatest female screen legends of classic Hollywood, and her influence on fashion, particularly the acceptance of trousers and tailored suits in women's dress, is widely acknowledged.
