Marlene Dietrich by Alex mather: 3D Gallery

Publicity photo of Marlene Dietrich for Paramount Pictures, 1936.

Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer. Throughout her long career, which spanned from the 1910s to the 1980s, she continually reinvented herself. In 1920s Berlin, Dietrich acted on the stage and in silent films

Young Marlene

Born on December 27, 1901, in Berlin, Germany, Marlene Dietrich had the given name Maria Magdalene Dietrich. In her teens, she gave up music to explore acting. She appeared in her first film, Tragedy of Love, in 1923. She explored notions of feminism with her femme fatale roles in films, such as in the film Morocco.

Charles I Triple Portrait

Charles I in Three Positions, also known as the Triple portrait of Charles I, is an oil painting of Charles I of England by Flemish artist Sir Anthony Van Dyck, showing the King from three viewpoints: left full profile, face on, and right three quarter profile. [more]

The Little Napoleon

Dietrich's film debut was a small part in the film The Little Napoleon (1923).^[17] She met her future husband, Rudolf Sieber, on the set of Tragedy of Love in 1923. Dietrich and Sieber were married in a civil ceremony in Berlin on 17 May 1923.^[18] Her only child, daughter Maria Elisabeth Sieber, was born on 13 December 1924.^[19]

Dietrich continued to work on stage and in film both in Berlin and Vienna throughout the 1920s. On stage, she had roles of varying importance in Frank Wedekind's Pandora's Box,^[20] William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew,^[20] and A Midsummer Night's Dream,^[21] as well as George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah^[22] and Misalliance.^[23] It was in musicals and revues such as Broadway, Es Liegt in der Luft, and Zwei Krawatten, however, that she attracted the most attention. By the late 1920s, Dietrich was also playing sizable parts on screen, including roles in Café Elektric (1927), I Kiss Your Hand, Madame (1928), and The Ship of Lost Souls (1929).^[24]

Traits

Marlene's image was far from standard at the time which was what made her so famous:

Low and sensual voice

Wearing tuxedoes, men's hats, and men's tailored suits

Her legs

Aura of glamour and luxury

Her signature scent was Bandit by Robert Piguet

Dietrich with airmen of the 401st Bomb Group (29 September 1944)

Dietrich was known to have strong political convictions and the mind to speak them. In the late 1930s, Dietrich created a fund with Billy Wilder and several other exiles to help Jews and dissidents escape from Germany. In 1937, her entire salary for Knight Without Armor ($450,000) was put into escrow to help the refugees. In 1939, she became an American citizen and renounced her German citizenship.^[1] In December 1941, the U.S. entered World War II, and Dietrich became one of the first public figures to help sell war bonds. She toured the U.S. from January 1942 to September 1943 (appearing before 250,000 troops on the Pacific Coast leg of her tour alone) and was reported to have sold more war bonds than any other star.

Random travia

She sucked lemon wedges between takes to keep her mouth muscles tight.

Marlene suffered from bacilophobia, the fear of germs.

Fell and broke her left leg at her last ever last stage appearance in Sydney, Australia, September 1975.

Became an American citizen on March 6, 1937.

Her father, a Berlin police lieutenant, died after he fell off a horse when she was ten years old.

Later life

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

In 1953, Dietrich was offered a then-substantial $30,000 per week^[48] to appear live at the Sahara Hotel^[49] on the Las Vegas Strip. The show was short, consisting only of a few songs associated with her.^[49] Her daringly sheer "nude dress"—a heavily beaded evening gown of silk soufflé, which gave the illusion of transparency—designed by Jean Louis, attracted a lot of publicity.^[49] This engagement was so successful that she was signed to appear at the Café de Paris in London the following year; her Las Vegas contracts were also renewed.^[50]

Final years

Dietrich's show business career largely ended on 29 September 1975, when she fell off the stage and broke her thigh during a performance in Sydney, Australia.^[70] The following year, her husband, Rudolf Sieber, died of cancer on 24 June 1976.^[71] Dietrich's final on-camera film appearance was a brief appearance in Just a Gigolo (1979), starring David Bowie and directed by David Hemmings, in which she sang the title song.

Death

An alcoholic dependent on painkillers, Dietrich withdrew to her apartment at 12 Avenue Montaigne in Paris. She spent the final 11 years of her life mostly bedridden, allowing only a select few—including family and employees—to enter the apartment. During this time, she was a prolific letter-writer and phone-caller. Her autobiography Nehmt nur mein Leben(Take Just My Life), was published in 1979.^[72]

Username:
Password:
Submit Cancel
Not a member? JOIN NOW!

Marlene Dietrich by Alex mather