THE BLUE ANGEL

The life and films of Marlene Dietrich

By David Stuart Ryan,
bestselling author of John Lennon's Secret

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Link to Chapter 5 of The Blue Angel

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First intimations of success

The cabaret had become big business in Berlin. Marlene joined actresses like Grete Mosheim and Leni Riefenstahl in visiting the hot spots in town. It was the Leni who was to make propaganda films for Hitler. He had a desire to be seen in the company of beautiful women and Leni received a dinner invitation from Hitler in the early 1930s where he went for a walk with her in the garden of the hotel and hugged her briefly before declaring he must devote himself to saving Germany.

The women often went to the lesbian clubs. In all the clubs outrageous humour was the great attraction, even more than the wildly suggestive dances where Marlene took female partners onto the floor and made love to them in front of the unshockable audience. The bystanders cheered them on as the couple kissed and stroked, fondled and undressed each other, flaunting bodies kept in shape by visiting men's gymnasiums to go through the rigorous workouts.

Another feature of the clubs was the very heavy use of cocaine by the decadent Russians, who had background and breeding but no money at all, they buried their bitterness in temporary forgetfulness but it was never enough. Marlene saw too many people die or fall into physical disrepair to ever want to let herself go. It helped to have been brought up as a good Prussian girl from an upper class background. She could never forget her appearance, and loved to be the centre of attention walking around in short skirts to show off her legs with no brassiere or undergarments of any kind. She became practised in flinging a high kick as she danced the tango to tantalise the watching men with a brief flash of womanly attraction. Often, these nights in the nightclubs and bars led on to parties at the great houses of the theatre directors and owners, so it was a case of mixing business with pleasure, the perfect recipe - they were to be paid for doing what they would have done anyway. One of those who frequented these parties was the wife of Erich Pommer, a highly influential producer at UFA. Thanks to this society hostess who delighted in introducing the up and coming to the influential, Marlene's name began to get known in the right circles.

Eventually, after several false starts at the casting sessions, she landed the part of a coquette in a UFA film at the Neubabelsberg studios. It was titled Manon Lescaut and directed by Arthur Robison with Lya de Putti as the female star. Marlene was to be Micheline, a pavement caf‚ provocateur who merely had to raise her head and flutter an eyelid to create a stir. Less can mean more, a lesson Marlene had learned in the experimental theatre, the Kammerspiele, where Max Reinhardt liked to stage his more progressive plays. The theatre was tiny compared to the 3,000 seat Grosses Schauspielhaus beside it, indeed the large theatre had formerly been a circus in the Berlin of Marlene's childhood when spectacle and vaudeville were the great crowd attractions before the coming of motion pictures.

On the cinema screen the smallest gesture is picked up and magnified by the camera so, just as she had in the Kammerspiele, Marlene made economy of movement her trademark. A look, a sigh, a raised finger, these were enough to signal inner power if handled with style. And in the Berlin of the 1920s if you had style you could carry anything off. People dressed the part, acted the part, nothing was as it seemed. Remarkably, the right clothes, the right manners could carry you into the inner sanctums of the rich and famous, the old barriers had disappeared with much else.

Even though Marlene had simply to play herself as the coquette in the cafe who becomes a nobleman's mistress, and then only for a few brief scenes, the sheer richness of the costumes and the production made the movies seem ever more desirable to her. She could dress in the most flattering and lavish dresses, although like a lot of young women she had taken to wearing men's jackets and trousers, and made her father's old monocle a virtual trademark. The Berliner Zeitung referred to the 'exceptionally pretty Marlene Dietrich' in the newspaper notices and she was getting known as a character around Berlin theatrical and cinema circles, though even she had to work at the outrageousness. The Kurfurstendamm was packed with tourists from all over Europe. They came to Berlin to see the cabaret, and go off with the tantalisingly young beautiful schoolboys and schoolgirls who hung about on the street corners ready for a brief assignation. Everything had a price in Berlin. More important, there was always someone ready to pay it.

By the beginning of 1926 the roaring sounds of the Jazz Age were ringing in Berliners' ears from America. Marlene started to carry a portable gramophone round with her to the clubs so that she could dance to the latest hits from Broadway, and later in the night at the more intimate clubs like 'Always Faithful' - for girls - she played the jazz sounds of the negro musicians who were releasing sexual innuendo into their very receptive ears. Almost without realising it, Marlene found herself becoming the breadwinner, out all night making contacts - and having an uproarious time - while Rudi, former playboy and escort to numerous beautiful actresses, had become the stay-at-home husband. But he was eager for her to progress in her career. Being seen on the social scene was an essential part of her strategy for advancement. She told Rudi about her flings with cameramen and film technicians, it was a way of learning about her chosen trade, only a complete mastery of its technicalities would allow her to establish dominance, and behind the bravura, this is what she had set her sights on. Love and career were two sides of the same existence, the film world was where she spent most of her time in one form or another, and penetrating the very layered and hierarchical system of Berlin theatre and films took immense persistence.

Marlene's first booking in 1926 was as a girl of easy virtue who could easily descend into the raffish criminal existence that was real enough outside the theatre's doors. Called Duell am Lido - 'Duel at the Lido' - the film was a social satire on the times. The director ordered her to wear her lesbian club outfit of trousers and jacket, with monocle. Marlne brought the mad frivolous gaiety of the bars outside to the part, and the audience immediately recognised the accuracy of the portrayal, probably thinking it exaggerated when in reality it was a pale version of what happened nightly in an arts world populated by the wealthy and criminal who liked to associate with actresses.

Then, the director Alexander Korda, who was to become a good friend, cast her as a coquette again, this time in his film Eine du Barry von Heute - 'A Modern Du Barry'. It was a vehicle for Korda to show off his wife Maria, but it did give Marlene the chance to dress in lavish modern dress. She loved the meticulous care that went into preparing her evening gowns coverered in sequins and the glamor of the fur wraps. This world she had sensed from Grandma Felsing and she took to the style as her right and inheritance. The film's super contemporary theme was how the right dress could open doors. But it was not a great critical success. To keep the money flowing Marlene agreed to take a part in the crowd for Korda's next film, Madame wunscht keine Kinder - 'The Lady Doesn't Want Children', as long as he employed Rudi as his assistant. It had been months since Rudi had been able to pick up work and it was depressing him. He had won her with his aura of influence and power at the film studios, Marlene in return had to use her influence on his behalf. She did not mind at all, but he did.

After this rapid succession of films, the theatre claimed Marlene's loyalties. Briefly, in the late summer, she joined two legendary cabaret artists who were in a show called Von Mund zu Mund' - 'From Mouth to Mouth'. There was the husky voiced Zarah Leander, and the even more rasping voice of Claire Waldoff to accompany her in introducing the near 20 scenes in a four-hour production. Marlene also had to sing three songs, the first time she had sung on stage although she had put in good practice at the cabarets when money was tight, singing, going round bare breasted serving drinks to rich patrons, sitting on their knees, cooing in their ears, there was always a way to get the housekeeping if you were a pretty young thing, and Berlin flappers were famous throughout Europe for their lively naughty ways! The next year, 1927, Marlene recorded the songs on record. One of them, Leben ohne Liebe, has become a classic. Listen to it and you hear the authentic voice of Jazz Age Berlin, the seductive call of a city regretting its past and immersing itself in a hectic present to bury it for good.

Marlene felt a strong sexual attraction for Claire Waldoff, she was everything she was not: small, thick set, a schoolmistressy face, very masculine in dress with her blouses and ties. Accompanying the butchness was a tremendous sense of parody in songs like 'Willi' where she mocked the Kaiser and all this pretensions, she even included herself in these pretensions. Marlene and Claire liked to wander off arm in arm after the theatre to serenade the crowds going home, giving off a bonhomie that reflected their happiness. Marlene let Claire take her in a way she felt unable to do with a man where she much preferred to take the lead astride them, waving her arms to the skies as she rode them in Valkyrian triumph. Claire turned Marlene into a passive femme fatale, she gripped her in iron thighs and nearly squeezed the life out of her, forcing Marlene to submit to her demands for affection and tribute. Marlene found she could release her passive feminine side. But the greatest most lasting lesson she learned was not to take anything too seriously, that philosophy was not only the cornerstone of her cabaret act, it was her. She did not worry who knew about her sexual preferences, and from then on, nor did Marlene. Woman lovers represented an undemanding love, a simple exchange of affection after the complications of the man/woman relationship, where she felt she had to gratify the man's wishes in order to win them to her, for she was certainly not going to allow herself to be enslaved to any man, they had figured little in her early life as a girl, and it was not something she was going to change easily. Rudi, though he hardly approved, let Marlene have her fling with Claire, and before too long it had cooled to a mostly chaste friendship.

Soon a more demanding affair was captivating Marlene's heart, for she had very little control of where her affections - and her loins - might take her. Early in 1927, after a quick couple of comedy films produced by Ellen Richter, one of which Kopf Hoch, Charley - 'Head up, Charley!' - became a big box office success, she was cast in a show called 'Broadway' which featured hoodlums, clubs, jazz and chorus girls. She was cast as one of the chorus girls at the 'Paradise Club' and revelled in the opportunity to play in straight theatre a role long familiar to her from the Guildo Theilscher touring company of 12 girls, which had given her the first entrance into show business. Around this time Guildo celebrated his 50 years in the business with the party to end all parties . The hedonistic mood of Berlin was infectious. The highly successful show was transferred to Vienna, and Marlene seized the opportunity to visit the city leaving Rudi to mind the baby. A new leading man was introduced, the Austrian actor Willi Forst, who was 26, just a year older than herself. Marlene tumbled for him, he was already a well known star in Vienna and they were seen at all the fashionable night spots, arm in arm. He had humour and wit without being weighed down by German seriousness and was just the person to take Marlene even further out of herself than Claire Waldorf. A producer who saw 'Broadway' on only the second night, offered her an audition for a film he was planning, 'Caf‚ Electric', with Willi Forst as the male lead. Although it was her first female lead, Marlene took great care to feign indifference to his offer especially as there was to be a film test that Sascha Film, a subsidiary of UFA, insisted upon. Even though the film test, where Willi and Marlene played a love scene with great conviction, was not regarded as sufficiently good, Willi insisted that Marlene play the part of the spoilt rich businessman's daughter who he seduces in the Caf‚ Electric with his gigolo ways. The Austrian star got his way and Marlene her first lead. As they shot the love scenes for real and repeated them, the heat between the couple was there for all the world to see on camera. Rudi arrived in Vienna as talk of the romance found its way into the flourishing gossip columns that talked of nothing but the lifes of the glamorous new film stars seen to live in a different universe from the man in the street. Rudi issued an ultimatum. Either Marlene stopped the romance with Willi or he would end the marriage. Marlene was briefly stunned. Then he announced he had a long term girlfriend, Tamara Matul, a Russian dancer, who he would move into the family apartment if Marlene did not agree. Never one to compromise, Marlene let him move Tamara in. She would, she guessed, provide more of a mother figure for little Maria than she was able to do faraway in Vienna.

The taste of stardom and being the talk of the gossip columns in Vienna was sweet. 'Broadway' had launched Marlene in Berlin society, helped by a little number where she cycled her legs on stage under the searching brightness of the theatre spotlights, the sensational routine was straight from Marlene's training routine in the men's gyms. It had a stunning effect on the theatre audiences. Her long perfect legs became the talk of first Berlin and then Vienna. One evening she received a request from the Sascha film company. Count Kolowrat, the owner, was dying from cancer, he wanted her to grace his bedroom to flash her legs before him as his dying wish. He was a gargantuan man who weighed some 360 pounds. Marlene dutifully appeared in his bedroom and surveyed the tragic fate of the man, bedridden and not long for this world. With a smile and whirl she went through her routine, flashing her legs and naked thighs before him. With a dismissive wave the poor creature indicated he had had enough. But the incident was talked about. Count Kolowrat was a partner of Alfred Hugenburg who owned the UFA film studios. In 1928 upon Marlene's eventual return to Berlin she received an equally strange request from Alfred Hugenburg. Would she attend the opera after a dinner at the Olympus Club in Berlin where he had a very important guest he wished to entertain and impress? She naturally complied, taking along Carl Zuckmayer, a writer who had sympathies for a National Socialist party that was causing waves in Bavaria. The guest of the evening was Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialists. Hugenburg, who had great wealth and influence, was prepared to deal with the Nazis as part of his campaign to restore the old conservative German values. He wanted Hitler to sign a pact of co-operation with him, in return he would give the Nazis prominent coverage in his newspapers.

Marlene never spoke of her meeting with the 'horrible little Austrian dwarf' but even her description speaks of some knowledge of his physical presence. He seemed to drain women he came in contact with and produce a mixed fascination and horror. Two of the few people alive who can confirm this personal contact between the future Hollywood star and the dictator are Leni Riefenstahl and Billy Wilder. Perhaps indicating her still smouldering resentment Leni Riefenstahl denies that she and Marlene were ever friends claiming they only met two or three times whereas in fact they used to frequent the same caf‚s in the Kurfurstendam on a regular basis besides working in the same studios and socialising in the tightly knit film crowd circles. While Billy Wilder while casting Marlene in a later film as a German with a past who meets Nazis at the opera (he can hardly resist basing his films on real life incidents) prefers to write his own story of the encounter.

Hitler was charm itself at the opera. It had been his greatest treat when poor and living on a small orphan's pension in Vienna in the period between 1907 and 1913. His attempts to gain an entrance to the Art Academy had confirmed him in his rage at the Jewish conspiracy that robbed him of recognition for his artistic skills and he had had to survive by painting tourist postcards and pictures sold to Jewish dealers. But gratitude for this help when he was down on his luck were conspicuously absent from a man badly damaged in his emotional responses from early youth. The strict old customs official and his much younger wife between them set up a marked need in the oldest surviving son to both rebel against authority and grovel before sadistic punishment when his father was around and then to bathe in his mother's unquestioning love when the father was absent. Ever after he sought this adoration, first from a specific woman and then from a nation as Germany became his great love.

There was a sinister air to the club in the presence of this drab small Austrian. Marlene found herself both repulsed to gaze upon him and yet drawn back again and again to the dark pits of his eyes. They had a mesmeric quality, no light emitted from the pupils, there was only darkness. He was charming enough that evening, trying to laugh and smile, but she sensed the absolute control he exerted over himself, and his control over everyone else, he appeared to be able to make everyone dance to his tune, to orchestrate them like puppets, it was as if he were the only person truly alive in the room, everyone else seemed false in comparison to this man who burned with a fierce primitive energy. Hugenburg knew Hitler liked to be seen in the company of beautiful women, which was why he had invited his top actresses to be present for the evening. Hitler acknowledged Marlene with the ghost of a smile, when she was introduced at his table and then he got back to his true passion, the political business. All night long she watched as he dominated everyone there by his presence, hardly moving, nodding occasionally, affecting the dapper ways of a man of influence, even though they all knew his power came from his storm troopers who ferociously attacked any who dared oppose them, so savage were the beatings that people often died under the bullying blows from feet, iron bars and knives. It had been the preferred tactic on the streets of Munich where he had tried to seize power five years before, on that occasion the state forces had been too strong for his few followers but though still small his party was growing in numbers in the conservative south of Germany. Marlene left the club that evening with a deep sense of foreboding about what would happen to Germany with Hugenburg and Hitler in league together.

Three years later she heard how Hitler's niece, Geli Rabaul, had committed suicide after being humiliated sexually. There were rumours it was Hitler who had pushed her to these extremes. The talk was of how he had liked to draw Geli wide open in graphic detail, and these pictures had found their way into the hands of a blackmailer. It was also said that his sexual tastes included Geli crouching over his face while he studied her genitals and grovelled beneath protesting his worthlessness with the climax achieved by him demanding she urinate over him. Later still Marlene remembered this story when yet another of the women Hitler had known intimately committed suicide. This time it was Renate Mller, another actress, who reported that she had been invited to the Chancellery for the night to gratify the Chancellor's pleasure. After she removed her clothes he started grovelling on the floor at her feet and demanding she kick and humiliate him, all the time feverishly denouncing his baseness and worthlessness. Terror was added to the proceedings by his sexual overtures commencing with a description of Gestapo torture methods. Marlene remembered Hitler's wish for the showgirls in the club to parade their bottoms before him as though about to be buggered. The man was a pervert, nothing was beyond him, she had known that immediately, well before he had the opportunity to play out his obscene obsessions before a wider audience. To the Berliners he was a provincial who could be safely played along, Hugenburg promised the former corporal a handsome financial support in return for Hitler's backing of his aims.

But the formative years in Vienna stayed with Hitler, even more than in Berlin there was a fetid doomed atmosphere there in the days leading up to the First World War. He had absorbed all this explosive and fated decay as the Habsburg Empire tottered towards its end, an end Hitler had predicted and which had fatally infected him as well as it had infected artists like Gustav Mahler and Klimt, while Freud probed the psyche of Vienna and found sex and death irretrievably mixed in the souls of the Viennese. It was the same atmosphere that von Sternberg himself had absorbed in his early years. Now was to come a film that depicted as never before the attractions and entrapments of this extreme sado-masochistic view of life. By the time it was over the whole world would be exposed to such a view of human relationships. The depictors were to be Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich playing out in life and on film a relationship heavily tinged with both masochism and sadism in a heady intoxicating brew made possible by the dream machine of the modern cinema.