Blue Angel

by Donald Spoto

  He also presented her to Paramount and to the world as a sublime but recognizably human creature—a new Garbo, but warmer, somehow more complex. Completely faithful to her own emotional logic, Dietrich/Amy has a tenderly radiant resignation throughout the film. And so carefully did von Sternberg set up every shot of her, so meticulously were the lights arranged that he could not often allow the more diffuse illumination of travelling shots. “The light source,” Dietrich commented later, “created my mysterious-looking face with hollow cheeks, effected by putting the key light near the face and very high over it.” This technique seemed to isolate her in the film, to detach her from the surroundings—until the great final retreat into the desert, where she is absorbed by the geography. She seems, until then, to inhabit her own continuum of time and space.

  FROM HER APRIL ARRIVAL THROUGH THE SUMMER’S shooting, Dietrich had maintained constant contact with Rudi and Maria, sending gifts every few weeks, with brief notes describing her life at home and at the studio (with discretionary exclusions). Her time with gentleman escorts had to be carefully scheduled to allow for press interviews, publicity and photo sessions, and enough rest to face von Sternberg’s camera six mornings each week. By the time production concluded in late August, she had seen none of California outside Los Angeles County. Her life, however rapidly her fame was spreading, was restricted to the precincts determined by work.

  The premiere of Morocco was held at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on November 24, 1930; just as Paramount’s executives had predicted during preview screenings, it was an instant and enormous success, and soon there were four Oscar nominations (none of them final winners): for von Sternberg, Dietrich, cinematographer Lee Garmes and art director Hans Dreier. This was the closest Dietrich ever came to an Academy Award.

  With a rapidity only a high-powered promoter could appreciate, things began to happen quickly. Paramount bought advertising and billboard space across the country heralding the arrival of a new Garbo, and as rave reviews poured in from critics and platoons of new fans, the studio was forced to send Dietrich two secretaries to cope with the avalanche of letters and requests for signed photos. Garbo, asked her opinion of this apparent counterpart, is supposed to have replied airily, “And who is this Miss Dietrich?” But actors, producers and directors jockeyed for a position near this Miss Dietrich’s table at the Coconut Grove, the Hollywood Roosevelt or the Club New Yorker. She was also mobbed at places like the Frisky Pom Pom Club, where she frequently went to see the lineup of female dancers in its revue called “Glorifying Hollywood’s Most Beautiful Girls.” At these venues the studio cannily arranged for her to be photographed—usually with von Sternberg or another escort, for the faint implication of scandal was very much part of the glamour. At the same time, Dietrich received letters proposing marriage or concubinage with unknown men, and offers of a lifetime of devotion from smitten women.

  All this adulation was in the starkest contrast to daily life at Paramount, where Dietrich worked hard to please her director—not only because she greatly respected him but also because she and Paramount needed him for the maintenance of her career. During Morocco as during the film they undertook immediately thereafter, she was tirelessly pursuing the demands of a difficult and exhausting craft. At work, instead of being rushed for autographs she was hurried from makeup to wardrobe at Marathon Street; in place of adulation from strangers at restaurants, she heard brusque orders from her director on the set: “Turn your shoulders away from me and straighten out . . . Drop your voice an octave and don’t lisp . . . Count to six and look at that lamp as if you could no longer live without it . . . Stand where you are and don’t move—the lights are being adjusted.” She was neither the first nor the last movie actor to sense a profound divergence in what life presented, a confusion of realms effected by brilliant celebrity and public adoration on one side, and on the other a fragile but arduous employment she knew could be terminated at the public’s or producers’ whims.

  To these separate signals Dietrich responded shrewdly, adding a touch of the heroic. She told the press she was Greta Garbo’s greatest fan and that no arriviste like herself could compete with so accomplished an actress. She then took the approach of the humble servant, repeatedly acknowledging her total reliance on von Sternberg’s genius with the subtle implication that she was a dutiful girl at the mercy of a ruthless sadist. For the final scene of Morocco (she told the press), he had forced her to walk barefoot in the desert, and when she fainted from the heat von Sternberg was so relentless that he corrected her pronunciation of the dialogue as soon as she was revived, and then asked for another take. By such methods she stressed her valorous, abject nature. Surely Hollywood had never seen her equal in this kind of self-promotion; even Garbo had limitations.

  BEFORE MOROCCO’S GREAT SUCCESS AND IN ADvance of the American release of The Blue Angel, Paramount renewed Dietrich’s contract that autumn, doubling her salary to 2,500 a week. Boldly imitating Garbo, who had her choice of director, Dietrich first insisted that her next film would also be under von Sternberg. The studio acceded to their respective terms, offering him complete freedom. “I made seven films with Marlene Dietrich,” von Sternberg said later; “in reality I wanted to make only two: The Blue Angel and Morocco. But she was bound by contract to a studio and she refused to work with anyone else. I did it reluctantly.” Bound she may have been—but only after she signed. She could have returned home, or requested another director; the collaboration, in other words, was due entirely to her insistence. And it endured because, for a time at least, the public wanted to see her.

  Aware of the Dietrich-Cooper affair and eager to exploit it to professional advantage, Paramount executives presumed he would agree to co-star in her next picture. They had not, however, sufficiently assessed the tension between the actor and director. Cooper announced his refusal to collaborate on Dietrich’s next film while von Sternberg was dictating the story and dialogue to Daniel N. Rubin, who had written The Texan the previous year for Cooper. Victor McLaglen was the unlikely substitute. Dishonored, as it was eventually called (against von Sternberg’s preference for X-27, the spy code name assigned to Dietrich’s character), went into production that fall, and at once the director’s initial vacillation was overcome in the story’s realization and the emotional pursuit of his presentation of Marlene Dietrich. According to the director’s son, the antiwar sentiments extolled in Dishonored were exactly those of von Sternberg, who had lost his brother in World War I combat.

  Morocco ended with Dietrich in white, in the blinding daylight of desert heat; Dishonored begins with the reverse image—she is wrapped in black on a city street corner at night, in a cold rainstorm. The narrative is basic Mata Hari, concerning a Viennese streetwalker (Dietrich) first seen adjusting her stockings and garters while pursuing her profession. She calmly tells a policeman, “I’m not afraid of life, but I’m not afraid of death, either.” Her remark is overheard by an intelligence chief who, after testing her loyalty, engages her to spy for Austria against Russia. She accepts, reflecting prophetically, “I’ve had an inglorious life; it may become my good fortune to have a glorious death.” At first she succeeds brilliantly, uncovering the traitorous activities of an Austrian general (Warner Oland). But then she falls in love with his contact, a Russian enemy agent (McLaglen), and after first collaborating in his capture, she arranges his escape.

  For this, she is convicted of treason and condemned to death. In her cell, she insists on wearing her prostitute’s clothes to the execution (“a uniform of my own choosing—any dress that I wore when I served my countrymen instead of my country”). Preparing to meet the firing squad, she asks a young officer for a mirror so she may adjust her veil; he draws his sword and she gazes at herself in its reflecting blade. He then escorts her to the execution site, offering a blindfold she uses instead to dry his tears. As the drumbeat begins, she marks herself with the sign of the cross and then we see, gradually, a luminous, triumphant smile on her face.


  The young officer then interrupts the execution: “I will not kill a woman! I will not kill any more men, either! You call this war? I call it butchery! You call this serving your country? You call this patriotism? I call it murder!” She takes advantage of this interruption to adjust her stockings (the exact gesture at the film’s opening) and, one last time, to apply lipstick. The young officer is replaced and the execution proceeds; the drumbeat accompanying the faithful Dietrich at the conclusion of Morocco is reprised here, but now the drums and rifleshots resonate like a carillon of honor. X-27 falls dead.

  In Dishonored, Lola Lola’s easy charm has been refined, sub-joined to Amy Jolly’s sober melancholy. X-27, an accomplished pianist, wears a medley of outfits, from a pilot’s rough leather suit to a padded disguise as a plump and giggling peasant girl. Tough but vulnerable, cynical but devoted, Dietrich and the character completely fuse; unpredictable, dangerous and irresistible to both countryman and enemy, she is ever intelligent and beguiling—exactly the adjectives a few perceptive critics often used to describe her when Dishonored was released. Her name led the billing for the first time, and deservedly so, for there was a new confidence, not merely an occasional, affected swagger.

  Languorously paced though it is, Dishonored advanced von Sternberg’s obsession with the complexities of a woman’s personality as he saw it refracted in Marlene Dietrich. The Blue Angel had disclosed something of his own feelings about her during and after their meeting, for he both saw and knew her as the unwittingly callous cabaret singer Lola Lola, with her artless ribaldry and unfeigned earthiness causing emotional chaos.

  But this had not described every possibility: in Morocco, Amy Jolly’s equally cynical and nomadic life as a performer finally revealed her own intrinsic yearning for a new nobility in love. Dishonored continued the logical development: the tarnished, wise and wandering Amy has become the jaded streetwalker, living within the code of her own honor and, at last, constant in love unto death—thus she can face the end with an almost blithe faith, blessing herself with the absolving sign of the cross.

  With Dishonored completed, Morocco widely released and The Blue Angel about to be, Dietrich took advantage of a hiatus in her contract to revisit Germany; when she departed, von Sternberg announced that in her absence he would make a film of Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy.

  Dietrich longed for Berlin society and was eager to return at Christmastime bearing the financial fruits of her labor for her daughter and for Rudi, to whom she felt she owed much. By this time her views on Hollywood were widely reported: she thrived only on her work with von Sternberg and she admired the efficiencies of the modern film industry, but there her fondness for the business ended. The New Yorker, on December 20, further reported that she stopped in New York to visit with James and Bianca Stroock, whom she surprised with a cache of lavish holiday gifts, in memory of their shipboard meeting.

  She stopped in London for the British premiere of Morocco, and by Christmas she was in Berlin where, in less than nine months, dramatic changes had occurred: the Nazis were now Germany’s second largest political party. Just as she was arriving home, many of her old friends and colleagues were preparing to depart. Soon she understood why.

  * Ironically, McCrea had rejected the role of Tom Brown before it was assumed by Cooper.

  7: 1931–1932

  FROM CHRISTMAS 1930 TO MID-APRIL 1931, Marlene Dietrich was on holiday. Her family reunion by all accounts was happy, lively and uncomplicated, as Dietrich gave time and gifts to her daughter and shared her Hollywood income with Rudi and Tamara. According to Dietrich’s friend and colleague Stefan Lorant, one of the binding elements in the lifelong Dietrich-Sieber friendship was precisely the amicable financial arrangement between them. Sieber was working as an associate producer and assistant director for Paramount, usually at the UFA studios. Six-year-old Maria, meanwhile, although tended mostly by Tamara, seemed to lack the neuroses one might have expected in a child to whom her mother was a virtual stranger.

  Unaware of budgets and indifferent to the concept of saving for the future, Dietrich had learned in Hollywood to be a free spender; much, after all, had been provided by the doting von Sternberg or the indulgent studio. By early 1931 she had accumulated the handsome after-tax sum of ten thousand dollars, much of which she began to spend prodigally.

  Away from the demands of moviemaking, Dietrich enjoyed the usual social whirl, and in the first weeks of 1931 she resumed a romantic liaison with the composer Peter Kreuder, for whom she had commissioned a song called “Peter,” which she recorded. Kreuder was intelligent and attractive, but sometimes there seemed something vaguely disconsolate about him that no one could quite decipher. The combination of wit, sex appeal and wistful ennui was a federation of charms she found irresistible. Together they frequented the theater, concerts and opera.

  Ever mindful of maintaining her controversial new eminence, however, she attended some events without escort. Learning that Charles Chaplin was visiting Berlin but was constantly protected from adoring hosts by ranks of police and bodyguards, she used the sheer force of her personality and a striking, mannish ensemble (grey serge suit, matching hat and shoes and a dark red tie) and forced her way past a security convoy into the Hotel Adlon. There she corralled a strolling photographer to take pictures of her strategically seated beside Chaplin, who stood by smiling but somewhat uncertain of her purpose. The photo makes it appear as though Chaplin is offering her a huge bouquet. She sent copies of the snapshot by the score to friends near and far, but mostly to her Hollywood secretary for distribution to the American press. In the film world she had quickly learned much more than technical matters.

  That April, Dietrich attracted her own mob of admirers. At half past midnight, she and Maria boarded the boat train at the Lehrter Bahnhof, with Paramount’s Berlin staff and representatives of the Lloyd steamship line assembled. The press had been duly alerted for the ceremony of her return to California with her daughter. Kreuder, weeping unashamedly, led a brass band, and a medley of sentimental farewell songs filled the night air. Wearing a leopard coat and a green felt hat, Dietrich waved, smiling one moment and solemn the next, perhaps to synthesize her mixed emotions. Rudi would not be leaving Berlin, she explained, because of professional commitments, but the correspondent for the New York Times added the widely known accessory fact—that Sieber did not want to go to Hollywood merely “to be Mr. Dietrich.”

  Mother and daughter had two other attendants: Gerda Huber had turned up again in Marlene’s life, and she was coming to America as private secretary and companion; and there was a nanny for Maria who also served as Dietrich’s maid. Whether the relationship between her and Gerda was still passionate cannot be determined; but with a few exceptions, Dietrich’s affairs with both men and women usually ran a swift, exhilarating carnal course before settling on the surer terrain of undemanding friendship.

  AFTER A SERENE TRANSATLANTIC CROSSING, THE foursome could not have been prepared for the crush of reporters and photographers in New York—nor for the unexpected greeting by a lawyer who leapt forward, nervously asked Dietrich’s identity and then pressed a thick envelope into her hand. Not until she reached the hotel did she read the enclosed documents, and then at once she cabled von Sternberg in Hollywood. His former wife, Riza Marks (known in her few minor screen appearances as Riza Royce, and by then living in New York State), was about to file suit retroactively against Marlene Dietrich for alienation of her ex-husband’s earlier affection, a charge newly made in light of an interview Dietrich had supposedly given to an Austrian journalist. Thus a libel charge was added to the so-called heart balm suit. The damages sought for these offenses would be a total of 600,000.

  The situation was somewhat bizarre from every viewpoint. For one thing, the von Sternbergs had been divorced since June 1930 and so he was evidently free to pursue his own life, with Dietrich or anyone else. But Mrs. von Sternberg’s attorneys claimed that she had a major case in light of the article in the N
eues Wiener Journal, in which Dietrich had, a year earlier, slandered her: “Mr. von Sternberg would have obtained a divorce even if he had never met me,” Dietrich was quoted as saying. “Between him and his wife serious differences have arisen. I may tell you that I value in him not only the artist but the man.” Dietrich stoutly denied ever uttering such indelicate and inflammatory remarks.

  Von Sternberg was outraged at Riza, and this led to an imprudent step taken in retribution: he ceased sending her regular alimony payments. This of course further complicated the problem, and as spring warmed to a torrid 1931 summer across America, so did Mrs. von Sternberg’s wrath blaze hotly. She cited him for contempt, he countered by paying only some of the moneys owed, and dates were set for court appearances in Los Angeles and New York. At the request of the cited parties, these were postponed until later that summer, and perhaps because no one involved was eager for the publicity, the case remained unknown to the press until then.

  AS WITH EVERYTHING RELATIVE TO HER PUBLIC LIFE, Dietrich depended on von Sternberg to manage the matter. In California, he had already rented an elegant, ten-year-old Mediterranean home for her at 822 North Roxbury Drive, on the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The house had a large rear yard with swimming pool, ample space for Gerda and the maid, and a large kitchen. For the first weeks, however, Dietrich religiously avoided that room: von Sternberg had greeted her with mild but firm criticism of the ten to fifteen pounds she had gained in Berlin, and until mid-May she subsisted on a diet of tomato juice and soda biscuits.

  Josef von Sternberg was, that spring of 1931, still more than mentor, manager and trainer to Marlene Dietrich. As a nod to the prevalent mores, he maintained a separate address, but soon it was widely known that he was living at Roxbury Drive and sharing the master suite with his star; their matching Rolls-Royce automobiles (hers bullet grey, his midnight blue) could be found parked each night in the crescent-shaped driveway. “Mr. von Sternberg loved good food,” Dietrich said with a wink years later. “So I went to the studio every day and did what he told me, and then I came home and cooked.” Dashiell Hammett, for one, kept his friends informed of industry gossip: von Sternberg and Dietrich, he reported to his mistress Lillian Hellman with typical irony, were “living in sin.”