by Donald Spoto
Predictably, Dietrich was pleased at the news of Maria’s separation and urged her to get on with her career. But there was no time for maternal fussing. After nearly four straight years of professional disappointments and a long period of depression, Marlene Dietrich knew that she would have to take drastic steps to alter her destiny. Films were failing her; lovers had departed; age was an unavoidable fact.
During her bond tour, Dietrich had learned more about an important venture involving actors in the war effort, and to this she now turned her full attention. The United Service Organization—always referred to simply as the USO—had been founded in 1941 to provide off-duty recreational, social, welfare and spiritual facilities for the American military at home and abroad. Originally a consortium of social services (the YMCA and YWCA, the National Catholic Community Service, the National Jewish Welfare Board, the Salvation Army and the National Travelers Aid Association), the USO became a war agency after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that precipitated America’s entry into World War II. In towns near military posts as well as near battle lines in Europe and the Pacific, volunteers offered servicemen entertainment, meals and often dances. Its New York branch, the Stage Door Canteen, attracted Broadway actors to such volunteer work, and the Hollywood chapter (under Bette Davis, Orson Welles and many others) did likewise.
By 1945 there were over twenty-five hundred USO Clubs, and the USO Camp Shows were an important feature: supported by voluntary contributions, more than four thousand Americans went to posts and hospitals round the world and served more than a billion persons. Among the Camp Show entertainers were many celebrity performers popular in the 1940s who gave time and talent to appear for the armed forces (often at considerable personal risk near battle lines); their number included Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Bing Crosby, Betty Grable, Frances Langford, George Jessel, Jo Stafford—and Bob Hope, whose officer jokes and risqué wit made him a particular favorite, and who subsequently made troop entertainment a primary adjunct of his career.
The only pleasant interval in Dietrich’s life recently had been one day’s filming of Welles’s magic act, before a live audience of servicemen. That picture’s name had just been changed to Follow the Boys, and as the bells rang in the New Year 1944, that was precisely what she decided to do.
* This was a problem from 1933 to 1945. Dietrich was a Russian in The Scarlet Empress and Knight Without Armour, Spanish in The Devil Is a Woman, vaguely Middle European in The Garden of Allah, English in Angel, and French in Desire, Destry Rides Again, Seven Sinners, The Flame of New Orleans and Manpower. In The Lady Is Willing, The Spoilers and Pittsburgh the characters’ national origin was simply not specified, and she was, of all things, an Iraqi in Kismet.
* Such period films were popular escapist fare during the 1940s, since the narrative could blithely omit any mention of the war. Also, the roles “masked” popular stars whose accents indicated nationalities unpopular at the moment. From 1939, the German Dietrich was conveniently hidden in the American West, the South Seas, New Orleans, Alaska, Pittsburgh and Baghdad.
* Earlier, Maria had been engaged very briefly to the actor Richard Hayden, a bachelor almost twenty years older.
12: 1944–1945
ON MARCH 20, 1944, MARLENE DIETRICH entertained more than twelve hundred soldiers based at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Wearing an elegant long-sleeved, flesh-colored net gown with gold sequins, she was every inch the elegantly sultry Hollywood star the men in uniform recognized. She sang “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have” (from her 1939 film Destry Rides Again) and her signature tune, “Falling in Love Again” (from The Blue Angel). She then played “Pagan Love Song” on the musical saw. After that, Marlene Dietrich’s accompanist, a thirty-year-old nightclub entertainer from Michigan named Danny Thomas, assisted her in a mental telepathy act she had learned in Hollywood from Orson Welles. She recruited soldiers from the audience, engaging them in the trick and exchanging racy anecdotes. The crowd went wild, and her tumultuous reception confirmed Dietrich’s resolve to go abroad to the front lines, to entertain as many young men as she could.
From Fort Meade, Dietrich proceeded to New York, where final papers were put in order for her to entertain troops in Europe; accordingly, she spent the last of her savings on a chic tan hat from John-Frederics and, from Franklin Simon, a fashionable olive gabardine suit with beige scarf. The colors may have been military, but the outfit was strictly Beverly Hills/Park Avenue. Dietrich had no intention of disappointing the boys she was following to camp. She also learned at this time that she would have the simulated rank of major in the United States Army: USO entertainers were routinely given rank so that, if captured, they might hope to be treated like officers. (Danny Thomas was merely captain.)
While in New York, she also learned a great deal about live performances from Thomas, an expert showman who taught her the fine points of phrasing and breath control for singing and the right comic timing for her repartee. All this was new to her. “He taught me everything,” Dietrich said later of Thomas; “how to deal with an audience, how to answer if they shout, how to play them, how to make them laugh. Above all, he taught me how to talk to them.” Together the pair continued to refine and rehearse what quickly became her one-woman show: Dietrich at the microphone singing, Dietrich playing the saw, Dietrich trading jokes, Dietrich telling stories, Dietrich encouraging the troops, Dietrich hosting a telepathy act.
At this point in her wartime service, her wardrobe, her array of cosmetics, her musical preparations—everything in her possession and attitude, in fact—indicated that she was indeed preparing to establish herself as a solo entertainer, to disprove those who claimed that her string of movie failures from 1940 to 1943 spelled the end of a career.
In this regard, Dietrich’s volunteer service is easy to understand, for many actresses and singers performed USO work—especially those not under contract or committed to a specific film. But in her case this was not only her way of demonstrating good citizenship, it was also a means to gain the male attention she thrived on and the public adoration she required.
As a star, too, there was something of noblesse oblige in this, as in all her menial efforts for others: in this case, she was the queen mother (if not quite any longer regnant), visiting her men in action. In another sense, of course, it was the logical extension of her “manly woman” role, which had long conjoined her own character with those she played in the von Sternberg films. She was, then, at last becoming one of the boys, the ambiguous and ambivalent woman-in-drag, the masculinized female who identified with men, loved them for themselves and as surrogates of herself, the woman of an embattled era who was striving to be all things to all men and women. Some of this psychospiritual medley was perhaps commingled in the murky depths of motivation as she entered the USO, claiming she wanted only to help the boys in battle. There had been no precedent in her character for such single-minded, altruistic sacrifice, after all. And human psychology is never so simple as to admit of a single basis; “only God is Love straight through,” as Thomas More said. And whatever Dietrich’s primary, conscious intentions, her purpose and her courage would soon be tested—in an ordeal worse than any devised by a tyrannical movie director.
ON APRIL 2, MARLENE DIETRICH BOARDED AN AIRplane for the first time in her life—a C-54 transport she took from New York with Danny Thomas and a little troupe who would perform supportively in their act: comedienne and harmonica player Lynne Mayberry, pianist-guitarist Jack Snyder and Milton Frome, a “straight man” for the humorous repartee. Not until they were airborne, huddling together for warmth and drinking steaming mugs of coffee to fight the cold, were they permitted to open a sealed envelope with their destination: Casablanca. They might have imagined themselves a road company banding together for a reprise of the previous year’s popular movie romance with that city’s name for its title—until a fierce electrical storm raged round the plane, tossing the passengers like so many rag dolls for several hours. Eve
ryone was desperately ill except the star, as Lynne Mayberry recalled. Dietrich covered the soldiers with blankets, poured Danny Thomas and herself tumblers of smuggled scotch whiskey (which he promptly threw up) and distracted her companions from the unpleasant flight by telling stories of Berlin in the twenties. Her protective instincts had perhaps never been so beneficially demonstrated.
With stops for refueling in Greenland and the Azores, the flight to North Africa took twenty-two hours. They finally reached Casablanca, Morocco’s chief port, at night and (because of the blackout) without benefit of runway lights. The poorly heated airplane had given Dietrich a chill, and she was exhausted after only three hours of fitful sleep. Casablanca was no idyllic spot, however, nor were there attractive characters like Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart or Paul Henreid greeting them in sparkling white suits. An eerie calm had settled over the city, site of the previous year’s Anglo-American Conference that had planned the Allied bombing offensive known as “Pointblank” in preparation for the invasion of Europe. Everywhere were military units and English, American and Canadian soldiers on the exacting rounds of their duties.
The Camp Show volunteers, separated from the GIs, were then bundled into a hastily requisitioned Red Cross convoy truck. Officers from the American base charged with the show had been misinformed of their arrival date, and there were no quarters for them. Finally a bungalow was found, for which modest would be too extravagant a word—it was a damp, cold, putrid hut near soldiers’ barracks. Without a word of complaint, Dietrich settled into a single room with her five companions. She had not come expecting much comfort, she told Danny Thomas, and with that she found the crude latrine, then returned to the group, pushed her hair under her cap and, curling up in her uniform and a regulation bomber jacket, tucked herself in for the night. Four sequined evening dresses, intended for her show, were wrapped in a knapsack; these she used for a pillow.
The next afternoon, Dietrich and company performed their first show. To cacophonous whistling and hooting, she stepped onto a makeshift platform behind an outpost of the Free French, sang a medley from her films and began her mind-reading routine. But the success of this telepathy stunt depended on a careful set of signals between her and Danny Thomas, and as she tried to make her way through the first few rows of the audience she was whirled around, asked for autographs, a kiss, an impromptu dance and a view of her famous legs. The act was sabotaged, but no one seemed to care.
From Casablanca the troupe proceeded, hugging the North African coast to Rabat and then Tangiers. Dietrich performed twice daily for gatherings of American and Allied forces along the road, coping constantly with short supplies of water and soap, erratic microphone systems and sudden windstorms. There were, of course, neither limousines nor gourmet cuisine—no comfort of any kind, in fact: Dietrich travelled in open jeeps and ate regulation tinned food. Nothing could have been in greater contrast to her comfortable life in California, but she was in her element—one of the lads, indeed. “Wherever I went to entertain troops, there were frankfurters and sauerkraut,” she told a foreign correspondent. “Frankfurters and sauerkraut, all over. And always outdoors. Even when there was an indoors, we ate outdoors, often in the rain, with rain on the food and cold grease running down. We didn’t mind. It was food, and millions were perishing of starvation in Russia.” At the Strait of Gibraltar, Dietrich asked the driver to stop. She jumped out, saying she had a dear friend in France, and stood tearfully for several moments, gazing across the water. Her thoughts for Jean Gabin may have been clear and tender, but geography was never her strong suit.
After a stopover in Oran, they arrived in Algiers on April 11. To Dietrich’s surprise, Gabin was there to greet her, for his transfer into France had not yet been arranged. The couple, according to Danny Thomas, “attached themselves to each other so amorously that the GIs cheered for at least five minutes while they clutched and kissed in full view of everyone.” They had a day-and-a-half reunion before Gabin finally left Algiers.
At the Opera House, the wail of air-raid sirens interrupted her performance several times, and she had to be hauled offstage and pushed to the floor by Thomas and Mayberry (“I was more afraid about my teeth than my legs!” Dietrich said). Later, she stood with soldiers and civilians on the waterfront, peering at flashes of orange and yellow light which, they were told, were airfire from Allied Beaufighters as they shot down three Junker 88s and a Dornier 217 only a few miles offshore. Flying from bases in Occupied France, the Germans were attempting attacks on convoys like hers moving along the North African coast. “It was my first real air raid,” she said next morning, “although we had practices at home when I was a girl. But I didn’t feel at all frightened.” Although by every account she remained calm throughout, Dietrich must have summoned her old Prussian reserve, for the terrifying air battle garishly illuminated the sky until dawn.
Next morning, she went to a makeshift hospital and could scarcely suppress her horror at the sight of so many boys wounded, limbless and blind. Trying to hide her emotion, she visited each bedside and, when one ward would not stop cheering her, she unpacked her musical saw and improvised “Swanee River,” “Oh, Susanna” and “My Darling Clementine.” There was, as reporter Louis Berg remembered, scarcely a dry eye in the room.
Such an emotional response from soldiers to Dietrich is easy to understand—not only because she was a warm, maternal figure bending over them with loving concern, but precisely because she was a beautiful, somewhat remote and glamorous Hollywood star. Her customary array of cosmetics, powders and rouges had to be abandoned, and there was no key light to accent her features just so. Instead, colleagues and soldiers were surprised to see a short, weary woman over forty, with lines of exhaustion and anxiety clearly traced around her mouth and eyes. Star performer she may have been, laying the foundation of her future one-woman show, triumphant abroad in a way she had not been recently in Hollywood. But for this—and for them, she made it clear—Dietrich was disdaining safety, rejecting special treatment and risking her life. Additionally, she was a naturalized German who loudly sided with the men fighting against her native country.
But she also flirted outrageously, according to Danny Thomas; she doffed her khakis, slinking around whenever she could in a form-fitting gown without underwear. He called her the Golden Panther.
Throughout April and early May, the show toured from Tunis, through Sicily and up the Italian coast, while Dietrich set her cap for Danny Thomas. In Naples the company stayed briefly at a small hotel, and one afternoon she asked Lynne Mayberry to send him to her room, ostensibly to ask why he refused to be photographed with her. “I went in,” Thomas recalled, “and there she was, stark naked, sunning herself on her balcony.”
“Come on now,” Dietrich said. “Don’t be such a baby.”
Thomas, then married and a father, tried to resist, but Dietrich was insistent. “You don’t like me,” she continued.
“That’s not true. I love you.”
“Then why don’t you want to have pictures taken with me?”
Thomas explained that he preferred not to exploit the war or his USO service for publicity purposes (as, he could have implied, she did so readily). She replied that he was a very unusual man—a reaction that may have had more to do with his carefully preserved chastity than his ideas about photographic self-aggrandizement. And with that, according to Danny Thomas, he promptly left Marlene’s room.
SOME OF THE MOST SAVAGE FIGHTING OF THE ALLIES’ push toward Rome was in progress when Dietrich’s convoy reached Cassino, a major Nazi stronghold. The siege centered on the hill near the ancient monastery that could trace its origins back to St. Benedict in the sixth century. From a mile away, she and her comrades—part of a small splinter group that had accidentally taken an alternative road toward the assigned camp—watched through field glasses as British and Polish troops backed up the Americans, whose most powerful mobile gun, the 240-millimeter howitzer, eventually destroyed the abbey and the entire town in d
ays. The Nazis then moved into the monastic ruins, which provided them with an excellent defensive position.
The area was thus particularly dangerous when Dietrich and her troupe could not relocate their division on the evening of May 15 and began to wander, lost in a no-man’s-land near enemy territory. Their jeep broke down, and during a cold and terrifying night they listened to the gunfire while huddled in a grove. Eventually a truck drove up and a group approached them. This turned out to be a detachment of Free French soldiers, among whom was the actor Jean-Pierre Aumont.
“I am Marlene Dietrich,” she said in French after hearing their language.
The reply was instantaneous and sarcastic: “If you are Marlene Dietrich, I am General Eisenhower.” But with a flashlight, Dietrich proved her identity.
Aumont then found himself responsible not only for his comrades but for a wandering band of American performers. “Being made prisoner wasn’t a very agreeable prospect for me,” he reflected later.
But to be responsible for Marlene’s capture! In the eyes of the Germans, she was a renegade serving on behalf of the American army and against her own people . . . Under the veneer of her legendary image, however, I saw a strong and courageous woman. There were no tears, no panic.
Instead, she tried to ignore the danger to them all, commenting on the peculiar odor from Aumont’s uniform. He explained that he had just had his first sleep in days, under a tank, next to the corpse of a Senegalese soldier. Eventually they found the French camp and hours later they located the Americans, who were not at all pleased at the temporary absence of Dietrich and her companions. By this time commanding officers had become accustomed to seeing her as a feisty, peripatetic den mother, Joan of Arc mustering her troops. She always obeyed orders, but when they were contravened by circumstances beyond her control she remained unperturbed and unapologetic.