Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives

by Wieland, Karin

  In October 1929, von Sternberg and his actors and screenwriters were busy with discussions, screen tests, and inspections of studio sets while the world outside was undergoing a sea change. Gustav Stresemann, foreign minister and cowinner of the Nobel Peace Prize, had died within hours of suffering a stroke on October 3. The manner of his death was utterly unlike that of Walter Rathenau, who had been shot in his car by young ultranationalists in June 1922, but the shock wave it triggered was of a similar order. In Stresemann’s years as chancellor and then as foreign minister, the traditional patriotic, pacifist, and liberal values still applied; these were dispassionate but significant years for Germany. Hundreds of thousands of people walked behind his coffin on October 6 with the sinking feeling that the time of peace was drawing to an end. Just three weeks after Stresemann’s death, the stock market crashed in New York. The day that came to be known as Black Thursday ushered in a worldwide economic crisis. Stocks plummeted and bankruptcies came with increasing frequency. Never before had statistics and numbers played such a key role in daily life. The growth of unemployment and equity prices, the number of bankruptcies and foreclosures, tax revenues, and debt levels were no longer relegated to the business section of the newspaper; these figures were featured in the lead stories and attested to the readers’ everyday woes.

  The lovely summer was followed by a raw and rainy fall in 1929. Sebastian Haffner recalled the oppressive atmosphere at this time: “Angry words on the poster columns; and on the streets for the first time, mud-brown uniforms and unpleasant physiognomies above them; the rat-tat-tat and piping of an unfamiliar, shrill, vulgar march music.”69 Black Thursday brought any last vestige of economic optimism to an abrupt end. The economic crisis gave rise to doubts about the equity of traditional policies and social conditions in a democratic society. Fears of a new period of inflation gripped the Germans, and fewer and fewer of them believed that a parliamentary democracy could cope with this crisis. Despite several notable cultural achievements of that year—Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Alfred Döblin published Berlin Alexanderplatz—people began to wonder what would become of the Weimar Republic.

  In these gloomy times, the sound film offered a new dimension to the cinema. For many years, Ufa had refused to take note of the development of talking pictures, but the great success of the American sound film The Jazz Singer made it clear that the days of the silent film were numbered. Now Ufa rushed to catch up, and its production director, Ernst Hugo Correll, announced that in 1929, 50 percent of the forthcoming movies would include sound. In order to implement this ambitious goal, Ufa invested in the biggest sound film recording studio in Europe. On April 25, the demolition of the old studios began, and many a monument to the silent film was destroyed in the name of looking to the future. One month before the world economic crisis hit, Correll proudly and optimistically opened his dream studios. The new layout reflected the sober functionality of the 1920s, a decade that was now coming to an end. The structure consisted of four film studios that formed a cross. At the intersection of these austere brick buildings was a square atrium leading to all four studios. The almost windowless exterior façades were wainscoted with red clinker bricks. The buildings were soundproof; neither the pattering of rain nor the racket of airplanes could be heard. There was much praise for Ufa’s devotion to sound film, but it also came in for heavy criticism. Many movie theater owners could not afford the new systems; silent film musicians were no longer needed; and people who worked in live theater feared this talking competition. Sound film required both directors and script editors to rethink their tasks. They had to match sounds to plots and try out new forms of dialogue. The defenders of silent film aesthetics argued that the soul of the moving picture might be lost if words were interjected between images and viewers. But the actors themselves were most apprehensive about the new technology.

  Even the great Jannings was afraid of his own voice and feared for the loss of his expressive power. By contrast, Dietrich’s voice sounded calm, she was able to sing, and she had training in music. She was unperturbed by the presence of a microphone. She had always worked with her voice, and she now saw the perfect opportunity to put it to new use. And unlike Jannings, she had never been a silent film star and had no reputation to defend.70

  Expectations for von Sternberg were running high. His studio was anticipating an artistic and economic success; Jannings, the temperamental international star, wanted to be presented onscreen as a brilliant sound film star, and liberal viewers were eager to see how Mann’s novel would be adapted for the screen. All the excitement left von Sternberg cold. He explained matter-of-factly that sound film gave a director the opportunity to integrate noise, music, and words organically, and as a necessary component, into a plot whose visual sequences did not differ substantially from silent film.

  Pommer, who had worked in Hollywood for two years, recognized the opportunities the sound film had to offer. The fact that he allowed von Sternberg to sign Dietrich over Jannings’s opposition indicates the great trust he was placing in the man from America. Günther Rittau was the head cinematographer. His training was in photochemistry, and he had worked with developing special technology for documentary filmmaking. He had been responsible for the special effects in Fritz Lang’s The Nibelungs. His assistant, Hans Schneeberger, was known as a daring maker of mountain films. After The Blue Angel, he would film Avalanche with Arnold Fanck and Leni Riefenstahl. Waldemar Jabs, who had worked on Max Reinhardt’s stages for decades, was in charge of makeup. In The Blue Angel, Jabs demonstrated his minimalist art on Professor Raat’s beard as it reflected the state of Raat’s social decline. On set, Jabs ran into many actors he already knew from the theater. Eduard von Winterstein, who for years had given acting lessons at the Deutsches Theater and who may have been known to Dietrich from this period, played the school principal, and Kurt Gerron, who had last been seen as the police chief in the legendary production of The Threepenny Opera, played the head of the traveling troupe. Hollaender was the composer, and the best jazz band in Berlin, the Weintraub Syncopators, provided the music.71

  Jannings planned to keep the spotlight squarely on himself and had no intention of stepping aside for Dietrich. He spent every day of shooting fighting for his special position. He arrived on the set at the dot of seven every morning. His transformation into Professor Raat began in front of his “sanctum,” his three-way mirror. The process was more psychological than cosmetic, according to his makeup artist. Von Sternberg had to inquire about the state of Jannings’s health at a quarter to nine; if he failed to execute this gesture of submission, Jannings would inform him that he needed to call an ambulance because he was deathly ill. If all went according to plan, von Sternberg would enter Jannings’s dressing room only to have his friendly greeting received with a reproachful look.

  Then Jannings lit a cigarette, exhaling the smoke as if his soul went with it, cleared his throat . . . and followed this by casually mentioning that I no longer loved him. I would counter this by assuring him of my undying affection and then ask him to show his love for me by assisting me to make a few more feet of film. Jannings would then extinguish the cigarette as if to grind me into ashes, and view me through the mirror with his limpid eyes filled with the usual self-induced torment, a prerequisite to winding himself up to be his masochistic self in order to be able to act, and would say, as if never before had me made so horrendous an accusation, “You did not lunch with me yesterday.”72

  Mealtime was sacred to Jannings. His favorite dish was a huge plateful of sausage. If we picture the short, trim von Sternberg with Jannings hulking over steaming hot sausages, we get an impression of the power struggle raging between the two. Von Sternberg tried to calm him down with all kinds of excuses, but Jannings would accuse him of showing preferential treatment to Fräulein Dietrich; he had heard that his rival had gotten up bright and early to prepare lunch for her director. Von Sternberg pointed out that as a married man, he ought to b
e aware of the difference between men and women. Diva Jannings countered that no woman could offer anything that he could not. Von Sternberg realized that he had no choice but to agree to eat lunch with him alone, but now he had to go to work with the other cast members, whereupon Jannings ripped off the beard that had taken hours to glue on. Von Sternberg used his powers of persuasion to get him to continue shooting the film. But Jannings would not hear of it; he again accused von Sternberg of wanting to eat with Dietrich. This was the cue for the final phase of the morning ritual. “He would hurl himself to the floor so that the whole room shook, weep, scream, and shout that his heart had stopped, and I would pick him up . . . then kiss him on the mouth, moist with tears and return him somehow to his mirrors.”73 Once this ritual had run its course, the filming could begin.

  Dietrich, who recalled Jannings’s shenanigans from when they filmed Tragedy of Love and considered him a psychopath, wisely stayed in the background.74 She had waited for her big chance long enough, and now that it had been offered to her, she was determined to seize it. Her protestations that she was a silly goose with no talent rang hollow. She had every intention of taking Jannings down from his throne. Dietrich wanted to succeed Jannings as diva. She was an intelligent woman who knew that she would have to wage her battle guilefully and in secret, so for the time being she did not make any attempt to compete with Jannings, but instead was the picture of sweetness. She showed up on time for shooting every morning, with nary a complaint about lack of sleep or the demands of motherhood, and greeted everyone with a smile.

  She no longer had to spread herself thin between dozens of roles, but instead could devote her energy to the role of Lola Lola. “I was always ready when I was called. I stood a bit off to the side so as not to get in the way of the other actors, but I paid attention to the slightest sign from Mr. von Sternberg ordering me onto the set.”75 He did not let her down, and she gave her all to becoming the person von Sternberg envisioned for her. He asked her to design her own costumes, although he himself envisioned Lola Lola bringing to mind the women painted and sketched by Félicien Rops and Toulouse-Lautrec. “I decked out my costumes with top hats and workers’ caps, replaced the jewelry with ribbons, tassels, and braids, everything I thought was affordable for a B-Girl in a cheap waterfront saloon.”76 Von Sternberg made Dietrich his ally and involved her in the creation of Lola Lola, while involving himself in choosing Dietrich’s own clothing, movements, and self-image. Von Sternberg had all the answers, and she liked that.

  Dietrich wore the finest lingerie. Her panties were little works of art, made of soft, flowing pink silk chiffon topped with golden-brown lace. Lola Lola donned many layers of clothing, as though preparing for a striptease. Dietrich’s chaotic dressing room had boas, scarves, skirts, and panties scattered everywhere. Depending on the upcoming scene, she would quickly throw something on or take something off. She did not always keep her garters out of sight under her skirt, exposing her thighs for all the world to admire. When she sat on her barrel, her top hat askew on her curls, clutching one gartered leg perched on the knee of the other, singing while eying the audience coquettishly over her bare shoulder, she looked half naked. Her top hat was white; her panties—a key prop in her relationship with Professor Raat—were big and frilly. Lola Lola went in for stork feathers on her dressing gown, and ostrich feathers embellished her slippers. She donned men’s hats with her lingerie, which resulted in a peculiar fashion mix of seduction and severity. Dietrich was able to wear vulgar clothing without appearing vulgar. She imbued Lola Lola with a unique sense of dignity, undiminished by tasteless costumes and the speech patterns and body language of a B-girl, snapping her garters and making suggestive cracks.

  Von Sternberg was crazy about her Berlin diction. The Berlin style of speech was considered coarse, and it was invariably associated with snippy repartee. The main feature of this diction was “a crass egotism, a naïve, utterly sincere sense of superiority.”77 Von Sternberg emboldened Dietrich to speak in a way that she had never dared to before. In the film we hear how brilliantly she succeeded, above all in her songs, which are just as much a part of Lola Lola’s adornment as her garters.

  Lola Lola is not a lady or a femme fatale; she is a sassy, savvy, honky-tonk B-girl. The transformation into Lola Lola must have been eerie for Dietrich, because right in front of the camera, she was turning into the woman that her mother had always feared might be hidden inside her daughter.

  Dietrich was fascinated by the magical effect of cameras and lighting. She followed every detail of von Sternberg’s working method and learned a great deal from him about the miraculous effects that could be coaxed from a camera. He allowed her to join him at the editing table. She was determined to master the art of film.

  It must have made Jannings livid to read all the high praise of Dietrich in the press, such as this comment in the Film-Kurier: “Marlene Dietrich’s voice is as supple as her body. Just as she does on the stage, she starts softly, then sharpens up somewhat into the call of the triumphant woman that no man can resist.”78 Jannings was painfully aware that von Sternberg was one of these men.

  Jannings had to pretend to fall in love with Lola Lola in front of the camera, while von Sternberg actually did fall for Dietrich when the cameras were turned off. Both of them were married. As a woman approaching the age of thirty with a husband and a lover, Dietrich was no longer driven by the need to satisfy her curiosity for adventure. She knew what she was doing when she got involved with von Sternberg; she was not giving in to a whim. He gave her the feeling he would never let her down. He knew the answers to everything, encouraged her to be independent, and guided her. She had never met a man like him before. She liked his extravagant style of dress and behavior, and admired his divine and demonic power, which enabled her to become the woman she had never dared to be. This deliberately conspicuous man was her savior, a kind of sorcerer who had come to “Pygmalionize” her. Von Sternberg was not interested in the sweet coquetry of a young girl; he wanted a woman who had experienced passion and remorse. He relished the feeling of being the only one who knew how beautiful Dietrich really was. “Never before had I met so beautiful a woman who had been so thoroughly discounted and undervalued,” he wrote many years later.79 “Eroticism has next to no conscience and makes hasty decisions,” he wrote in August 1969, just a few months before his death.80 He left his wife, Riza, who had come to Berlin with him, after meeting Dietrich.81 No other woman could stand up to her; “her personality was one of extreme sophistication and of an almost childlike simplicity.”82

  Maria Riva provided glimpses into von Sternberg’s visits to Kaiserallee. “When a stocky little man with a big droopy mustache and the saddest eyes I had ever seen appeared, I was rather disappointed. Except for a long camel-hair coat, spats and elegant walking cane, he didn’t look so important at all. His voice was wonderful, though. Deep and soft—like silky velvet.”83 Because her family was the center of her life, Dietrich simply made her lover part of her family. When von Sternberg and Dietrich saw each other on the set, she had to follow his instructions and they were surrounded by observers. When they got together in Dietrich’s apartment, she mothered her lover in front of her husband. They appear to have had their romantic trysts in hotel rooms, perhaps posing as transients under assumed names.

  The closer they grew, the more prominent the role of Lola Lola became. Zuckmayer recalled von Sternberg altering Dietrich’s role according to his directorial concept. Von Sternberg was the one to set the title of the movie and to change the name of Rosa Fröhlich in the novel to Lola Lola for the film, citing Wedekind’s “Lulu” as a model. Jannings felt as though something was going on behind his back. During the shooting, he sensed that von Sternberg and Dietrich had already agreed on the shots. Everyone else on the crew also noticed the balance shifting in favor of Dietrich as the filming progressed. A woman named Resi was assigned to be her personal dressing-room attendant. Joe Pasternak, the young and highly successful production director
at German Universal, requested an appointment with Dietrich. Pasternak, who wanted to make her an offer for Hollywood, knew that von Sternberg kept Dietrich under lock and key but decided to try his luck. She let him in, and when he looked at her, he broke out in a sweat. All she had on was a negligee, and she agreed to give due consideration to an offer from Universal. Dietrich was growing into her new role, on screen and off.

  On January 22, 1930, filming of The Blue Angel was completed, and on February 11, von Sternberg left the city, heading to Hollywood. In his suitcase, he had a song that Hollaender had composed for Dietrich. Von Sternberg was keeping it from the public for now because he wanted it to become Dietrich’s first Hollywood hit. Two days after von Sternberg left, Tempo magazine reported that Dietrich would be following him to Hollywood. Sidney Kent, a manager at Paramount, had come to Berlin to find new faces. He watched a private showing of The Blue Angel and liked what he saw. Readers of Tempo were informed that “according to Marlene Dietrich’s contract, she will be spending only six months a year in Hollywood.”84 She told the journalists at the Film-Kurier that she had hesitated quite a while before accepting the offer, because although it signified a great professional opportunity, it also meant she would be separated from her child. Then she added, “As soon as I said yes, I got right in touch with the Bremen and talked to von Sternberg, who was delighted to learn of my acceptance.”85

  All those unspeakably boring afternoons conversing with French and English tutors proved to be an unexpected boon to her career, because the offer from Paramount was evidently an outcome of the successful American version of The Blue Angel. Jannings received far more money for his role than Dietrich did, but he was painfully aware that the shifting of the film’s title from that of the novel (Professor Unrat) to The Blue Angel reflected the fact that even before the movie was released, Dietrich was the center of attention.