A Foreign Affair opens with the approach to Berlin of an airplane bearing a congressional delegation from the United States, which has come to find out what they can about the morale of the troops stationed there. Gazing down at the city from above, they cannot imagine that people could be living in these ruins. “Like pack rats been gnawing at a hunk of old mouldy Roquefort cheese,” is one of the cynical comments. There is one woman in this upstanding group: Phoebe Frost, a congresswoman from Iowa. Jean Arthur played Frost as a prim and proper puritan from the New World, but we come to realize that under her steely exterior, she yearns for love. Frost distrusts the way in which Colonel Rufus J. Plummer, the pragmatic commander in chief in Berlin, is going about this assignment. During his tour through the city, he points to some boys playing baseball as evidence of his success in bringing democracy to the Germans. He advocates patience and forbearance with the Germans. He conceives of his task as restoring order and reviving the defeated people’s will to live. Frost will have none of that. Her focus is the moral integrity of the boys. She heads off to explore Berlin on her own and winds up at an illegal nightclub called Lorelei, which features the seductive, inscrutable Erika von Schluetow. The American and Russian soldiers cheer for her in equal measure. Dietrich played von Schluetow as a world-wise, cynical representative of the Old World. Von Schluetow is well-versed in guilt and atonement, but her only goal is survival. She sings “Black Market,” a song about venality that has people selling their “souls for Lucky Strikes.” For the first time in her life, the congresswoman from Iowa is confronted with an utterly cynical state of mind. “I’m selling out, take all I’ve got—ambitions, convictions, the works. Why not? Enjoy these goods.” Frost is disgusted. When she also finds out that von Schluetow was the lover of a high-ranking National Socialist and is being protected by an American officer, she knows what she has to do. She asks Captain John Pringle (played by John Lund) for help in exposing von Schluetow’s lover. Wilder did not want Pringle to embody the American hero: “Yeah, I wanted him to be a grown-up man, with pros and cons, not goody-goody, and then not a guy who fucks everybody, but just a human being. With errors, with faults, with wonderful things.”25 What Frost doesn’t know is that Pringle is the American officer she is looking for: he is Erika von Schluetow’s lover. Consequently, he plays a double game; by making Frost fall in love with him, he tries to distract her from pursuing her investigation. Von Schluetow wins the first showdown. She carries on about her rival’s lack of makeup and odd hairdo. American women may be good democrats, but they lack any kind of refinement. Von Schluetow instantly senses that Frost is insecure and vulnerable in her femininity, yet this is the woman that poses a danger to her. Pringle spends too much time with her, and eventually they show up at the Lorelei together. Frost’s infatuation has made her morally corruptible, as is evident from her clothing. Instead of her uniform-like suit, she is now wearing an evening gown she bought at the black market. At this encounter, von Schluetow is wearing a dress that Dietrich had worn for her performances in the war. She is accompanied on the piano by Friedrich Hollaender, who had also written the songs for The Blue Angel. On this evening, Frost gets her second lesson in disillusionment. The song that von Schluetow sings is called “Illusions,” about buying “lovely illusions . . . second-hand,” that reach far but are “built on sand.” Frost’s ecstatic delight comes to an abrupt end when the police raid the Lorelei. It is von Schluetow who saves Frost from having to reveal her identity, but in doing so robs her of her illusions about the man she loves. In a matter-of-fact monologue, von Schluetow opens the eyes of the woman from Iowa: “Everything [is] caved in . . . My country, my possessions, my beliefs.” However, she draws the line at relinquishing the man who protects her and gets her nylon stockings. As a German, she cannot afford the luxury of generosity. As an “old gambler” at the roulette table of love, she advises Frost to leave the table and end the game. The American woman, who has experienced neither war nor love, understands her. She is now one of the disillusioned and has lost her naïve innocence. At the end, Frost takes Pringle with her to the Unites States, where he belongs. Von Schluetow sings her final song in a low-cut floral dress. “Amidst the ruins of Berlin / Trees are in bloom as they have never been.”
A Foreign Affair was Wilder’s triumph over Hitler. Hitler was dead, but Wilder and Hollaender had survived. Hollaender found his place at the piano, just as he had fifteen years earlier, and the Lorelei was a smoke-filled, cramped club, just as it had been in The Blue Angel. Wilder’s Berlin is a beaten-down city in which the victors and the vanquished try to get something out of life after so much has been withheld from them for so many years. Von Schluetow speaks on behalf of the vanquished, who haven’t been able to sleep for fifteen years: “First it was Hitler screaming on the radio, then the war of nerves, then the victory celebrations, then the bombing.” Pringle, speaking for the military, complains that everyone has gone back to their daily routines and forgotten the soldiers. Frost, who represents the victors, is overwhelmed by the moral complexity of the situation. Her rigid moral values make it impossible for her to grasp the psychological anxiety and disorientation the victors and the conquered were facing. In real life, Dietrich was in all three positions: as an American citizen she was one of the victors; as a Berliner she was one of the vanquished; and as a combatant against the National Socialists she was one of the soldiers. A Foreign Affair was Dietrich’s film, portraying her own history. Erika von Schluetow was a logical follow-up to the Lola Lola role of fifteen years earlier. Von Schluetow moves with the times, flirts with a Nazi, and extricates herself neatly from the situation once his power had ebbed, returning to the stage of a disreputable club and singing her sage songs.
Dietrich had returned to Berlin in the role of Erika von Schluetow. Surrounded by sets of her destroyed hometown at the film studio in Hollywood, she played an artist who knew how to turn the Nazi reign to good advantage. In this role, Hitler’s most famous opponent showed that the era of morally unequivocally positions was over, which was precisely why this film was disliked. The critics were furious about not seeing any American heroes. Captain Pringle thinks only of his own pleasure, not the dissemination of democratic ideals. And Phoebe Frost may be proper, but her puritanical zeal comes across as neurotic. The unflappable character in this trio is the ex-lover of a Nazi. A Foreign Affair was nominated for two Oscars, but neither was for Best Actress. Hollywood shrank back from honoring Dietrich for her portrayal of Von Schluetow. In Germany, screening of the film was forbidden. The screening committee was not amused by what it saw.
Wilder considered A Foreign Affair one of his better films. Working with Dietrich went smoothly. It was apparent to him right from the start that he could not put anything over on Dietrich, who had been trained by von Sternberg. In order to avoid conflict on the set, he granted her the privilege of selecting her own lighting. Wilder was one of Dietrich’s few good friends. There are very few directors that she enjoyed working with as much as she did with him. During the shooting, Dietrich lived at Wilder’s house, and it is easy to picture these two scandalmongers having quite a lot of fun bad-mouthing the others in the evening.
Hollywood may have withheld the Oscar from Dietrich throughout her life, but the military did not forget her. In November 1947, just before shooting began for A Foreign Affair, she was awarded the Medal of Freedom at West Point. This was the American military’s highest distinction for civilians, and Dietrich was the first woman ever to receive it.26 For the awards ceremony, she wore a high-necked dark suit, tasteful earrings, red lipstick, and a small hat. With perfect posture and an impassive expression on her face in front of the colonel, she is the very picture of poise. Her telegram to Rudi read: LEAVING TRAIN NOW GOT MEDAL FREEDOM ALL LOVE.27 Her French lover and wartime comrade sent her his congratulations: MY ANGEL BRAVO POUR MEDAILLE . . . PENSE A TOI TOUT MON COEUR JEAN.28
“10:28 a.m. Maria’s boy born” is written in red in Rudi’s daily planner. When Dietrich began in
Hollywood, having children was considered a blow to a woman’s career. Almost twenty years later, history was repeating itself. The press pegged her “the most beautiful grandmother in the world.” For an actress, a description of that sort could be deadly, but Dietrich tried to ignore the gossip that ensued.
Her personal life changed with the birth of her grandson. It almost seems as though she and Rudi were rediscovering family life. But she had no intention of retiring. She believed that Roberto Rossellini was the director who would know how to give expression to her postwar enervation. During her stay in Paris, she had often spent time with him and with Anna Magnani. She had even translated the screenplay for Rossellini’s film Allemagne année zéro into German and typed it up herself.29 However, Rossellini did not offer her a role. His star was the young Ingetraud Hinze.
The fact was that Dietrich was remaining in America only because she did not want to be in Paris. Gabin had sent her a positively exuberant telegram as the new year approached with the message that the coming year would be her year; he would make her the happiest woman on earth. But no sooner had the year begun than he realized that she actually wanted to be rid of him. Dietrich’s letters were matter-of-fact. She did not understand what all the fuss was about. The final quarrels were about Gabin’s belongings in America, and the matter was left to her business manager, Charlie Trezona. Gabin wanted to have his refrigerator and Cadillac, which led to an extensive correspondence between a patient Trezona and an increasingly peeved Dietrich, who made her opinions known primarily by telegram. Trezona gently reminded her that Gabin’s refrigerator and Cadillac were making quite a lot of work for him and costing her quite a bit of money that she did not have. The correspondence with Trezona provides insights into the dreary life of a woman who is at her wit’s end. The complaints about tax liabilities, a lack of work, and dishonorable lovers ran on endlessly. Her movable possessions were spread among various warehouses; her valuable assets, such as furs, jewelry, and paintings, had to be insured and thus entailed expenses. The bills for her hotels, telephones, and flights were high, and Sieber and Matul also had to live from her assets. Gabin’s Cadillac was eventually sent to France by ship; his agent sent a letter of thanks. Trezona commented that Dietrich agreed to send it out of love. The Cadillac would be the final token of that love.
Gabin left Dietrich, and on March 28, in Paris, he married Dominique Fournier, a fashion model. She was fifteen years younger than he and bore a startling resemblance to the young Dietrich. Gabin had known her for only two months. This utterly unexpected marriage followed on the heels of Dietrich’s earlier public degradation as the “youngest grandmother”; now she was the abandoned older lover. Marlene minus fifteen equals Dominique, the newspapers reported. The photographs of the wedding ceremony show a beaming Gabin sitting next to a beautiful young woman. In November 1949, Dominique gave birth to the first of their three children. With this marriage, Dietrich was dead to Gabin. When they ran into each other on the street, he did not even look her way. He shielded his wife from her, not wanting to give Dietrich any more power over his life.
In June, she flew to Paris. In a letter to Maria, she wrote about how she was coping with her feelings. “I played gay and almost felt like it.”30 She sat at her old table at Fouquet’s with Remarque and an acquaintance and suddenly thought: Why isn’t Jean here? She found out that his baby would be born in October. “We joked that in France they now make Babies in much a shorter time than it usually takes, and said that it must have happened the first night he knew her and there one can not be quite sure one is the father.” She was full of sorrow and hatred. Dietrich lost her authority to the women who supplanted her, and reacted by painting Dominique as a slut who had already aborted many children. Overcome with panic, she was afraid of going out; what if she ran into Gabin? “And shaking hands with him and his wife I cannot imagine and know that I am not good enough an actress for that.” She felt just as bad as she had as a child when she had eaten unripe cherries. In this sad letter, she may have found the most loving parting words for her daughter: “Forgive me for not yet being my age and a wise old Grandmother. Kiss your two men for me and be happy Mami.” It was only when she had lost Gabin forever that she realized he was probably the last great love of her life.
She still had Remarque. They were both just as lost after the war as they had been before, and she wrote to let him know how much she missed him.31 Dietrich had been one of Remarque’s last ties to the Old World. Once he was back in Europe, he realized that this situation had not changed in the slightest. In the summer of 1948, he wrote sadly to her from Porto Ronco about his first trip to Europe and declared that one should never come back.
Remarque was suffering from Ménière’s disease, an inner ear disorder that affects balance and hearing, and Dietrich took care of him with homemade meals. Wilder called her a “Mother Teresa with better legs.” Remarque diagnosed her symptoms as a refugee illness of the kind suffered by the characters in his novels. “You need a strong heart to live without roots,” he had written in the epigraph to Flotsam.32 No one knew that better than the two of them. Their reemerging feelings of love fluctuated between affection, temptation, disdain, and intimacy. Remarque’s face was marked by leading too indulgent a life in restaurants, hotels, brothels, and dives. He envied the courage she had shown. Dietrich loved to feed him home-cooked meals and give him vitamin pills. What is more, she no longer tried to change him. He led an unsettled life, just as she did, and in contrast to Gabin, he understood her back-and-forth between the continents. However, they were both too restless and narcissistic to restart their romance for real.
Ernst Lubitsch, who had started life as a tailor’s son on Schönhauser Allee in Berlin, died in November 1947, and a few months later was followed by Richard Tauber, the Austrian tenor with whom Dietrich had worked in I Kiss Your Hand, Madame back in 1929. She had been one of the few friends willing to help him out financially.33 The voice she loved so much had stopped singing forever. The end of the war confronted Dietrich with the confined world in which she had grown up. Her relatives started showing up. She saw her sister, Elisabeth Will, on her second USO tour in Bergen-Belsen. Contrary to Dietrich’s initial assumptions, Elisabeth had not been in a concentration camp; she and her husband had run the officers’ movie theater. Her husband had now left her, and she was alone with her son. Elisabeth was a timid and anxious woman who lived in constant fear of doing something wrong. She hoped that Marlene would help her son get an apprenticeship as a cameraman in the United States, but her hopes were dashed. Dietrich did not want to be saddled with relatives. She supported her sister with care packages and kept in touch with her, but that was about all that could be expected of her.
The focal point of her family was now in New York. After Gabin left her, she went through quite a domestic phase. She gave Maria some free time by taking walks in the park with her grandson. She learned all about childhood diseases and became the perpetual know-it-all. Following A Foreign Affair, she was onscreen for all of two minutes in the forgettable movie Jigsaw. She was not missing the film business per se—only the money it brought in. Her agent, Charlie Feldman, was none too pleased with her behavior. She had finally taken his advice and returned to America, but she had become extremely demanding and hard to work with. She found fault with every script, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was difficult to cast. Feldman had to move heaven and earth to come up with roles for her. When he found out she was telling everybody that she found her jobs all on her own, he was furious: “This is far from the truth. . . . The talks I have had in connection with your business matters, expenses, and other problems would fill a book.”34 He milked his connections and got her a role in Hitchcock’s Stage Fright.
The filming in London went from late May until mid-September 1949. As usual, Dietrich stayed at Claridge’s. She complained to Maria about the bad food. The film moved ahead slowly, although they even used Sundays for shooting. Working with the famous Hitchcock seems t
o have been quite a challenge for Dietrich. She wanted to have a say in everything, and was bossy on the set. Hitchcock, who knew whom he had signed on, gave her a free hand and valued her expertise: “Miss Dietrich is a professional. A professional actress, a professional cameraman, a professional dress designer.”35 In a nod to Dietrich’s past, her character in Stage Fright, Charlotte Inwood, is a singer. Dietrich performs two songs, both of which became part of her standard repertoire for the next twenty years. One was Cole Porter’s “The Laziest Gal in Town,” which was relatively unknown before this movie; the other, Henri Salvador’s “La Vie en Rose,” had already been made world-famous by Edith Piaf. Piaf allowed her to sing it because the two of them were friends. Jane Wyman, who was much younger than Dietrich, was jealous of her. Every day when she saw the raw footage, she compared herself to Dietrich, and the following day she would come to the set looking more and more primped, which worked to the detriment of her role as an unattractive maid. Hitchcock blamed Wyman’s vanity for dragging down the quality of the movie: “She couldn’t accept the idea of her face being in character, while Dietrich looked so glamorous.”36 Dietrich’s wardrobe, which—as her contract specified—was hers to keep after the film was shot, was designed by Christian Dior, so she flew to Paris from time to time to try on new designs. Dior, who was three years younger than Dietrich, had caused a sensation in 1947 with his New Look. Wide skirts, unpadded shoulders, narrow waists, gloves, hats, and handbags transformed yesterday’s comrade in arms back into a woman of mystery. Dietrich would recall her grandmother Felsing, who had told her so much about the magic of femininity, and she now made a point of wearing Dior. A uniform was passé. She played Charlotte Inwood as a beautiful, elegant woman who, despite her success, hates her profession of singing and acting. However, she has no other choice, because performing is her life. Apart from Dietrich, the actors in the movie are all very British, including Michael Wilding, who played an inspector. Dietrich sought solace with him. Wilding was eleven years her junior; he was handsome and he admired her. His letters reveal that she told him about her financial, professional, and familial obligations. As usual, Wilding was willing to follow her anywhere, and she was always able to fend him off. He felt inferior to the world-famous Dietrich and her illustrious lovers, and apologized for his shortcomings. Eventually he could no longer endure the torment of her constant absences. In 1952, he married the nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Taylor. Dietrich wondered why he had not stayed with her.
Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives Page 40