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

by Wieland, Karin

23 Rolf Gillhausen brought Bert Stern’s “Marilyn’s Last Sitting,” fashion photography by Irving Penn, and Helmut Newton’s erotic photography into Stern.

  24 “Es geht rauf, es geht runter,” Spiegel interview with Leni Riefenstahl about the visual aspect of the Olympic Games, in Der Spiegel, no. 36 (August 28, 1972): 33.

  25 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 830.

  26 Stern, no. 41 (1975).

  27 See, for example, Wilhelm Bittorf, “Blut und Hoden,” in Der Spiegel, no. 36 (October 25, 1976), and James C. Faris, “Leni Riefenstahl and the Nuba Peoples of Kordofan Province, Sudan,” in Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 13, no. 1 (1993): 95–97.

  28 For the 1973 New York Film Festival, Niki de Saint Phalle designed a poster announcing “Agnes Leni Shirley.” According to Susan Sontag, this phrase “accurately reflected the contribution made by feminist consciousness at a certain level to whitewashing Riefenstahl.” “Feminism and Fascism: An Exchange” (Adrienne Rich, with a reply by Susan Sontag in response to February 6, 1975 issue), New York Review of Books 22, no. 4 (March 20, 1975).

  29 Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” published in New York Review of Books, February 6, 1975; reprinted in Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980), pp. 73–105; this quotation is on p. 88.

  Camp

  1 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, August 13, 1953, MDCB.

  2 Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich (New York: Knopf, 1992), p. 634.

  3 Sunday Chronicle, n.d., MDCB; Marlene Dietrich quoted in Daily News, December 22, 1953.

  4 Noël Coward to Marlene Dietrich, February 17, 1954, MDCB.

  5 Milton Shulman, “In came Marlene like a glacier glinting in the sunlight,” Evening Standard, June 22, 1954.

  6 Kenneth Tynan, Profiles (London: Nick Hern Books/Walker, 1989), p. 216.

  7 On April 22, 1954, he had written a letter to her when he found out from Major Neville-Willing that she would be coming: “This is simply to tell you that I await the encounter with ill-concealed hysteria, and to reassure you of my continued devotion between now and then.” Kenneth Tynan to Marlene Dietrich, MDCB.

  8 Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich, March 24, 1955, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Ernest Hemingway Collection, Boston.

  9 494 Ernest Hemingway, April 9, 1953.

  10 “First I rush upstairs and into my dressing-room. Then I throw off my shoes and then I throw off my gown. I take off my earrings and rings, dry my lips and grab two brushes full of brilliantine and put down my hair. Then I put on socks, my shirt, pants, suspenders and zip up my pants. The girl gives me my coat, I ring the buzzer for the orchestra, jump into shoes, put on my hat, and I’m ready. The whole thing takes a minute. It has to be fast to be effective. I’m not even out of breath when I come on.” Art Buchwald, “Night Out With Marlene,” in Sunday Chronicle, July 17, 1955. By her own account, her record was thirty-two seconds.

  11 Marlene Dietrich to Yul Brynner, n.d., MDCB.

  12 Marlene Dietrich to Noël Coward, n.d., MDCB.

  13 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, August 13, 1953, MDCB.

  14 Information from Barbara Schröter, MDCB.

  15 See, for example, the letter he sent her on February 9, 1945: “Dearest, Dearest Marlene . . . I read that you don’t expect to come back to Hollywood, and I send you here my heartiest congratulations. I wish I could leave, too. Let’s hope we can do a picture together in Paris next year. All my love, Orson.” MDCB.

  16 Portion of a telegram from Orson Welles to Marlene Dietrich, April 16, 1954, MDCB.

  17 Marlene Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1987), p. 169.

  18 Edith Head and Paddy Calistro, Edith Head’s Hollywood (New York: Dutton, 1983), p. 28.

  19 “Fully expecting Academy laurels, she had already arranged for the recorded introduction to her Las Vegas nightclub act to include a reference to her Oscar bid.” Kevin Lally, Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1996), p. 273. Dietrich did receive a nomination for a Golden Globe from the Foreign Press Association in Hollywood.

  20 “By 1947, 34.8 million of the 38.5 million households in the country had at least one radio receiver; there were 8.5 million in use in automobiles; and another 21.6 million in stores, hotels and institutions. . . . Radio reigned as America’s sole ‘national’ means of communication. With listening patterns enhanced by the war, people got into the habit of switching on news on broadcasts and forgetting to turn off the radio when they ended.” Joseph C. Goulden, The Best Years 1945–1950 (New York: Atheneum, 1976), p. 148.

  21 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei dank, Berlinerin, p. 245.

  22 “I was on my way to California to try to learn something about film scoring and maybe get a chance to score a movie. And I got a call from Peter Matz, a friend who conducted both Dietrich and Noël Coward. Matz was in a bind and asked whether I would consider, like, working with her. I said, shoot, yes, that would be great! I went to see her the next day at the Beverly Hills hotel in one of the villas. She was intimidating.” Burt Bacharach, quoted in Michael Brocken, Bacharach: Maestro! The Life of a Pop Genius (New Malden, UK: Chrome Dreams, 2003), p. 66.

  23 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 314.

  24 Ibid., p. 320.

  25 Burt Bacharach to Marlene Dietrich, n.d., MDCB.

  26 Brocken, Bachrach, p. 70.

  27 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, 1959, MDCB.

  28 “But, God, how he looks at me. It makes your teeth rattle.” Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, August 5, 1959, MDCB.

  29 Marlene Dietrich to Friedrich Torberg, November 3, 1959, in Marcel Atze, ed., Schreib. Nein schreib nicht, Marlene Dietrich/Friedrich Torberg Briefwechsel 1946–1979 (Vienna: SYNEMA Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, 2008), p. 63.

  30 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, August 5, 1959, MDCB.

  31 Maria Riva to Marlene Dietrich, n.d., MDCB.

  32 “Marlene kommt. Mehr als 20 000 DM Abendgage!” in Nacht-Depesche, February 13, 1960, MDCB.

  33 Joachim Besser “Haben wir wirklich nichts gelernt? Bewährungsprobe für uns: Marlene Dietrichs Besuch,” Die Welt 6 (April 1960).

  34 Joachim Besser, “Heben wir wirklich nichts gelernt? Bewährungsprobe für uns: Marlene Dietrichs Besuch,” Die Welt, April 6, 1960.

  35 Karena Niehoff, “Zwei Beine, die die Welt erschütterten. Gerührtes und anstrengendes Wiedersehen mit Marlene Dietrich,” Der Tagesspiegel, May 4, 1960.

  36 Sabine Lietzmann, “Majestät im Schwanenpelz,” FAZ, May 5, 1960.

  37 RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) Berlin, “Stimme der Kritik” (radio broadcast by the well-known theater critic Friedrich Luft), May 8, 1960.

  38 From the documentary film Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song (2002), directed by David Riva.

  39 Quoted in Christian Burkhard, “Von Kopf bis Fuss auf Zion engestellt. Marlene Dietrich und Israel—eine Liebeseschichte,” Jüdische Allgemeine, no. 25 (June 19, 2008), MDCB.

  40 Elisabeth Will to Marlene Dietrich, 1963, MDCB.

  41 Elisabeth Will to Marlene Dietrich, 1965, MDCB.

  42 Riva, Marlene Dietrich (film).

  43 The other Oscar for this movie went to Abby Mann for Best Screenplay. Judgment at Nuremberg also won two Golden Globe awards, one for Stanley Kramer as the Best Motion Picture Director, and the other for Maximilian Schell as Best Motion Picture Actor in a Drama.

  44 Erich Maria Remarque, March 23, 1962, MDCB.

  45 In 1953, Marlene Dietrich had been paid twenty thousand dollars for a four-thousand-line article in the Ladies’ Home Journal. She wrote her daughter about a quarrel that ensued with Remarque: “Remarque was furious at the price. It did not help that I pointed out that crap is better paid than good stuff, he was burning up.” Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, August 13, 1953, MDCB.

  46 Marlene Dietrich, quoted in John Lahr, ed., The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan (New York: Bloomsbury, 2001), pp. 38–39.

  47 Marlene Die
trich to Maria Riva, January 23, 1964, MDCB.

  48 Ibid.

  49 Marlene Dietrich to Friedrich Torberg, November 3, 1958, in Atze, ed., Schreib. Nein, schreib nicht, pp. 62–64; this phrase is on p. 64.

  50 Rudi Sieber to Marlene Dietrich, August 14, 1964, MDCB.

  51 Rudi Sieber to Marlene Dietrich, September 9, 1964, MDCB.

  52 Ibid.

  53 Rudi Sieber to Marlene Dietrich, March 16, 1963, MDCB.

  54 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, October 12, 1965, MDCB.

  55 Josef von Sternberg to Marlene Dietrich, September 14, 1959, MDCB.

  56 Marlene Dietrich to Leo Lerman, February 3, 1966, MDCB.

  57 Marlene Dietrich to Kenneth Tynan, March 17, 1967, MDCB.

  58 Marlene Dietrich to Kenneth Tynan, September 5, 1969, MDCB.

  59 Leo Lerman, The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman (New York: Knopf, 2007), p. 615.

  60 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, n.d., MDCB.

  61 Marlene Dietrich to Burt Bacharach, June 17, 1972, MDCB.

  62 Marlene Dietrich to Friedrich Torberg, in Atze, ed, Schreib. Nein, schreib nicht, p. 100.

  63 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, September 28, 1970, MDCB.

  64 Ibid.

  65 Marlene Dietrich to Margo Lion, August 2, 1970, MDCB.

  66 Marlene Dietrich to Orson Welles, November 10, 1971, MDCB.

  67 Quoted in Werner Sudendorf, “Die wütende Venus. Marlene Dietrich und das Fernsehen,” Filmgeschichte, no. 20 (December 2005). This article contains an extensive description of the events surrounding Dietrich’s television show. Excerpts from the interview with Rex Reed can be read in newsletter no. 63, dated April 30, 2004.

  68 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, July 21, 1973, MDCB.

  69 Marlene Dietrich to Brian Aherne, September 23, 1974, MDCB.

  70 Kenneth Tynan, May 25, 1972, in Lahr, ed., The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan, p. 96.

  71 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, July 21, 1973, MDCB.

  VII The End Game (1976–2003)

  In the Mattress Crypt

  1 At the auction of the contents of her New York apartment at Sotheby’s in Los Angeles in November 1997, the gifts from her lovers held a magic attraction for the buyers. A gold money clip that Gabin had returned to her, for example, brought in more than six thousand dollars.

  2 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, September 7, 1976, MDCB.

  3 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, October 24, 1976, MDCB.

  4 Marlene Dietrich to Kenneth Tynan, June 19, 1977, MDCB.

  5 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, October 25, 1976, MDCB.

  6 MDCB.

  7 Max Kolpé to Marlene Dietrich, January 14, 1979, MDCB.

  8 Klaus Jerziorkowski, “Die schönen Beine erinnern sich. Marlene Dietrichs Reflexionen ‘Nehmt nur mein Leben,’ ” in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 4, 1979.

  9 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, April 22, 1977, MDCB.

  10 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, 1948, MDCB.

  11 From the documentary film Marlene (1984), directed by Maximilian Schell.

  12 Brian Aherne to Marlene Dietrich, October 19, 1984, MDCB.

  13 Billy Wilder had sent her the screenplay of Fedora, but she sent it back to him by return mail, with the remark: “How could you possibly think!” She did not want to play an aging actress.

  14 Kevin Lally, Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996).

  15 In 1989, when the German premiere of A Foreign Affair was being planned for what was then the Quartier Latin in Berlin, Dietrich was invited to attend. Messengers who came with deliveries to Avenue Montaigne 12 were told that Dietrich did not live there. After the premiere enjoyed great success, the organizers received a light blue, hand-addressed envelope from Dietrich, thanking them for the invitation and apologizing that she would not be able to attend a premiere that would take place forty years hence. The odd thing about the letter was that it had been posted in Bel Air, Los Angeles. Dietrich had sent it to Billy Wilder from Paris, and he then brought the letter to the post office in Bel Air to send it to Berlin.

  16 Entry dated July 22, 1981, Leo Lerman, The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman (New York: Knopf, 2007), p. 471.

  17 Marlene Dietrich, Nachtgedanken (München, 2005), p. 105.

  18 Walter Reisch to Marlene Dietrich, October 9, 1976, MDCB

  19 Max Kolpé to Marlene Dietrich, June 19, 1987, MDCB.

  20 Marlene Dietrich, April 9, 1985, MDCB; reprinted in Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memories, compiled by Jean-Jacques Naud and captioned by Maria Riva (New York: Random House, 2001), p. 207.

  21 The magazine Bunte bought these photographs. Josef Wagner, who was the editor in chief at the time, did not publish the pictures, but gave the set to Maria Riva, who brought them to her mother. She burned them and thanked Wagner for his tact.

  22 This information stems from the description Peter Riva provided for the May 2004 MDCB newsletter 64. His purpose in writing this was to counter the claim by Dietrich’s former secretary, Norma Bosquet, that Dietrich had taken her own life.

  At the Bottom of the Sea

  1 Bianca Jagger, “Leni’s Back and Bianca’s Got Her,” Interview 5 (January 1975): 35–37.

  2 http://telluridefilmfestival.org/news/2013-8.

  3 Peggy Ann Wallace, “An Historical Study of the Career of Leni Riefenstahl from 1923 to 1933,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1975.

  4 From Riefenstahl’s cameraman Henry von Javorsky, in Peggy A. Wallace, “The Most Important Factor Was the Spirit: Leni Riefenstahl During the Filming of The Blue Light,” Image 17, no. 1 (1974): 17–29.

  5 “In the Art Institute of Chicago, Leni Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light, made in 1932, was the first film to be shown in a series featuring women directors, and also highlighted the work of Mai Zetterlin, Agnès Varda, and Susan Sontag. The three showings of the film were sold out.” Henry Marx, “Wenn Eisenstein, dann auch Riefenstahl. Amerika entdeckt die Werke der ‘ersten Filmemacherin überhaupt’—Ehrungen und Diskussionen,” Die Welt, January 31, 1975.

  6 The program, “Je später der Abend,” with Hans-Jürgen Rosenbauer, was broadcast on October 30, 1976. In addition to Riefenstahl, the songwriter Knut Kiesewetter and the unionist Elfriede Kretschmer were invited.

  7 All quotes in this paragraph from the talk show Je später der Abend, October 30, 1976.

  8 After spending several months in Africa in 1974 and 1975, she traveled to southeast Nuba once again in 1977 for an assignment with Geo magazine. During this trip, she was awarded a medal by Sudan’s president, Jaafar Mohammed an-Numeiri. She had been granted Sudanese citizenship several years earlier.

  9 Leni Riefenstahl to Bernhard Minetti, January 23, 1985, AdK Berlin, estate of Bernhard Minetti.

  10 She provides a description in her memoirs; Leni Riefenstahl, Memoiren (Munich: Albrecht Knaus, 1987), p. 437.

  11 Je später der Abend, October 30, 1976.

  12 A few weeks before her death, André Müller conducted an interview with her and asked her to react to Helma Sanders-Brahms’s claim that Lowlands contained a masked indictment of the National Socialist regime. She spurned this chance to be seen as one of the good ones after all: “Yes, but there was nothing behind it. People have read so much into my work. I actually viewed this movie as no more than a stopgap so that I would not have to make a propaganda film. It is silly to presume that there was something critical in it.” André Müller, “Gespräch mit Riefenstahl,” Weltwoche, August 15, 2002.

  13 Anyone who had appeared on the cover of Time magazine was a guest of honor. Her photograph had been featured on the cover of the February 17, 1936, edition. A photograph by Martin Munkacsi shows her skiing in a bathing suit. The caption read: “Hitler’s Leni Riefenstahl.”

  14 Helmut Newton, Autobiography (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 2003), p. 275. When he was asked about her after her death, he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “Leni and I had an interest
ing relationship. I admired her as a director and photographer, although I didn’t like her political views.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 10, 2003.

  15 Leni Riefenstahl, “Ich habe einen Traum,” Zeit-Magazin 35 (2002).

  SUGGESTIONS FOR

  FURTHER READING

  Aichinger, Ilse. Film und Verhängnis. Blitzlichter auf ein Leben. Frankfurt: Fischer, 2001.

  Arnheim, Rudolf. Die Seele in der Silberschicht. Medientheoretische Texte Photographie—Film—Rundfunk. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004.

  Blumenberg, Hans. Geistesgeschichte der Technik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2009.

  ———. Lebenszeit und Weltzeit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986.

  Costantino, Maria. Fashions of a Decade: The 1930s. London: Batsford, 1991.

  Douglas, Ann. Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.

  Ehrlicher, Hanno. Die Kunst der Zerstörung: Gewaltphantasien und Manifestationspraktiken europäischer Avantgarden. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001.

  Feilchenfeldt-Breslauer. Bilder meines Lebens: Erinnerungen. Wädenswil: NIMBUS, 2009.

  Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Philosophische Lehrjahre. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995.

  Hambourg, Maria Morris, and Christopher Phillips. The New Vision: Photography Between the World Wars. The Ford Motor Company Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994.

  Hecht, Ben. Revolution im Wasserglas: Geschichten aus Deutschland 1919. Berlin: Berenberg Verlag, 2006.

  Hollander, Anne. Sex and Suits. New York: Knopf, 1994.

  Lepsius, Rainer M. Demokratie in Deutschland: Soziologisch-historische Konstellationsanalysen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993.

  Lukacs, Georg. Die Seele und die Formen. Berlin: Luchterhand, 1971.

  Nicolson, Harold. Diaries and Letters 1930–1939. London: Collins, 1966.

  Nostitz, Helene von. Aus dem alten Europa. Frankfurt: Insel, 1978

  Roseman, Mark. Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany 1770–1968. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

  Spackman, Barbara. Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.