Marlene: A Novel

by C. W. Gortner

  I felt vindicated. As argumentative and combative as von Sternberg could be, we belonged together. I missed working with him and was certain that he missed me. I barraged his address in New York with calls and telegrams. He took his time to reply; when he did, he said he’d return to Hollywood as soon as he could, but he had other obligations to attend to first.

  “What obligations?” I grumbled to Mercedes. “His wife doesn’t want him and Lubitsch does. Now he has other obligations? I don’t understand it. The man is impossible.”

  “Why don’t you take a holiday?” She stifled a yawn. “You have some free time now after working so much. Paris is lovely this time of year, and your daughter must miss her father.”

  I understood her meaning. With Gerda gone, I’d hired two bodyguards to watch over Heidede while I was at the studio and my daughter attended a private school run by the studio for celebrity children. She was doing well, her English getting better than mine, but with my schedule, we only shared occasional evenings together. I fussed over her, bringing her with me on the weekends to visit Mercedes, to walk on the beach and collect seashells, but Heidede found Mercedes “creepy”—an Americanism I had to look up—and Mercedes didn’t like having a curious child underfoot. My lover was growing impatient with my domestic obligations.

  “What?” I reached for my cigarettes. “Is Garbo getting jealous?”

  Reclining on the bed like a sylph, she sighed. “Marlene. Why ask?”

  Indeed. I went home nursing a tiny wound in my heart that appalled me.

  The very next day, I booked passage for Heidede and me to Paris.

  VI

  I fell in love for the third time.

  Paris enamored me with her incandescence, her sweeping boulevards and cobblestone labyrinths, her spiky cathedrals and noisy cafés, her chestnut Tuileries and the open-legged thrust of her Eiffel Tower. She was glamorous and bawdy, sophisticated and vulgar. She straddled the Seine like a cabaret girl and paraded down the Champs-Élysées like a goddess. She laughed and smoked and drank red wine; she ignored the foibles of celebrity and celebrated everyday joys.

  Most of all, she gave me privacy. I did not fear kidnapping threats here, and I dispensed with my security to take Heidede to the parks and open-air markets, where, when I was recognized, the interest rarely translated into a stammering request for my autograph. Parisians understood that even famous actresses still use the bidet.

  I could have stayed forever.

  In Paris, I found a lover who cared as much and as little as I did.

  RUDI WAS CONTENT. He and Tamara had a cozy apartment not far from his Paramount job, though the international economic malaise meant he didn’t have too much work. No one worked too much in Paris anyway, unless you were Coco Chanel, whose atelier I visited for a fitting. She was an intense, simianlike woman, devoted to her craft, chattering nonstop about everything as she adjusted my jersey dress. She showed me newspapers with photographs of my arrival at the Gare Saint-Lazare splashed across the front pages, dressed in my beret, oversize sunglasses, pearl gray man’s suit, and chocolate mohair polo coat.

  “Public transvestitism is a crime in Paris,” she jeered. “You risk arrest by the police. Not that I mind. That mohair coat is sublime. But here, we like women who dress like women.”

  “What about the men?” I said, and she laughed, her profusion of enamel bracelets jangling. “I don’t bother with men,” she said. “And I prefer it if they don’t bother me.”

  All lies of course. Her reputation for lovers exceeded mine. Besides, what she really was saying was that she liked women who dressed in her clothes. I ordered a dozen outfits from her, including several evening gowns, but continued to wear my suits and ties to the Hungarian restaurant on the Rue de Surène where I liked to dine, daring the police to lay a finger on me. They put me under surveillance—it became a game for me, eluding them as they dogged my steps—but I wasn’t arrested. And wherever I went, I made headlines. It might be a crime to cross-dress in Paris, but the French newspapers adored it and couldn’t get enough of me.

  I decided to use the attention to shed light on the plight of refugees after Rudi arranged a visit with Kurt Weill, who wanted to meet me. Famed composer of The Threepenny Opera, whose ballad “Mack the Knife” had convulsed Berlin, Weill had been forced to escape the Nazis. He and his wife were now holed up in an apartment on the Left Bank, waiting for a visa to go to New York. A tremulous, nearsighted man with huge round glasses that made him look like a starving owl, he clasped my hand, bemoaning the decimation of our culture. I was deeply moved by his circumstances, and outraged that one of our finest talents had to flee Berlin like a thief. I promised to put in a good word for him with my contacts in Hollywood and he in turn implored me to record German songs as a tribute.

  “You must be our voice,” he said, “before everything is lost.”

  I thought it a splendid idea. I hired him to write two songs for me, but they were as gloomy as his mood, and I couldn’t sing them. I did, however, record “Allein” by the Jewish composers, Wachsmann and Colpet—a haunting anthem to the dying Weltschmerz of Berlin, our melancholic homage to a world-weary existence. I did it on purpose, to highlight the Nazis’ denial of Jewish contributions. The recording, issued by Polydor, was an immediate hit.

  “Let Goebbels ban it.” I laughed with Rudi, and we went on to Vienna, where Mutti joined us. I’d sent train fare for her and Liesel, but she arrived alone, her hair newly styled for the occasion. She was smiling and conciliatory, affectionate with Heidede, but she refused to talk about the Nazis. When I asked her if she and everyone else in the family were okay, she sniffed.

  “Why must you use that word? ‘Okay.’ What does it even mean? Yes of course. We are fine. We’re not Jewish. They’ve no reason to question our sympathies.”

  I glanced at Rudi. He grinned. Some things, like my mother, never changed.

  Fans caught wind of my arrival and gathered outside our hotel in Vienna to chant my name. My stay in Paris had made international headlines, so I went down two nights in a row to sign autographs. The attending press also snapped pictures, which reached the American press, which printed them under the caption “Marlene Defies Berlin.”

  It finally penetrated Mutti’s reserve. On the morning she was scheduled to return to Berlin, as we prepared to accompany her to the train station, she motioned me aside and said in her most glacial tone, “I suppose you find these antics amusing.”

  “Antics?” Even as I feigned ignorance, my heart sank. I had forgotten Mercedes’s advice.

  “Yes. Entertaining that rabble with your disrespect for our führer. Or perhaps it’s the fashion these days in Hollywood to show disdain for one’s nation.”

  “Mutti, it’s my job. My fans wanted to see me and—”

  Her mouth thinned, in the same way it had when she’d caught me flubbing a chord on the violin. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You might live too far away now, but Liesel, Willi, and myself—we do not. We are Germans. Would you have us put on some list because of this incessant attention grabbing for the press?”

  “I am a German, too,” I said angrily, but then I saw it, a fleeting moment of fear in her eyes. “Mutti, have they threatened you?”

  She brushed her hands over her coat as if I’d sprayed crumbs while talking with my mouth full. “Of course not. They wouldn’t dare. Our lineage goes further back than any Nazi’s.”

  “So does the Wertheims’ of the department store. Are they in business now?”

  “They are Jews.” She stepped past me to Rudi, holding her hand out to Heidede in her blue coat and matching cap. “Come, mein Liebling. Kiss your Oma good-bye.”

  “She’s coming with us to the station,” I said, wanting to make amends.

  My mother shook her head. “I’d rather not. Your adoring fans will be waiting outside. I’d rather leave in privacy, without wondering if my photograph will end up in the newspapers.”

  Needless to say, she got her
way.

  ONBOARD THE ÎLE DE FRANCE on our way back to America, once I saw Heidede settled in our cabin and asleep, I donned one of my new Chanel white gowns and sauntered into the dining salon. I only intended to have an aperitif, still unsettled by Mutti’s upbraiding and my farewell with Rudi, who told me not to fret, yet had upheld my mother’s concerns.

  “There’s no reason to antagonize them, Marlene,” he told me before he boarded his train. “Focus on your work and leave politics to others.”

  Although I hadn’t said anything political out loud, I understood. I shouldn’t have recorded the Jewish songs or let myself be photographed without setting foot in Berlin. I had allowed my rage against the Nazis to overcome my better judgment, and now sought distraction onboard, only every table but one was full—and everyone was staring—and the lone empty seat would have made me the thirteenth guest. It was bad luck on a crossing, so I retreated to the bar.

  I had just ordered a cocktail diluted with soda water when a burly dark-haired man at a table pushed back his chair and made his way toward me. As he approached, his close-cropped black hair enhancing his strong-featured, florid face, thick eyebrows, and mustache, I set a hand high on my hip, a screen affectation, and braced for the inevitable come-on.

  “I know you,” he said with a disarmingly warm smile. “You’re the Kraut.”

  I could tell he didn’t mean to insult me, so I replied, “I am. And you are . . . ?”

  “Hemingway.” He thrust out his hand. “Ernest Hemingway. I’m a writer.”

  “I’m aware,” I replied, for I was. “The Sun Also Rises.”

  “You’ve read it?” He raised an eyebrow. “Or just the reviews?”

  “I never read reviews if I can help it.”

  “Good for you. It’s the one thing we can control: Don’t ever let them see you sweat.” He ordered a scotch. He reminded me in a way of Gary, with his masculine physique and directness, but also, strangely, of von Sternberg, like a man with something to prove.

  “What brings you aboard this rust bucket?” he asked, looking into my eyes. With any other, I’d have interpreted this as the come-on. But it didn’t strike me as his intent. He seemed more curious, as if he’d heard things about me that he had to ascertain for himself. “Wait. Don’t tell me. Weren’t you in Paris recently?”

  I nodded. “And Vienna.”

  “Yeah, but I saw pictures of you in Le Figaro, wearing a suit and tie. My friend Gertrude Stein—do you know who she is?” When I assented, he went on, “Well, she thinks you’re grand. She said you’ve got some serious cojones to walk around like that and not give a damn.”

  “I’m flattered. I understand Miss Stein doesn’t lack for cojones herself.”

  “She sure doesn’t.” He laughed. “I admire a woman with balls. It’s like I always say—”

  “Never let ’em see you sweat?” I was thinking I’d like to see him do just that. In my bed.

  “That, and—” He leaned close to me. “Don’t do anything you sincerely don’t want to do. Never confuse movement with action.”

  In that instant, I liked him very much. “A philosophy for life. I must remember it.”

  “Do so.” He motioned at my glass. “Another?”

  I drank down my cocktail in one gulp. “Why not?”

  We didn’t sleep together, but we closed the bar that night. By the end of the evening, during a lengthy stroll on the deck, I was calling him Papa and he never said my name.

  I had made a lifelong friend.

  VII

  Upon my arrival in Los Angeles, I found out that von Sternberg’s mysterious obligations had entailed a covert trip to Berlin to meet with the UFA, only to discover, as Lubitsch had assured me, that the studio had no wish to hire him.

  “Those yellow-bellied swine,” he raved before I’d even unpacked, waiting in my driveway with a pile of cigarette butts at his feet. “They think they can reject me because I’m a Jew. Without me, there would be no them! They’d be bankrupt, as everything that has kept them afloat came from The Blue Angel.”

  He exaggerated, but I served him cognac, soothing his anger while managing to finagle out of him that he’d hoped to shove Paramount, and Lubitsch in particular, into a corner once again by hanging a UFA offer over their heads.

  “Cowards.” He gulped down his cognac, then handed me his glass for a refill. “They acted as though they were doing me a favor by letting me through the back door. ‘We’re only seeing you because we hold you in such esteem, Herr von Sternberg, but we must abide by the new policy.’ New policy,” he spat out. “Kowtowing to Hitler and Goebbels and the rest of those idiots, as if the Nazis know anything about film or culture.”

  “They’re burning our culture,” I reminded him. “You might have spared yourself the indignity. You already knew Ernst wants us to work together.”

  “On a first-name basis with the new boss, I see.” He scowled. “Of course he does. The man is a cretin, but he’s not stupid. The Song of Songs was a vulgarity. Did you know the studio sent dozens of copies of that nude statue for display in the theater lobbies? It’s a wonder the Hays Office didn’t slap brown-bag wrappers on the lot and pull the picture for indecency.”

  I gave him an exasperated look. In light of his humiliation, of course he had to degrade the one picture I’d made without him. But I was glad he was here, relieved that he’d been allowed to leave Germany. “You were very reckless,” I said. “You could have been arrested.”

  “For what? For bringing a script in my luggage?”

  I paused. “You took a script to the UFA?”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to persuade them with my Yiddish charm, was I?”

  “I see.” I served him his third cognac. “And what is this script about?”

  He turned vehement, as only he could be when possessed by a new idea. “A picture about Catherine the Great. All the studios are doing royals now: Kate Hepburn as Mary, Queen of Scots, Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette, and Garbo as Queen Christina.” He paused, anticipating my reaction to the news of MGM’s queen playing a famous cross-dressing queen.

  “Garbo in a doublet,” I said dryly. “How original.” I served myself a cognac, even if I had no intention of drinking at three in the afternoon. “Are you going to approach Ernst with it?”

  “I already have. He loves it.”

  “He does?” Immediate suspicion overcame me. “Has he renewed your contract?”

  “With absolute control. He also thought he was doing me a favor. And he has—because now we can do as we please, without the studio’s interference.”

  As they said in America, I smelled a rat. He rarely had a full script before the first day of shooting, if then. He thrived on vagueness, on keeping everyone in suspense, so he could make it up as he went. It was part of his genius and the reason most actors detested him. Yet Lubitsch had granted him “absolute control.” It seemed the height of folly. Or trust. I doubted the latter.

  “I’d like to read this script,” I said, bringing an immediate glower to his face.

  “When have I ever led you astray?”

  “How soon we forget,” I replied, echoing his own past words to me.

  He pulled out two crumpled pages from his pocket, flung them onto the sofa, and walked out, mumbling under his breath about ingratitude everywhere he turned.

  It wasn’t a script. Not even half a script.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if Lubitsch was more cunning than we knew.

  IN A VOLUMINOUS VERMILION GOWN with skirts wide enough to house tribes, I felt like another candelabrum in von Sternberg’s décor, his self-designed set drenched in baroque archways, Russian icons, and gargantuan doorways, the excessive tableaux better suited to the silent era.

  “In this scene,” he said, swiveling in his new director’s chair, which was affixed to an ingenious platform that could be cranked upward for panoramic viewing, “you order the murder of your husband, the half-wit Grand Duke Peter.”

  “Yes.” I
lowered my eyes to the pages he’d left in my dressing room, trying to not dislodge my bejeweled wig. As expected, he revised the script daily, leaving me and hundreds of extras wondering what we would shoot that day. “About that. Must she be so evil?”

  “He planned to kill her. She must have her revenge.”

  I was glad I’d kept Heidede off the set. She was almost eleven, old enough to join me at work after school. She’d made a brief cameo in the picture as Catherine’s younger self, but then I left her in my dressing room, concerned she’d think these grotesqueries reflected my career.

  “She seems to exact quite a lot of revenge. Without much in the way of words to go with it. Won’t the audience lose sympathy for her if she doesn’t explain her actions?”

  “Who needs explanation when the mood will suffice?” He motioned brusquely with his white-gloved hand to the set, having reverted to his eccentric mode of apparel, sometimes bellowing instructions at the crew while brandishing his aviator goggles. “You’ve seen the rushes. It’ll be sublime. A Catherine the Great unlike one that anyone has seen.”

  “That’s what worries me,” I muttered under my breath, but I took my mark.

  By the time the shoot wrapped, I had no idea what we had made. After screening the unedited version, Lubitsch walked out. I knew then that my instincts had been correct.

  “He led you by the nose,” I told von Sternberg as he lay on my sofa with a damp cloth on his brow, exhausted by his creative mayhem. “He gave you full control and you ran with it.”

  “Did he say he hated it? Did he say he wouldn’t release it or would make us reshoot?”

  “No.” I stood over him anxiously. “He said nothing. Isn’t that enough?”

  “He said nothing because he’s a mediocre talent in a big office. He’ll continue to say nothing, which is how I prefer him.”

  Perhaps, but I still made an appointment to see Lubitsch the next day. By the time we met, I was a bundle of nerves. “Well?” I said as soon as I sat before his desk.