Marlene: A Novel

by C. W. Gortner

  I saw myself grimace in the bulb-lit mirror, where I was applying eyeliner for my upcoming scene. Countess Alexandra was about to take a bath, frolicking among bubbles before her enraptured translator on the eve of the 1917 revolution. I intended to shoot the scene nude, though everyone expected me to wear the flesh-colored bathing suit provided by wardrobe. But the suit made my thighs bulge. Given the picture’s portentous subject matter, with endless flights from rampaging Bolsheviks, a little reality, as my last director had claimed, was required.

  Now wrapped in a fleece robe (the studio could have doubled as an icebox), I was in no humor for inopportune visitors, particularly ones from Germany. “Did you say I’m working?” I asked, as Betsy paused by the bathing suit on a chair. “I can’t receive them now. Tell them—”

  A knock came at the door, followed by a cheerful: “Liebchen! It’s me, Leni. I know you’re in there. Stop hiding. I won’t bite.”

  “Mein Gott.” Horrified, I swiveled on my stool to Betsy. “Is that Leni Riefenstahl?”

  She dangled the bathing suit between her fingers. “She didn’t give her name. She only said you knew each other in Berlin and she’s here on official business.”

  I hadn’t seen or spoken to Leni in over ten years, but I’d heard from Anna May about how Leni had graduated from her Alpine epics, securing a contract to film the Nazi party rally in Nuremberg—a propaganda piece that made its way to America, in all its abhorrent display of faux-imperial grandeur, replete with strobe lights and a colonnaded stadium, with the only things missing being horse-drawn chariots and hungry lions to devour the Jews.

  What on earth was she doing here now?

  Motioning Betsy aside, I opened the door. My former Sister About Town greeted me with an effusive, perfumed embrace. “Darling Marlene. I thought you didn’t like me anymore.”

  I drew back. I’d have been hard-pressed to recognize her, so sleek and manicured in her expensive sable, her hair bobbed and lacquered, doused in Chanel No. 5 and Nazi prestige.

  “Why would you think that?” As I spoke, I saw a leather-coated man a few feet away, a German officer in civilian disguise, staring at me from under his cap, his face like a slab of rock.

  Leni pushed past me. I shut the dressing room door on the officer and saw Betsy dive behind my dressing screen. “This is a surprise,” I said. “I’m due on the set at any moment.”

  I wasn’t rude, but not friendly, either. I suspected a setup, watching her take a seat on the chair, squashing my bathing suit and plucking a gold cigarette case from her fur-coat pocket. I almost expected her to pull out a camera and start taking candid photographs of me for delivery to Goebbels, who’d publish them in some Nazi magazine to prove I was one of them.

  “Oh, I know how busy you are,” said Leni. “I am, too. I’m only in London for a few days. I’m due back in Germany next week. The Olympic Summer Games are being held in Berlin this year, as you must know, and I’ve been hired to film them.”

  “How nice for you.”

  She lit her cigarette. I was on the verge of informing her that she needn’t pretend; I knew she’d been pestering Betsy to see me, so she could forget the chitchat and just state why she was here. But I held back. I wanted to see how she played this out. She must have impressive credentials to bypass the studio security, and ever a performer, if rarely a good one, she never could resist drama. She might end up amusing me, though I doubted it.

  “Is that your official business?” I asked, as she smoked with a pursed-lip affectation so as not to smudge her lipstick. “I can’t imagine the Brits are keeping their athletes from you.”

  Her smile came out more like a sneer. “Marlene. Always so droll. You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Neither have you.” I returned to my dressing table. “As I said, I don’t have time now for a visit. If you want, you can tell me where you’re staying and once I finish shooting, we’ll—”

  “This won’t take long.” She regarded me in the mirror. “I have an offer for you, a very lucrative one.” As she saw me frown, she went on, “Herr Goebbels has read the notices for your last few pictures, darling. He knows things aren’t going so well for you in America these days.”

  “Really? And here I thought Goebbels didn’t fancy my work.”

  “You misunderstand. He likes it very much. So much, in fact, he’s authorized me to offer you fifty thousand pounds to make a picture in Germany. You can hire any director you want.”

  Now, I had to laugh. “Leni, have you come all this way to proposition me?”

  She went pale under her rouge. “Of course not. Heaven forbid.” She tried to laugh herself, but her voice was shaky. “I’m booked solid. The Olympics and all.”

  “And if I were to name von Sternberg?” I asked. When she did not answer, I nodded. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Marlene, really—”

  I held up my hand. “As I said, this is a surprise. They want me to make a picture there? Last time I checked my notices in Germany, they were far worse than any in Hollywood.”

  “We promise an immediate reversal of the campaign against you, to prepare the public for your return.” She leaned to me with a coy smile. “The führer wants to receive you personally. He’s expressed great interest in meeting you. He has quite a way with the ladies.”

  She was wrong. I did understand. With Germany in the spotlight for the Summer Games, the Reich’s brutality must be swept under the carpet until the games concluded. International tourists and delegates would attend; it would be inhospitable to offend foreign sensibilities with JUDEN VERBOTEN signage or the continued absence of Hollywood’s highest-paid German actress.

  As revulsion swept through me, I sweetened my voice. “Darling Leni, it really is so lovely of you to have come all this way. What a pity I cannot accept. I, too, am booked solid. I’m under contract for the next two years at Paramount, which brings us to the end of 1938. Then I’ve committed to other engagements. Can we possibly resume our little talk after, say, 1940?”

  She froze. Then she ground out her cigarette on the floor. “It is a pity, to reject one’s nation for dollars. It won’t last. A woman of your age, no matter how well preserved—they don’t appreciate maturity there like we do. And I fear 1940 will indeed be much too late.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” I didn’t rise as she went to the door. She paused. “I’ll be in London for another day or so should you happen to change your mind. My hotel is—”

  “Have a safe trip home, Leni,” I interrupted. “Give my regards to your führer.”

  She walked out, slamming the door behind her. From behind the dressing screen where she’d crouched, Betsy emerged. Meeting my eyes, she let out a giggle. “Her führer?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He certainly is not mine.”

  I ATTENDED MY PICTURE’S premiere clad in diamonds and silver lamé. At the studio after party, I was approached by the debonair actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Exceedingly handsome, he trailed after me like a puppy throughout the evening, until I invited him to my suite.

  Unaware at first of our seven-year age difference, young Douglas was passionate and devoted, accompanying me to Paris to meet Rudi and Tamara, where he was surprised to learn I was married—apparently, he didn’t read the press—but took pains to affect nonchalance.

  Rudi gave me a mordant look—“Rather young, isn’t he?”—which I ignored as we embarked for a monthlong family vacation in Switzerland.

  During our stay in a rented château by Lake Lucerne, Douglas’s nonchalance crumbled as he witnessed my arrangement with my husband and his mistress. We had no qualms about trotting around the grounds naked to take a dip in the pool, Rudi sunbathing and reading, while Tamara and I sat under a parasol and chatted about fashion or art. Tami was not well. She had developed a nervous condition, Rudi confided to me, exacerbated by the move to Paris. After having fled Russia, she was acutely sensitive to any change, sometimes falling into depressions that lasted for weeks. I was concerned for her
and gave her extra attention, letting her wear my clothes and asking her to help me cook up meals in the kitchen. She was devoted to Rudi, more so than I’d ever been, and I did not want her to be unhappy.

  “But he’s your husband,” Douglas said. “Yet she’s his lover and your daughter calls her Auntie Tami. It’s all so . . . irregular.”

  I slid my gaze over him. He was beautiful. Picture perfect, as Hollywood would say. But I was beginning to realize that he was indeed too young. He hadn’t lived nearly long enough in Europe or anywhere else to develop that maturity I’d come to expect in a lover. “I told you that I’m not sleeping with him,” I said. “What is the problem?”

  He didn’t reply. Until one morning after making love, when I left him to go sip hot chocolate and read the terrible notices for my new picture with Rudi and Tamara in their bed. Barging in on us, he took an outraged look at our chuckling, undressed trio—the reviews were so bad, we had to laugh—and cried out, “This is outrageous!”

  “Outrageous,” I said coldly, “is how you seem to have forgotten your manners.”

  I was obliged to escort him back to our room, sitting him down and informing him that I wasn’t in the habit of being told what I could or could not do. “If you want us to continue,” I warned, “you must stop behaving like a jealous spouse. I’m not interested in getting married again. One husband is enough.”

  He moped for a time but refrained from making another scene. Unfortunately, a more unpleasant situation caught me by surprise when Heidede, who’d gained so much weight that I chided her for eating herself out of her new clothes, bawled, “I don’t care about your stupid dresses. I don’t want to look like you. I don’t want to be your little girl anymore.”

  Tamara went to comfort her, but I motioned her aside. In tears, Heidede said to me, “I want to stay with Papa in Paris. I hate America.”

  Belatedly recalling Gerda’s words to me, of how miserable and homesick my daughter was, I knew this was my fault. I had ignored her feelings for too long. She was nearing adolescence; she needed more than a schedule and new clothes from me. I fought against the remorseful guilt that I’d not been a very good mother. I hadn’t meant to neglect her, for I loved her so much, but I had done just that. I’d ignored her awkward entry into puberty and never solicited her opinions, afraid of her answers, which might mean I’d have to cease living my life my way. But she wasn’t a child anymore; I could no longer treat her like my pretty doll. She was almost thirteen, with excess weight bloating her figure and an expression of utter misery.

  “But, my darling, we’ve such a lovely home in America,” I said, “and your school is there, with all your friends. Wouldn’t you miss all your things?”

  She glowered. “Your lovely home. Your friends. Your things. I never see anyone but the cook, the maid, or my bodyguard. The only friend I have is Judy at riding class, and she also works in pictures. Before she knew who I was, she asked me if I was your fat sister.”

  I regarded her in silence. Shame at my own behavior sharpened my voice. “You could try and make other friends besides that Garland girl.”

  “I don’t want to. I hate Hollywood. I hate it all. Please, Mama, let me stay with Vati.”

  “Out of the question,” I retorted, but after she staged morose defiance, refusing to leave her room, Rudi confronted me. “You have a contract to fulfill. You have to start working again sometime. I am here. Let her stay. You know it’s for the best.”

  Under the circumstances, I couldn’t justify forcing my daughter to return to Hollywood. If I wanted to prove to her that I cared, how could I refuse her request? Still, I resisted.

  “To live with you in Paris?” I said. “Where you’re working, too? And Tami, with her nerves? How can that be better for Heidede?”

  Eventually, we agreed to enroll her in a prestigious Swiss boarding school, close enough that Rudi could visit on holidays but with a disciplined schedule that could help her shed some of her weight. Rudi also persuaded me before I left to put some of my more expensive jewels in a Swiss vault. I spent lavishly, on clothes, first-class travel, and hotel suites, and I never saved, as if disregarding any limitations would assure I had none.

  “You must think ahead,” Rudi said, fingering my jewels. “Putting these in safekeeping will give you something to fall back on, should you ever need it.” He was worried for me, aware that my standing in Hollywood was precarious. “Paramount pays me a salary in Paris,” he added, “and the studio supplements my rent. I don’t need your support right now.”

  I did as he suggested. As for Heidede, she was so delighted with our new arrangement, she forgot to kiss me good-bye.

  I returned to America with Douglas, fretful over my daughter’s absence and the fact that my attempt to reinvent myself abroad had resulted in failure. It would take many years before I learned that my obsession with the latter was directly responsible for the former.

  WITHIN WEEKS OF MY RETURN, Paramount lined up a picture for me—a potboiler called Angel, in which I played a diplomat’s wife who drifts into an adulterous affair. I didn’t want to make it; I found the plot as thin as my diaphanous gowns, and reviewers duly noted that “the lugubrious story comes to a stultifying halt every time Dietrich raises her elongated eyelids.”

  A few weeks after the lackluster premiere, my agent Eddie, an urbane man whose client list included other top stars, took me to lunch at the Brown Derby, that whimsical hat-shaped restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard that was considered the place to be seen.

  His choice of locale was deliberate: public yet intimate, a celebrity watering hole where no one raised their voice, as I discovered after we ordered two Cobb salads. Unfolding the latest edition of the Hollywood Reporter, which only the previous year had lauded me as the highest-paid actress in the world, he slid it across the table.

  “Now don’t get upset. You’ll see you are in excellent company.”

  I looked at the article he’d circled in red. There, in type that leaped out at me like a wolf with bared fangs, I read that the Independent Theater Owners of America had published the results of their annual audience poll. Bette Davis, Rosalind Russell, and Jean Arthur were the new popular favorites. Mae West, Joan Crawford, Kate Hepburn, and the sphinx herself, Garbo, along with myself, had been deemed “box-office poison.”

  I looked up in horror. “They’re encouraging the studios to stop making pictures with us.”

  He nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “You’re afraid so? Have you spoken to Paramount about it?”

  He glanced around us. I knew at once that he was ascertaining whether anyone was eavesdropping, as Louella Parsons paid spies at the Brown Derby to pick up stray gossip. Then, as my chest tightened, he said quietly, “I have. They’re very apologetic but given the situation, they regretfully cannot renew your contract. As I said, you’re in good company. Garbo is there, too. This happens to some of the best talent.”

  I sat immobile, stunned. I couldn’t have cared less if Garbo found herself in the same predicament; I had an expensive Swiss boarding school for my daughter, a house in Hollywood, a lifestyle to maintain. If the studio let me go, how was I going to afford it?

  The waiter served the salads and asked if I wanted some grated cheese. When I failed to reply, he sniffed and retreated.

  “The studio adores you,” Eddie went on. “You’re one of their favorites. But with the state of the industry as it is, they can’t afford to keep you. They wish you all the best.”

  A greeting-card sentiment, as though I’d been diagnosed with an inconvenient ailment. “All the best,” I echoed. “That’s it, after everything I’ve done for them?” My voice had grown shrill, bringing the waiter hurrying back to the table.

  “Is everything to your satisfaction, Miss Dietrich?” he oozed.

  “No.” I glared at him. “It most certainly is not.”

  Eddie slipped the waiter a tip and sent him away. He regarded me in discomfort from across the table. “This isn’t as bad
as it seems. Think of it this way: You’re now free to choose parts you want to do, not whatever the studio assigns. I’ll put together a wonderful submission packet for you and—”

  I raised my hand. “No,” I whispered. “Please. No more.”

  He lowered his gaze. “I am sorry, Marlene. I realize this comes as a shock, but I represent you. My job as your agent is to look after your interests—”

  I couldn’t bear it. Coming abruptly to my feet, I retrieved my jacket from the coatroom and walked out into the blinding Los Angeles sunlight, calling for my car. By the time I reached my house, I was beyond tears. Beyond reason. Beyond despair.

  I had fallen into an abyss of my own making.

  THE STUDIO ISSUED MY FINAL PAYMENT FOR ANGEL. Infuriated by their abandonment, I flaunted my tarnished celebrity to the hilt, buying a new Cadillac and carrying on simultaneous affairs with Douglas, Gary, and Mercedes. My recklessness resulted in a nerve-wracking moment when, after accidentally overbooking myself, I ended up with Douglas at my door, shouting that we had reservations at the Cocoanut Grove, while Gary clambered half-dressed down the back stairs and Mercedes telephoned me in a snit because she had a salon waiting and I was nowhere in sight.

  When I called her the next day to apologize, she berated me. “Really, Marlene. Two men? And both such mediocre actors? I don’t know whether to be more insulted by your relish for these imbroglios or your appalling taste in dick.” She hung up on me.

  Gary was more sanguine, remarking that I should hire a secretary to ensure I didn’t end up with all three of them in my bed. Douglas wept. After demanding I give up the others and hearing my predictable answer, he ended our liaison. In turn, I left my house with its empty rooms—the studio was no longer paying for it—and rented a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where I happened upon Cary Grant and Randolph Scott in the bar. They invited me to their Santa Monica cottage for coffee, after which I joined them for a walk along the beach with their terrier.

  Touched by their kindness, I poured out my professional troubles. Cary shook his head sadly. “The studios own us. They control everything we do, vetting our scripts and choosing our parts, but then we get blamed when it doesn’t work out.”