Once I sat behind her in a café on Rankestraße.
I was sketching in my notebook, working on an idea for a film scenario. She was with a bunch of friends, smoking. They were all dressed like they’d just ran away from the circus. She was talking loudly, something about “my beautiful breasts,” and asking her friends if theirs had begun to sag, then she swung her pair about in her hands! Needless to say, the entire café was shocked. She behaved as if she did not know that she had attracted everyone’s attention, but she must have been lapping it up inside.
The other time we were both guests at the Berlin Press Ball.
The wonderful photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt wanted to make a picture of me, and I had invited Wong May, a Chinese actress visiting Berlin at the time, to join me for the picture.
If I had known that Marlene wanted to be in the picture, too, I would have asked her to join us, but I had not noticed her in the ballroom, until she made a big scene by spilling her drink on Wong May. We were all in shock. Poor Wong May was very upset, but I calmed her down.
Marlene was not sorry at all. She got more and more shameless.
First she kept repositioning that silly pipe-shaped cigarette holder she had to the left and then the right, hamming it up. Then Marlene started telling Eisenstaedt she was a leg model for the new synthetic silk stockings that were going like hotcakes at the Kaufhaus Tietz. If he ever needed legs for his pictures he should write her, these gams could sell anything.
All sorts of unladylike behavior—for just the tiniest bit of limelight!
I did not want to associate myself with Marlene, so I excused myself. Off I went to rejoin my table—I was seated next to the director of the latest film I had been cast in. The Fate of the House of the Hapsburgs was about the suicide pact of the Austrian crown prince and his mistress in 1889. I auditioned to play the empress, but the director said I was too young, and too attractive—I was better suited for the mistress, Mary Vetsera. For the role, the director wanted me to “think about history.” How does one think about history? I asked. Ripples, he exhorted, think of the ripples! He wanted my every movement, the weight of my footsteps, to carry with it the ripples of future consequences. After all, he concluded, it is because of these two thwarted lovers that Franz Ferdinand became the heir apparent and was assassinated. Thus: the war. Our smallest actions lead to large outcomes, when we cannot yet know it. Think of that when you are brushing your hair!
The director wanted all of us to read a book by Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. He said it was essential reading for the serious actor.
I had never heard of Husserl.
I had heard of the P word in passing, but I did not really know what it meant. The director told me phänomenologie was the study of consciousness and its constructions, as experienced from the first-person point of view. The book was so heavy and dusty that every time I moved it I sneezed. I took a peek at the first few pages, saw erkenntnistheorie and ontologie appear several times, and proceeded to hide it under my bed.
I did not like to read. I liked to be active.
And surely, internal time was an attempt by a man to be clever! It has no real or useful meaning. Time is external or it is not at all. Life is for the living. Every morning when I woke I wanted to seize the day. I did not want to be thinking about phänomenologie.
* * *
—
I HEARD THE same thing as well—but I doubt if they were lovers for long, if at all. Wong May looked to be a very decent girl. They said Marlene kissed her in full view of everyone in a homosexuals-only club, but Marlene had probably kissed everyone in Berlin once, you know. Did she really go by renal failure, or was it syphilis? Who is to say!
I ran into Wong May round the corner in my neighborhood the day after the Press Ball.
I was coming back from a wardrobe fitting for The Fate of the House of the Hapsburgs. My costumes were snug, but I intended to lose five pounds before the shoot began. To motivate myself I wanted the clothes to be taken in a few centimeters all around beforehand. I remember being surprised to see Wong May in this area. It was mostly residential, not for a tourist. I told her I lived on the corner and what a nice coincidence it was to see her around here.
She was wearing a well-cut navy pantsuit with a yellow blouse.
It looked great on her.
I complimented it and asked if she wanted to get a coffee.
I would have loved to find out more about Hollywood, and in turn I could tell her about Berlin. She looked a little flustered. She said she would have loved to, but she was running late for an interview. I helped her to get a cab. We made a plan to meet for tea before she left Berlin.
It was a busy week for both of us working actresses, but we managed to fit tea in.
I think I took her to Konditorei Buchwald—excellent baumkuchen, and a terrace right by the river. I told her about my role as Mary Vetsera, and she told me in London she would play, for the first time, a lead character in a movie. She was excited about that. The movie was called Piccadilly. Her character was a dishwasher-turned-dancer called Sho-sho who catches the fancy of the proprietor, to the wrath of his girlfriend. She said she was looking forward to choreographing her own dance sequences for the movie. I told her I had been a modern dancer before making my career switch to acting. She was obviously impressed.
I die at the end of Piccadilly, of course, she said, so that everyone else can live happily ever after. What a snooze! I told her my character died in The Fate of the House of the Hapsburgs, too, in a suicide pact with the emperor. That’s different, she said. Your character chooses to die for love. My character is killed because someone is in love with her and she has to pay for it with her life!
That’s the last time I saw Wong May.
I know that after Marlene moved to America they acted in one of Jo’s films together, Shanghai Express. I always wondered if that would have been a little uncomfortable. Although I take some issue with Marlene’s acting—a bit flat if you ask me—I thought that was one of Jo’s finest works.
XVII
Two movies changed my life.
One was a German Bergfilm called Mountain of Destiny, directed by Arnold Fanck. I was a dancer then, and when I saw that movie I knew I wanted to be an actress.
The other was Docks of New York. It was a Hollywood movie, and the first film of Jo’s I ever saw. By that time I was an actress, and it made me realize that perhaps I had the eye to be a director. Docks of New York was about a roughneck stoker who saves the life of a world-weary prostitute on the Manhattan waterfront. I was drawn deeply to the style. Contrasting surfaces balanced out one another. Smoke and water, light and dark. I was so impressed I went back to see it several times in the span of two weeks, even taking my notebook into the movie theater on the last viewing to scribble notes down.
One of the things that kept me going back was a tiny detail.
Close to the end of the film, there was a subjective shot attributed to Betty Compson.
We see a close-up of a needle and thread in her hand, from her point of view. In the next moment, the same shot is out of focus. On my first viewing, I thought the cinematographer had made a mistake. Then the camera pulls back, and we see that Betty Compson is in tears.
That was why the shot was made blurry.
It sounds insignificant and lasts for only a few seconds on the screen, but I found this to be nothing less than a mark of artistic genius. I could not really explain, even to myself, what I admired so much about it, and so I felt the need to watch it over and over.
* * *
—
WHEN I READ in the papers that the director of Docks of New York was coming from L.A. to Berlin to negotiate a film deal with UFA, I marked the date in my calendar. The papers said Josef von Sternberg was Viennese but that he had grown up in New York City. On the day of the meeting
, I set off for the studio in a green woolen dress, a coat trimmed with red fox, a matching green felt hat. Another small tip from me to your readers: I take a lot of care with how I dress when I meet an important person for the first time. I pick my clothes according to what I think of him, and how I want him to see me. It sends a message, sets a mood.
Don’t be afraid of a little artifice. Use it well.
I inquired from department to department all over the UFA building and thankfully was not turned away—they must have seen Fanck’s movies and recognized me as an actress. Finally I found the conference room, but I was told expressly not to disturb Mr. von Sternberg. He was in an important meeting. With whom? I asked. UFA studio executives, the producer Erich Pommer, the novelist Heinrich Mann, and the playwright Carl Zuckmayer, I was told. I could hear their voices from inside the conference room. I was so close to the man who had made Docks of New York! Before anyone could stop me, I reached my hand out and rapped on the door. When the door opened, I could barely make out anyone in the room. The cigar smoke was so thick I started to cough. One of them called out: What is the matter?
I would like to speak with Mr. von Sternberg, I said.
The door was slammed in my face. Well, I thought, at least I tried. Then the door opened again. A thinly moustached man stood in the doorframe. He was quite short and his coat was too big for him. He asked: What can we do for you? I would like to speak with Mr. Josef von Sternberg, I said. I’ve seen Docks of New York at least six times. You’ve seen my movie six times, I remember him repeating my words wryly, and you want to speak with me? So he had come to the door himself. The assistant was apologizing to him and shooing me away.
Von Sternberg stopped him. He took the cigar out of his mouth.
So, he said. What do you like about it?
The subjectivity of the tear-stained shot, I said. I have never seen something like that before.
I could see that he was surprised by my answer.
Not the “heartfelt love story between two underclass urchins,” he said, appearing to be quoting reviews, from the officious tone he was putting on, nor the “sumptuous visual decadence that approaches the painterly surface,” but the subjectivity of the tear-stained shot! He folded his arms and looked at me. I suppose I could lunch with you tomorrow at the Hotel Bristol, he said. Come by at two.
* * *
—
BY ONE O’CLOCK I was at the Hotel Bristol. I was not sure if he would really turn up, but I was prepared to wait. He came down at a quarter to two. I greeted him as Mr. von Sternberg.
Just Jo, he said.
We ordered my recommendation, I recall—tender beef with horseradish. He actually yawned when I told him I was an actress, and was unimpressed when I mentioned Arnold Fanck. That man would be better off as a nature photographer, he said. When I started trying to explain what I liked about Docks of New York, he grew more attentive. He might have seemed blasé, I thought, but he was just the same as other men, who liked hearing about themselves!
It’s plain to see that your technical solutions are brilliant, I said, just as I had rehearsed all morning, but it is not as simple as that. What I mean to say is, they are made not just for aesthetic principles, but on the grounds of emotion. You leave out a lot. Your camera decides what the viewer’s eye will look at, how much of it you will be allowed to look at, from where you will look at it. Of course this is true of every movie, but in most cases it is made to feel incidental, even though it is deliberate. In your case, it is accentuated by a highly personal touch that does not try to pretend it isn’t there. Instead, you flaunt it. Also, you do not play out a scene all the way, or to where an emotional climax would typically have been located. I suppose you expect the viewers to complete the scenario with their own imagination.
By the time I had finished my speech, he’d put down his fork.
But my dear fräulein, he said, you are not as guileless as you seem!
I was a little insulted, but I didn’t say anything. Men often talked like that in those days. I’d worked with enough of them to know. He told me the reviews had been glowing, but only in the most superficial of ways. He had begun to think that perhaps Docks of New York was really a picture that would be appreciated only by directors and cinematographers. He was surprised that I had so intuitively grasped how its technical considerations interacted with its aesthetic ones.
Have you ever assisted a director?
Oh no, I said, I am an actress.
They’re not mutually exclusive, he mused, are they?
This had never occurred to me.
Anyway, he said, why don’t you audition for my next picture?
He said they had signed the papers that morning. The financing was in place, it was his first talkie, and UFA’s first sound film. An adaptation from a Heinrich Mann novel, Professor Unrat.
I had not read the novel, but it had a saucy reputation.
Jo said he wanted to call the movie The Blue Angel. The novel is more concerned with the point of view of the male protagonist, he said, but I want my movie to focus on Lola Lola. After all, the camera has less fun gazing at a man than it does a woman, whomsoever she shall be.
Before we parted I asked him: Docks of New York—is that what New York is like?
No, he said, tipping his hat, but it is exactly what you will wish New York was like.
XVIII
It would not be an exaggeration to say that every young actress in Berlin auditioned for the part of Lola Lola in The Blue Angel. They knew Jo was based in Hollywood and were eager to make inroads there. America was too foreign for me. I was not one of those hungry European starlets who wanted to go over and make it big—I’ve always been a grounded person.
Lola Lola was a barroom singer, a real hussy, who seduced an old professor.
It didn’t fit my image at all—I was known for playing sporty, pure-hearted, lively types on the screen, and I wanted to keep it that way. I went for the audition only because Jo had personally invited me. It was the polite thing to do, you know, even if I didn’t want the part. I remember wearing a sleeveless cream-colored pleated dress and nude silk stockings to the audition. From the moment I entered the room I tried to avoid Jo’s gaze, so I would not be affected by his eyes on me. After that lunch at the Hotel Bristol, I could sense he thought I was special. I liked him, too, but just as a friend. I hoped he didn’t get the wrong impression. It was always a headache for me when a man fell for me, and I couldn’t reciprocate his feelings.
* * *
—
EACH HOPEFUL WAS given a scenario with a pianist.
We were to sing an English song, “You’re the Cream in My Coffee,” accompanied on the piano, but the pianist would play it poorly. We were to react to the pianist, who would take it from the top, and we would start singing again. He would flub his notes. We would get mad, chastise him, cross from the back of the piano to the front, whereupon the pianist would begin to play a German song, “Ohne Dich,” smoothly this time, and we would sing it.
Dual-language productions were not uncommon.
I had not been involved on one yet, but it meant that each scene was done twice, once in German and once in English. I was lucky I had learned English at school. There were actresses who tried to scrape through without knowing the language, but they were at a disadvantage for such productions. I was nervous because I did not think I was much good at singing. Music’s one of the few art forms I don’t have a natural gift for. I tried to use my dancer’s training by leaning across the piano, with my arm outstretched, when singing “You’re the Cream in My Coffee,” but it did not feel comfortable. If it did not feel comfortable to me, then it would hardly look right on the camera. When I received the phone call saying I had not been selected for Lola Lola, I was not surprised. The tension between Jo and me was plain to see; it was probably better this way. Now we could get to know each othe
r as equals, since I wouldn’t be working with him.
I breathed a sigh of relief and asked who had been cast.
When they said it was Marlene, I felt so happy for her! She was older than me, but she had not received any real roles in a movie yet. I told them she would be a great fit for Lola Lola and wished them all the best. Before the commencement of the shoot I wrote Jo to ask if I could observe him on the shoot. I had given more thought to our lunch conversation, and I was curious about how directors worked.
Certainly, he wrote back.
I visited the set twice. The first was very pleasant.
How Jo positioned his lights made an impression on me. I also got to see how he moved his actors like chess pieces and gave them instructions. The great Emil Jannings, who played the professor, was in a good mood and I got to speak with him.
The second time, I brought my notebook and was asking Jo questions between rehearsals. He was rehearsing the barrel scene with Marlene, where she hikes up her knee and sings, but she was not listening to Jo’s cues. She kept looking over in my direction, and I began to feel awkward about being there.
I don’t know what’s wrong with that broad today, Jo said to me as he puffed on a cigar.
When they resumed, Marlene scratched her armpit vigorously.
I was surprised that she would do such a thing in public. I tried to focus on asking Jo about the position of the lights, but then Marlene tugged her panties down and lifted her leg much higher and wider than she was meant to for the scene, till finally Jo roared: Put down your leg, Marlene, everyone can see your pubic hair!
I was so embarrassed I said good-bye to Jo and fled the set.
Delayed Rays of a Star Page 28