Marlene Dietrich - No Angel - A Life of Marlene Dietrich.flv

do you think I can't wash I still eat crackers in my bag what have I got to lose the meeting to put the fork or baby processed are do you think I care I tell if there I seem to remember you came backstage once before Marlena Dietrich lives on in our minds not simply as an actress or singer the more eventful than her movie plots though marriage had numerous affairs with her leading men and many other famous figures of both sexes she led a complicated life she was a magnificent actress in real life much better than she ever was on the screen or was permitted to be on the screen well I think that's probably what was a great tragedy in her life although she would never have recognized it as a tragedy I say it is I think each ryx life is a tragedy from beginning to end didrik was born in 1901 in a small town near berlin her father was a police lieutenant and he bequeathed milena and military sense of duty but he died when she was young leaving her mother and a local school to bring her up quietly she began to rebel which was only 16 it was common gossip at school that she had bedroom eyes she got one professor sacked and her first significant affair was with her violin teacher she had musical talent but only use it as a non trait of the world she couldn't wait to join a cabaret circuit a decadent Berlin she threw herself into club life first a spectator then as a chorus girl these were heady days in the Germany of the early twenties and the entertainment was raucous and uncensored we all should have been ruined to go to places like this there were other places cabaret had been around since the turn of the century and there was still a lot of those places with sawdust on the floor and your early 20s a brilliant of milena on stage and the reviewer says as for Marlena Dietrich legs legs legs Marlena was very ambitious and in her ambition she occasionally forgot to wear undergarments when she went on stage this gave certain segments of theatrical audience in Berlin reasons to visit her shows again and again and again a choice of clothes were to market Berlin's atmosphere of sexual freedom one moment she was enticingly feminine the next she was dressing like a man she wore trousers which in Berlin in the 20s and Sodom and Gomorrha Berlin was absolutely acceptable bisexuality was an acceptable trait in Berlin it was not even discussed or considered strange there were gay bars there were bisexual bars there were anything you wanted was out in the open so she came from that background despite all this she took the conventional route and married in 1923 she had a baby her only child Maria a year later though they only lived together five years Dietrich and her husband Rudy stayed married for the rest of their lives he worked in the German film industry I the famous director was in town to cast his first talkie about a cabaret club called the Blue Angel von Sternberg wanted to make the Blue Angel in both German and English so it was very careful about the actors that he was casting and he'd had trouble casting to cabaret singer then one night he went to the Berliner theatre and when the curtain went up he discovered that the leading lady was played by Marlena Dietrich and she played of all things an American and he discovered further she could act she could sing she was beautiful and lo and behold she could speak English three three and three three cheers for the gentleman who has drawn the first price that's all I had to say in one sentences and he saw me there Neil asked the company to call me in the morning he made me come there and I couldn't understand it I thought I know the book but there is no small part in it at all for we wanted to take her to Matt he thought he could make of her as big a star as Greta Garbo was for MGM I left spilling the night of the opening night I was on the ship going to America and I got cables and they said that I had a big success which I never thought I would have she got off the boat bolstered by her success in Germany but completely unknown in America she decided to play up her image as the origin who plucked from nowhere by Sternberg and reinvented her recent past she never never admitted that she'd ever made silent films because in her opinion and I quote Dietrich only Garbo and dished it's silent films I never and that became then the truth as far as the world were concerned parent man's future star moved into a home provided for her by the studio after a year she brought Maria over to join her and the family unit became Elena Maria and Josef von Sternberg he was contracted to direct all her movies and the Association prospered personally and professionally she flowered in his hand she became the the fulcrum of his taste they absolutely became indistinguishable in some way Sternberg's use of light and shadow someone said he was the Leonardo of cinema and she was his is Mona Lisa his obsession was woman the the politics of desire the mystery of sexuality and if anyone could could radiate could encompass all of these enigmas it was she look baby three what I need me that bleep Hey I still think that's the most startling star introduction in the history of motion pictures Maui Waena was the first great star to be created in sound era and how did he do it she sings a French song from the turn of the century dressed in men's clothes turns gives it very obvious lesbian kiss to another woman and this was the introduction because von Sternberg made sure that except for Paris and Berlin Morocco was seen throughout the world before the Blue Angel this is the milena Dietrich he wanted us to see and remember you she's an extraordinary woman and she was a great beauty and very easy to respond she responded beautifully in it and gave me an image very often which was not only exactly as I wanted but very often better than I want it and she was she was quite a gal the Sternberg dietrich collaborations continued she earned the title of Hollywood's undisputed Empress of desire when they made their fourth film together in 1932 Shanghai Express was to be the most successful of them all Sternberg made her a vision of unapproachable world-weary sophistication less through acting through image and lighting it is a lesson detritivores remember she learned from her great original director Josef von Sternberg she had learned where her key light should be and how she should be lit to get what she called her butterfly of Justices or shadow shaping up in fact another nose and she's always really conscious of her lighting every move she made every expression she fooled it was keyed to that lighting Dietrich soon seemed to have absorbed all that her man talked with teacher as she had grew Sternberg their partnership began to fail at the box office and in their personal lives many people saw their seventh and last film together as autobiography rather than fiction so romantic that I often wish I had a more discreet heart but believe me the villain when I tell you that I haven't got this tweet from this Bengali had become completely disillusioned with his protege did you hear me say that I had none no I only said I have a funny colour model isn't open secret that Mawlana was having affairs with maurice chevalier with gary cooper with whatever star of the moment she was attracted to and who was attracted by her and I think this tortured von Sternberg to a degree but it was as if Marlena had said to him look you knew I was married when you met me you didn't expect me to be faithful to true don't touch me why call for help are you mad Concha I came here as a friend suddenly you throw yourself into my arms and now you accuse me I kissed you because I loved it for me he just suffered and a tour in the park and he would pass the dressing-room door when the door was locked and that was always a queue for everybody that nobody entered and if you do that enough times and you see it enough times and then she comes back to you always this wonderful enigma and that makes you love her all over again no matter how much you know your mind is is turned like in a wringer for laundry you know it back and forth it's emotional seesaw and he finally couldn't take it anymore you've gone too far you're not going to play with me anymore hi mr. bird he threatened me what right have you to tell me what to do are you my father No are you my husband No Dietrich and Sternberg were finished as lovers and collaborators to make matters worse the film then flopped at the box office but she was now Hollywood's highest paid female star and she could afford to travel and spend more time with her increasingly extended family no way his domestic situation was basically with a series of lovers all of them more accepted by Rudy her husband who had his own domestic relations the menage tois we understand the Menasha cats and Menasha sake it was very normal for instance had a very well-known affair with Douglas Fairbanks were Douglas Fairbanks moved into a schloss in Austria with Rudy and his girlfriend these were very modern people they were modern even by today's standards I think you have to look at somebody like Madonna today who may not be quite as daring as Marlena was in her day December the 10th 1936 one of the most momentous days in the history of England on this day the decision of King Edward the eighth was awaited with anxiety throughout the empire milena was in London making a night without Armour and Douglas Fairbanks was making pictures here as well she was appalled at the idea that Edward the ape should consider giving up his throne for Wallis Simpson the American divorcee and she announced to Douglas Fairbanks that she was going to get into her car and the brig's the chauffeur was going to drive her out to the country where she personally was going to sacrifice herself for the British throne she was I guess going to seduce Edward the eighth and to stay in King of England they stopped her at the gate after attempt to save the monarchy failed and expectations were in the South of France hazy and I know a place that's quiet except for daisies one in my head and there's no one passing by it to see come spend this lazy often with me she didn't come alone at various times at least six past or present lovers joined her but pride a place was given to a new passion Erich Maria Remarque author of all Quiet on the Western Front she would put down the blinds in the suite and they kept on TV with a hot Sun outside and the white Mediterranean life and she would say to remark she would say he's my sweetheart you write and when you're finished you come out of your room and I will have your meal ready for you on the beach and here she was them the epitome of what every author has ever wanted in a woman completely his slave to his work in adulation and adoration of his ability in his talent and she would leave him close the door behind him and go downstairs and have an affair with Kennedy you know it to her she had done what remarque expected of her but she wanted to do for him at that moment she was his and once that door was shut she had done it then it was down to the next next at Antibes was one of her female lovers millionairess Jocasta's but while she and Marlena went off together they left fourteen-year-old Maria with a female employee of castas who assaulted her I judged Dietrich not because of my being raped that's that I have to live with and have come to terms with and is behind me but that it should be permitted by a parent to put a child in danger that you cannot permit anyone to do that whether they are movie queen a world icon or god almighty you do not put your own child at risk particularly if you are not innocent of that risk but perversion was that never happened nobody would dare this was also another facet of the Dietrich character that anything that she didn't like didn't exist people of extreme same can get away with living the way they wish to live because the world and our society unfortunately has worked enough to permit them to do so and in Dietrich's case this was very convenient because she did not accept things that were uncomfortable to her something naive on the part of the public and the reader if they really expect these stars to have been Saints are not normal in any way in their private lives they weren't they weren't good mothers they weren't good compared they weren't anything except stars this is where all their mental and erotic energy weds her holidays on the Riviera had been made possible by a two year absence of movie work seven of her last eight films had failed and the press had taken to calling her box-office poison then in summer 1939 she took a call offering her a kind of Blue Angel role opposite James Stewart in of all things a Western at first she laughed then she took the next boat home Hey what the boys in the back room will have and tell them I'm having the same go see what the boys in the back room have and give them the poison bending Josef von Sternberg had made milena the world's reigning sex goddess he'd also made her the world's most highly paid woman but he made her untouchable by 1939 she was the world most unemployable one until Universal said come over to us and make a horse Apple she did it was the greatest comeback in screen history and it turned her into a very rare thing a glamour girl with a sense of she sort of thought to be the mainstay of the whole thing it just amazed everybody true to form Diedrich was falling in love again with her leading man and he with her she has this fight of this girl and man and appeared just as they were starting to the fight that Montana said what are those two girls with our with our drugs no and they said what they're going to do you can't we want a real fight on it when I said you and I are going to do the fight well if you remember the fight of the daughter fight scene you've ever seen Oh lady you must be pong turn it out when she started throwing stuff at me she said no I'm not going to tell you when I'm going to throw it or where you just make sure that your duck because I'm going to throw it right in at your face I didn't realize she was such a good shot who's buying me a drink ready on wheels moves to where the entertainment is and what a songwriter and a movie star make for the front the mobile station follows right along by Wyatts Marlena Dietrich reach for the sky you coyotes it's me dead ID tree the sheriff jeepers it's the arm of the law the legs ain't bad either see ma'am when America joined the Second World War dear Drake was one of many Hollywood stars oh and out to entertain the troops she'd become a naturalized American when she saw what Hitler was doing to her homeland so she had extra motivation to take part what's your phone number actually I think Dietrich you wanted to be a soldier and you couldn't very well be a soldier so she fought her way and she did a magnificent job certainly when she was active finally overseas she practically was a soldier I mean the way her stories went that was her boy she was in the army she never said I was with the USO she was in the army and she really came into her only the Prussian soldier wasn't at his element yes we were simple soldiers had no we had no grade no we only had a grade in case of capture with the captain's now always thought it was rather silly we should have been generals no because it was only a matter of money or they treated you in case of capture naturally all very much afraid of capture I was very much there she is lovely musty quick she get a tremendous ovation just by being there to come out and she talked to them make a few suggestive jokes and get a good reaction on those then she'd sit down and play the musical song which is very in Congress I mean it it just it just struck the guys to have this struck the guys to have this glamor creature that they'd always seen and heard about and there were this big big saw between her legs and then she'd sing a few songs in this husky whiskey tenor of hers and they just loved it just see what the boys in and tell them my sight and tell her my koi and tell her my die of the pain she was one of the most popular of all the troupe entertainers and spent 18 months constantly touring it wasn't just her talent and her glamour that endeared her to them the fact was she was prepared to lay down her body for the cause a dedication extended to fulfilling the servicemen's fantasies it was part of the romanticism that you know what if you if you're going to face death don't you want to live one time really magnificently before you faced it all right and she felt that being with if a man if a young boy a soldier from Arkansas or rose and south somewhere could sleep with a movie star who was beautiful and giving and loving was that not a proper way to prepare for the mourn of his demise she didn't restrict herself to the enlisted men she had a more lasting if I were the paratrooper James Gavin the youngest general in the Army ex respect that she was fascinated by me after I was a gigantic hero and he did have he did look like serve a cross between Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper I mean come on did she choose an ugly kid general you know when the war ended Dietrich went to Paris where she met up with several old friends including the actor jean gather with him she began the most serious love affair of her life Ballena fell in love with Jean Gabin and I think she would have loved Rudy and she would have married Jean dragoon she always loved things French she loved him are as far as Dietrich could love and he was volatile enough to make it interesting I think he would throw her out which had never happened to her before and she would come begging back which was a role that she rather liked playing although she complained about it but she enjoyed every minute of it because he would always take her back so she was victorious and that but also in Paris was General James Gannon and marlenas affair with general Galvin apparently lopped over into Paris and it was through that affair I think the jeonga ban understood that milena was not a one-man woman and this was not a relationship that he was willing to continue on that basis and he threw her out right leo like a man they were lovely reaching high yeah she left Paris and returned to Hollywood where she made a film called Foreign Affair which is about post-war Berlin on the piano is Friedrich Hollander a composer who had also written the songs for the Blue Angel and Destry rides again you are in love and the director was someone who'd known her since her days as a cabaret singer in Berlin muwah Jakarta Kasbah lean as the honorees on to keep accurate from for them for the front they are people so we have the front Aziza actually we have the front of the eyes now but Friday took algebra the allergy he written remark well on John Mitton gap down onto the almost it even goes the front the film was wonderful for her because he played with an old pal and he let her have fun playing it slightly off one shoulder and she resented that she had to play maybe a Nazi that disturbed her very much but she trusted Billy enough that he would have the comedy offset what might be indicated that she had been a Nazi and he did you are an American woman will ask the questions here what is the name of the man yes Johnny Johnny what I see you do not believe in lipstick they want to chew his way to do your hair rather not to do it now wait a minute you know you're talking to an American woman and I'm a little disappointed to tell you the truth also Jean Arthur whom she detested because she said that ugly ugly plucked chicken she called well had a very difficult role that did not really suit her talent as well as the broad the Dietrich head suited her so she won the film that's a change Glenn the dresses from Iowa Oh No Berlin do you like it oh it's stunning when have you got it on backwards then in 1950 Hitchcock's film stage fright gave her the chance to upstage another young actress this time it was Oscar winner Jane Wyman dear madam this will introduce my cousin Doris who is in everywhere good girl I we'll find a satisfactory during my unassign Nelly good this is very nice two people called morning nice but isn't there some way we could let it plunge a little in front suppose not stage fright and Foreign Affair in which he played respectively with Jane Wyman and Jean Arthur are inside in some ways to the cruellest spectacles I've ever seen and I blame Hitchcock and Billy Wilder for that to some degree because she does up she can't help but upstage I mean that they look and both of these are attractive women but they suddenly become Church mice in her presence she just first of all is you know she has a graduate degree where they're in kindergarten as far as her narcissism and her a sense of the camera and they just shrivel in her presence you wouldn't mind if I depend on your great deal thank you darling as she branch drifted the didrik image was harder to sustain so depressing I think that reputation was such that everybody knew that she was it was very careful and very pernickety and very concerned about her physical image her looks and certainly she took a long time in a cup water and insist on having her toes done by Dior which she had and she was well preserved I'd be glad of the rest oh we could to start with sunshine she showed me one day she used to before she always wore a wig in later years because she plaited in tiny tiny little plants all around her face and then she pulled them up and tied them at the top and so the whole whole thing went right up and and then she put the wig on top of that it was marvelous but I don't know how that the roots were pulling dietrich was still capable of attracting her leading men on stage fright she had an affair with co-star Michael Wilding who went on to marry Elizabeth Taylor 30 years Dietrich's junior and Hollywood's new great beauty two more ex-lovers then did exactly the same thing Dietrich's opinion if a rival in love was almost unprintable Elizabeth Taylor was a huge problem for Marlena because there had been Michael Wilding married Elizabeth Taylor there had been Michael Todd married Elizabeth Taylor then there was Eddie Fisher married Elizabeth Taylor Elizabeth Taylor was younger Elizabeth Taylor married men that Marlena had dalliance 'as wid that didn't last time was beginning to tell it was not easy to co-star with old boyfriends and we new ones when ex-lover Michael Todd produced around the world in 80 days the 54 year old Dietrich played opposite three others who claimed to be her own flames get out and stay out I have a catch you in here again I'll cut you up in a thousand pieces that's won't be necessary I'll show you I'm just leave your draft and David Niven were to Frank Sinatra the third our confidence is a glamour girl now gain an unexpected boost when she made a series of live appearances when she became ringmaster in a benefit for charity a hotel owner saw her and invited her to Las Vegas to perform in cabaret first I said no and they kept on asking me and finally I weakened and I did it in Las Vegas and I loved it from the very first time I did it but at that time you know I didn't sing any serious songs I was just entertaining everybody and being beautiful in 1953 she began a residency at the Sahara Hotel that had the effect of relaunching her entire career audiences Suniya from movies had no idea what an experienced live performer she was somewhat pianola he's working night and day even had a series of special gowns credit for her that gave the illusion of being very revealing she called them and new dresses part of it that was so appealing to her was that it was direct to the audience is something who went back her very earliest days in show business the way she loved being loved by people what could you ask more than to be loved by 200 people or 2,000 people and that kept her going I think it fueled her the way applause fuels all true performers it's not cause I shouldn't not cause I wouldn't and you know not cause I couldn't simply because I'm the lane is doing poor heart is akin to bring home the bacon I'm alone none forsaken simply because I'm the way and just amazing Dirac became the highest-paid cabaret artiste in the world she repeated her success in London and finally on Broadway but she became the most eccentric of travelers now I don't know whether anybody out there in the audience has ever heard this about Dietrich but everything had to between where she was she was a freak about it she was she travelled with their own Ajax so you know just for and her own SOS pads and her own soap and her own everything she says she would arrive at a theater and completely clean it not have them clean that she would clean it she was famous for this um she came to my dressing room just to wait for all of us we were all going to go to supper together so I said you know make yourself coffee make a drink whatever and she completely rearranged my makeup table she cleaned the entire dressing it was not to be believed I couldn't get over the New York Times dr. Queen of Ajax Broadway changed it to queen of the world every ticket there sold out weeks in advance and she won a special Tony Award day she toured her show through Europe Japan Australia South America and Russia she still made occasional movies but this was now her main career she even risked returning to Berlin it was her first visit since the end of the war when they'd called her an enemy and a traitor many Germans didn't want her back but she won over a hostile audience and took 18 curtain calls she toured from the late 1950s to the early 1970s the whoever soil whose song zone mocha King you the lifestyle was beginning to take its toll push it always soon have a little nip behind stage you choose to like to have a glass of champagne to clear her throat between songs while the audience was going crazy applauding for well ina would have a little bit of Dom Perignon and go back on stage and charm everybody yeah it got pretty scary at times I could I would always kiss her before I went on stage to conduct the overture and as soon as I got within you know a few inches of I could tell and I'd say to the orchestra watch me very carefully at night you know because she would skip bars or she'd forget what the next song was or she'd forget a lyric or whatever until finally it got so bad that she would wave it you know you were taught her and then you know she would taught her and then she fell in one of those moments of stupor and she felt quite often that she didn't break anything and then at one time she fell she was lying at the edge of the stage saying bring down the curtain bring down the curtain her leg had broken and it was a compound fracture that went through the flushing never healed nobody knew this because we used to bandage her leg with water compresses underneath this shimmering dress and for me it wasn't Cobb and yet amazingly moving idea to see this shimmering body standing on that stage and that pink light all by herself this soldier alone on the battlefield because a stage is like a battlefield and underneath I knew that there were these losing news I get no kick I'm jumping me alcohol doesn't thrill me at all so tell me why should I beat you I'd ride her out three times three times she was sober three times she was dried out three times she remained sober because of the accidents because no surgery could be performed on an alcoholic that's very very dangerous and each time I brought it back from the hospitals straight to that bottle straight to those pills in 1976 her husband Rudy died though they hadn't lived together since the twenties he remained a faithful friend and support without him her will to continue working finally began to fade it's a it's a terrible thing to watch self-destruction in someone who has been that perfection in that realm of what we call Fame and beauty in looks yeah people know the path Diedrich eventually retired from the stage in 1976 when she was 74 years old but she made one final appearance in 1978 in the movie just a Ziegler how many it was unintentionally poignant then what will they say when the end comes I know you'd say just that she was drew into her Paris apartment and never left it again for the final 13 years of her life she lived in seclusion the last 12 she spent in bed connected to the world only by her telephone any degenerative thing any decay of the Detrick picture the legend was apparent to her not because she was afraid of age because she was afraid of tarnishing legend it's a big difference and it's very difficult for people to understand because most women when they become old don't want to look in a mirror and hide themselves because they don't want the face that was not Dietrich Dietrich did not become a recluse because she didn't want to face her age she became a recluse because the legend no longer was able to be reimbursed Marlena Dietrich died on May 6 1992 a funeral was held at her favorite Church la Madeleine in Paris the treacle or on the coffin bore medal she'd won for her service in the war against Germany ironically a coffins final journey was to Berlin she was buried close to her mother milena was dead but the image of Lola Lola the blue angel that was not we often think of her not as being an actress but as being Marlena Dietrich she became a legend she knew she was a legend she kept it alive for 90 years I think it's great to be an icon to be a movie star but you cannot pray to these people I have great respect for the profession Dietrich great respect as a human being I reserve my respect but not as a professional that's always been my game with me I was made that way I can't help it men closer to me like mothers around the flame and if their wings bow I don't know only in love again never one to - whatever - I just gotta you

Channel: The Wunschen Channel

Views: 1,100,467

Keywords: Marlene Dietrich, documentary, Marlene, Dietrich, No, Angel, life

Id: -HvkQhzhZJE

Length: 46min 49sec (2809 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 04 2012