Blue Angel (20 page)

And so on January 5 her secretary, Eleanor McGeary, telephoned
the studio to say Dietrich would be at Marathon Street prepared to work the following week. Paramount immediately cancelled all legal action and simultaneously offered her a new five-year contract, starting with (and ultimately advancing beyond)
4,500 per week—almost four times her original starting pay and a royal emolument in that worst year of the Great Depression. (The studio was not simply acting magnanimously. On his return from a European trip, director Ernst Lubitsch reported to Paramount that abroad the most popular movie stars were Dietrich, Garbo and Jeanette MacDonald.) This deal she wisely signed, and on January 9, wearing a man’s tweed suit, tie and beret, she joined Mamoulian for lunch in the studio commissary to discuss the first scenes of
Song of Songs
. “Like every German girl, I regard this as one of the great works of fiction,” she told the press. Her outfit, however (which she claimed was simply for the sake of comfort, economy and simplicity) accentuated the difference between the actress and the pious, shy peasant girl she was about to portray, and this the press gleefully noticed.

That year, Marlene Dietrich was rarely seen in public wearing women’s clothes; in fact some said she was the best-dressed man in Hollywood. Chevalier—who objected more to her unconventional wardrobe than to the press prying around her rented beach house—demanded that she wear more traditional clothes, at least when they dined out or went dancing.

“Her adoption of trousers and wearing of tuxedos,” commented the
Los Angeles Times
on January 24, “[was] extreme showmanship, but on the other hand it may also prove a hit.” Her apparel was indeed widely remarked—and this greatly displeased Chevalier, who perhaps thought journalists would look for even more scabrous details if he were regularly seen with a mistress wearing only high-fashion drag. In this matter she was implacable, and the affair (but not the friendship) ceased.

The reason for the end of the Dietrich-Chevalier liaison was not simply her wardrobe, but the woman for whom she was now wearing it almost exclusively. Early in 1933, she became deeply involved in an affair with the stylish Spanish immigrant Mercedes de Acosta, a playwright, screenwriter and feminist who was also a
charter member of America’s creative lesbian community.
*
A dominating personality in any situation, de Acosta was, as actress and writer-photographer Jean Howard described her, “a little blackbird of a woman, strange and mysterious, and to many irresistible.”

De Acosta (who was forty in 1933) moved easily in the aesthetic worlds of Eleanora Duse, Pablo Picasso and Igor Stravinsky, and among her friends she counted at various times Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Sarah Bernhardt, Jeanne Eagels, Laurette Taylor and Helen Hayes. During and after World War I she knew well the dancer Isadora Duncan, and her own career as poet and screenwriter was firm after 1930. Although she was married to the artist Abram Poole from 1920 to 1935, the relationship was never anything but a warm friendship.

In her published memoirs,
Here Lies the Heart
(1960), de Acosta acknowledged that the most ardent relationships of her life were with Le Gallienne (who starred in her plays
Sandro Botticelli
and
Jeanne d’Arc)
, Garbo and Dietrich, although she was indeed as busy as the notorious Natalie Barney, the doyenne of Parisian gay women. De Acosta’s accounts of her intimacies are fragrant with details not only of flower deliveries but also of candlelit evenings, long, late bedroom conversations and lovers’ quarrels. Friends who resented her frankness tried to deny the most torrid romantic revelations, often referring to her book as “Here the Heart Lies.” But there is the concomitant witness of many third parties, among them the men in Dietrich’s life; the basic truth of de Acosta’s book (if not the accuracy of every detail) is indeed unassailable.

According to the custom of that time and the requirements of law, Mercedes de Acosta employed meaningful circumlocutions: Marbury (nicknamed Granny Pop) “seemed such a man to me”; Nazimova acted “like a naughty little boy”; John Barrymore’s wife Michael Strange (an apt monicker if ever there was one) looked “like a healthy young Arab boy”; Garbo (“more beautiful than I ever dreamed she could be”) overwhelmed her so much that on first
meeting her, de Acosta removed a bracelet and slipped it on her wrist. Two days later she managed to accelerate their mutual attraction.

Their common friend Salka Viertel (wife of writer-director Berthold Viertel and screenwriter of several Garbo pictures) arranged for them to meet privately in an unoccupied house near her own on Mabery Road in Santa Monica Canyon, where Garbo and de Acosta “put records on the phonograph, pushed back the rug and danced ‘Daisy, You’re Driving Me Crazy’ over and over again.” The scene ends on a closed door, behind which the relationship became more intimate (“I was moving in a dream within a dream,” de Acosta wrote tremulously).

When Garbo returned to Sweden for a holiday in 1933, Dietrich, now her rival offscreen as well as on, was quick to replace her, delivering roses and violets to de Acosta’s home—“sometimes twice a day,” the recipient recalled, “ten dozen roses or twelve dozen carnations [and] many Lalique vases.” Dietrich, grandly overstating, told de Acosta, “You are the first person here to whom I have felt drawn. I want to ask if you will let me cook for you.” She then suggested they go swimming together at the beach, and next evening the affair began. “You have exceptional skin texture that makes me think of moonlight,” de Acosta whispered as if reciting from her current screenplay assignment
(Rasputin)
. “You should not ruin your face by putting color on it.” Thenceforth Dietrich never again wore rouge in her friend’s presence.

Mercedes de Acosta and Marlene Dietrich, almost unique among women in Hollywood, carried on their affair quite openly throughout the 1930s—despite the fact that, then as later, homosexuals were subjected to the fearful suppressions of a hypocritical movie industry. But Dietrich was not to be restricted by the norms of polite expectations any more than by the annual shifts in female fashions. With de Acosta, as with other women and men, it was often important for her to gratify someone she respected. Cooking for them, offering gifts, cleaning their homes, even doing their laundry—no gesture was too humble to demonstrate her desire to ingratiate herself and thus be included in their society. Trained by her grandmother in the arts of feminine attraction and by her mother in
the crafts of domesticity, she effectively linked the Victorian model of the loyal and dutiful woman with the Prussian ideal of the tireless, attentive companion and the Berlin prototype of an unfettered, worldly maverick.

It would be tempting, in this regard, to postulate that the men in her life represented a continuing search for a father-figure, and that the women were surrogate mothers she wished to please. But human affects do not conform so tidily to the rudiments of textbook psychology. It is perhaps more accurate to argue that Marlene Dietrich was attracted to those whose styles she admired, whose intellects she respected and whose social influence she wished to share. Sex could be a useful component in a relationship—a bevel with which she could achieve emotional balance—but none of her affairs had even the temporary exclusivity that betokens a desire for loving attachment, much less permanence. Not one of her paramours, men or women, ever reported that she gave herself up to a truly grand passion; always she was remarkably self-aware and in control of the directions her relationships took.

T
HE FILMING OF
S
ONG OF
S
ONGS
LASTED FROM MID
-January to early April, a protraction required by the almost daily arrival of new writers to tackle the script’s problems. Dietrich was cast as Lily, a devout provincial girl with an impossible ideal of romantic love, sent to Berlin after her father’s death. There she takes refuge from a boozy aunt (Alison Skipworth) in the studio of a sculptor (Brian Aherne) who convinces her to pose nude for a statue based on the faithful lover of the biblical Song of Solomon. (With more alacrity than Lily, Dietrich did model nude especially for the movie—for sculptor S. C. Scarpitta, whose statue was provocatively exploited throughout
Song of Songs.)
Fearing that marriage will compromise his career, the artist abandons her; and Lily’s aunt marries her off to a lecherous old baron (Lionel Atwill). Marital misery leads to accidental infidelity and the predictable descent to the demimonde before a happy reunion with the fickle sculptor.

Mamoulian remembered her as a disciplined worker but one whose performance was entirely calculated and lacking the spontaneity
that derives from intuition. This may have been partly because she was working for another director for the first time and was fearful of her appearance in the picture.

Paramount makeup artist Wally Westmore recalled that Dietrich at the time was fully aware of her own special requirements—especially a key light about eight feet above her and a little to the right. “This created the hollows under the eyebrows and cheekbones which gave her that sculptured look. She never worked without that key light hitting her from above.” Dietrich continued to refer to a large mirror just off-camera to assure that this light was properly positioned for the best presentation of her face—a moment that occurred when she saw a small butterfly-shaped shadow under her nose. “If you look carefully,” Westmore pointed out, “you can see that little butterfly shadow in every movie and still picture she made.”

Cinematographer Lucien Ballard recalled that Dietrich became so skillful that she could simply lick her finger and hold it toward the key light, determining from the heat if it was exactly the proper distance from her face. As for the mirror, it was becoming a kind of totem: the reflection she saw, harbinger of the image on the screen, became her only permanent partner. Just as she was ever confident and controlling in her intimacies, so was Marlene Dietrich the epitome of the Hollywood Narcissus. Gazing at her own reflection, she became transfixed with what she saw and dedicated herself inexhaustibly to its refinement and perfection. But like the figure in the Greek myth, her self-involvement, indeed self-obsession, would lead at last to an isolating and loveless solitude. Perhaps no star was ever more trapped by her own image.

Predictably, Dietrich’s directorial tactics on the set annoyed Mamoulian, who was certainly not placated by her impolitic action each day before the first shot. “I had the sound man lower the boom mike,” she admitted years later, “and I said into it, ‘Oh, Jo—why hast thou forsaken me?’ ” Rightly, von Sternberg ignored her pleas to be present as photographic counselor—until Dietrich, on March 28, carefully but deliberately fell from her horse during a scene and, in a performance better than any she had ever given onscreen, wept for his assistance. He sped to her side and took her home, where she
rested for three days. Perhaps the only memorable moment in the finished film was Dietrich’s singing of Frederick Hollander’s “Johnny,” which gave her the opportunity to convey elegant raciness even as she wandered about trying to find the right key (“We’ll disconnect the phone, and when we’re all alone, we’ll have a lot to do-o-o-o . . . I need a kiss or two—or maybe more”).
*

P
ARAMOUNT ALLOWED HER A
E
UROPEAN HOLIDAY
before her next assignment. Although she had spoken for almost a year of returning to Germany, she was now receiving bad press there. “One would like to see so famous a German artist show some German spirit and work in German productions,” proclaimed the Berlin trade journal
Lichtbildbühne
in May 1933.

It is inconsistent with our national revolution that our most famous movie star should be playing foreign roles in a foreign country under foreign directors, speaking English instead of her mother tongue. As long as she opts for the dollar and has shaken the dust of her fatherland from her feet, can the new Germany place any value on the importance of her movies?

Nazi Germany’s resentment of her was sealed when
Song of Songs
was submitted for German release soon after. It was, of course, banned, for it was based on a novel by a Jew, was financed by “Jewish Hollywood money” and, added the codifiers of the
Licht-spielgesetz
(which specified the requirements for a play or film to conform to Nazi ideology), it used a German actress to impugn the moral purity of the German people by claiming that adultery could go unpunished in their own country, where the story was set.

Still, Dietrich longed for a summer in Europe, and so with Maria—and luggage containing twenty-five suits of male clothes, dozens of men’s shirts, neckties and socks—she boarded the
Europa
in New York and arrived in Paris on May 19. Within hours the Parisian
newspapers were detailing her shocking outfit: a chocolate-colored polo coat, a pearl grey suit, white shirt and tie—and aviator’s goggles perched saucily atop a felt hat. One Paris magistrate suggested next day that she be threatened with arrest for impersonating a man, and in fact the police seriously considered a warrant. This idea collapsed when (of all people) Maurice Chevalier told a journalist that Dietrich was a friend to all Frenchmen who loved freedom.