Blue Angel (27 page)

D
IETRICH
’
S AFFECTATION OF BEING LINKED TO A NO
ble lineage was, according to Fairbanks, another of her brilliantly assumed illusions. Well trained from childhood in the requirements of a beguiling persona, she played the role of glamour queen to perfection, invariably saying and wearing the right thing. Related to this, she spoke of von Sternberg as a godlike artist precisely because
this reinforced her status as his ultimate masterpiece on the pedestal to which he had raised her. But there was, Fairbanks realized, another woman in Dietrich—a
Hausfrau
who put a towel around her head, scrubbed her lover’s kitchen floor and then cheerfully prepared their dinner: “In these tasks, she divested herself completely of mysterious allure and became a fun-loving European woman who wanted to enjoy life.” What she gave the public, on the other hand, was the part of herself elaborated by von Sternberg, and this role she grew to covet; indeed, she contributed quite willingly to the myth.

By coincidence, the myth-maker was also in London, and several evenings in late 1936 Dietrich and Fairbanks dined with von Sternberg, Korda and his own contracted star (and soon his wife), Merle Oberon. Ever loyal to her mentor—and well aware that Korda was in deep financial trouble because of the delays over
Knight Without Armour
and the failure of his films
Things to Come
and
The Man Who Could Work Miracles
—Dietrich told Korda that if he found something for von Sternberg to direct, she would forfeit payment of the
100,000 still owed on her salary for
Knight
. This generous offer he accepted, and shortly into the new year 1937, Korda replaced William Cameron Menzies with Josef von Sternberg as director of the forthcoming epic
I, Claudius
, starring Charles Laughton and scheduled to begin in February. But Laughton clashed constantly with von Sternberg, causing major delays and increased costs. Thus, when Oberon was injured in an auto crash, Korda had the excuse he needed to shut down the hapless picture. Von Sternberg, feeling more anxious and rejected than ever, was paid off, but the collapse of this promising vehicle and the subsequent invasion of Austria pitched him into a nervous breakdown. To Dietrich’s dismay, he was virtually an immobilized catatonic for over a year.

O
N
J
ANUARY
18, 1937, D
IETRICH WAVED FARE
well to Fairbanks, Sieber, Matul and Maria (who was on holiday from the Ecole Brilliamont in Switzerland) from the deck of the
Berengaria
and departed from Southampton. Back in Hollywood by mid-February after a sojourn in New York, she began a week’s rehearsals for her last Paramount film—
Angel
, directed by Ernst
Lubitsch. This was perhaps one of the two or three most disappointing pictures of her entire career, and in it she gave nothing like a gala farewell performance.

In this arid, talky and unconvincing romance (based on a creaky Hungarian play), she was Lady Maria Barker, the neglected and bored wife of an English diplomat (Herbert Marshall). On a Paris holiday she meets a handsome American (Melvyn Douglas) who falls in love with her, and after ninety minutes of brave sentiments, whispered protests of love and ever so polite threats of disentanglement, the Barkers rediscover their lost love and the American parvenu nobly withdraws from the family circle.

Angel
promoted the career of no one associated with it, and because the director and cast soon realized they had committed to a loser, tempers were as short as the dialogue’s wit. Lubitsch and Dietrich, hitherto friendly colleagues, were barely speaking by the film’s completion on June 14. One typical critique said straight out that Dietrich, although beautifully gowned, was “at the root of [the picture’s] evils . . . The film comes to a full stop every time she raises or lowers the artificially elongated Dietrich eyelids,” which she did so often that she seemed a sphinx without a riddle.

Away from the studio, her life was happier. Mercedes de Acosta hosted several welcoming soirées; Dietrich bought a snappy new white convertible roadster (for the impressive sum of
2,245); and in March she rented a house in Beverly Hills. Having moved so often as a child and never having had a permanent home even in her adult Berlin life, she was comfortable with frequent changes of residence; this was her sixth California address.

On March 5, Maria Magdalene Dietrich Sieber applied formally for American citizenship, taking an oath of allegiance in Federal Court before naturalization clerk George Ruperich. On her papers, she provided correctly all the details (the date and place of her marriage, and of her husband’s and daughter’s birth)—except one. She gave her date of birth as December 27, 1904, and thus three years were neatly subtracted from her official age.

Her application was not ignored in Germany, where a photo of Dietrich with Ruperich was accompanied by a comment in Berlin’s
Der Stürmer
, Julius Streicher’s notoriously anti-Semitic newspaper:

Marlene Dietrich, the film actress of German origin, has spent so many years with the cinema Jews of Hollywood that she has become an American citizen. The association with Jews has made her whole character quite un-German. In the picture we see her taking the oath in Los Angeles. The Jewish judge’s contempt for the legally prescribed oath is revealed by his demeanor: in his shirtsleeves he administers to Marlene Dietrich the oath by which she betrays her Fatherland.

Apart from the usual Nazi malevolence, Streicher had the facts wrong: Dietrich would not in fact win her citizenship for two years (this was an application to begin the process), and Ruperich was third-generation Bavarian Catholic.

A
FTER PLAYING THE LAST SCENES OF
A
NGEL
, D
IE
trich lost no time preparing to depart for an extended European holiday. Paramount, she knew from her agent Harry Edington, had no idea how to remedy the disaster they expected from the film and so were disinclined to renew her contract. Except for some kind words for her subtle comic gifts in
Desire
, she had not received any really glowing critical notices since
Morocco
. Additionally,
The Garden of Allah
was a terrific disappointment and advance word on
Knight Without Armour
was discouraging. Now thirty-five, she knew the film-fan polls showed disenchantment—even uninterest—after seven years and ten films of basically insubstantial Dietrich exoticism. For the past two years, she had been the highest paid woman in the world, receiving almost half a million dollars a year for very little actual working time. But that was all about to end, and now she had no indication that her career would endure; accordingly, she decided to retreat rather than sustain the scorn Hollywood so likes to heap on those once adored.

The summer of 1937 began in Switzerland, where she collected Maria at school and planned a holiday with her, Rudi and Tamara. Dietrich then dispatched a telegram to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in London, inviting him to join her in Austria. Unaware that the plans included an extended family, Fairbanks arrived two days later, astonished
and disappointed to find what he termed “really a rather curious ménage.”

The arrangement was indeed knotty even by the most tolerant criteria, and it suggested that Dietrich’s relationship with Sieber could occasionally be at least casually carnal. Even as she shared a room with Fairbanks, she extended herself liberally, leaving their bed and blithely toddling down the corridor to join Rudi and Tamara—and not only for hot chocolate. This may, in an odd way, have had more to do with the latter than the former, for Dietrich saw “Tami” as a necessary, helpful adjunct to her own life: Matul not only made Rudi happy, she also looked after Maria’s needs in Europe. And because Matul (also a product of the freewheeling Berlin life of the 1920s) was not immune to feminine blandishments, Dietrich may well have known that to please her would be, in effect, to please Rudi (and by extension Maria). “This design for living,” Fairbanks reflected years later (alluding to the Noël Coward play about a romantic trio), “was really not within my experience, much less my desire, and I made known my displeasure—to no avail, of course. Why did I sustain it? I was completely carried away with Marlene.” In this he was not unique.

Apart from this element, which seemed of concern only to Fairbanks, the summer was passed in pleasant indolence, and mother and daughter enjoyed an unusually protracted period together. “Her devotion to Maria was very touching,” Fairbanks added,

although she was so extremely maternal one wasn’t sure whether this, too, was a part she was playing. But I remember thinking that the child had not much sense of who or where she was. It seemed to me an odd way of bringing her up, but of course no one criticized. That summer Marlene was the doting mother—until she decided to go with her public image again, and then she was the distant, remote and cool Venus.

This odd quintet remained several months at a rustic, timbered chalet on a lake near Salzburg. They visited Max Reinhardt at his summer festival there, sat on benches in the sunshine and drank huge steins of beer, dined at a local inn (or at home, where Dietrich as
usual prepared the meals) and listened to Tyrolean music in the summer twilight.

By mid-November, Maria had been returned to her Swiss academy, Rudi and Tamara were en route to Paris, Fairbanks to London and Dietrich to Hollywood. During a stopover in New York, she received the unsurprising news from Harry Edington that Paramount had definitely decided not to renew her contract. The woman who could so recently command the richest deal in the history of movies was now unemployed, had established an expensive and indulgent lifestyle, and—with two years of back taxes still owed—lacked any source of income.

Before Christmas, on Rudi’s advice, she sped to Los Angeles, moved her clothes out of her furnished house, dismissed her maid and chauffeur, sold the car and moved to a hotel. But despite the widespread knowledge that she was in effect out of work, she comported herself publicly with the serene dignity befitting Alexandra, the exiled countess she had played so prettily in
Knight Without Armour
. Independent as ever, she refused an offer to live with Mercedes de Acosta; instead, she exploited the sheer force of her charm and prevailed on the management of the Beverly Hills Hotel to open a long-term account in her name. That Christmas, she invited fourteen friends and cooked a lavish roast beef dinner in her private bungalow.

*
Later the film was resuscitated as
Hotel Imperial
with Margaret Sullavan, but she fell and broke her arm on the set. Two years later, the film was completed and released, starring Ray Milland and Isa Miranda.

*
Reviewing
Knight Without Armour
, Frank Nugent commented on Dietrich’s attitude of “unpardonable complacence, as though she had just turned from a mirror”
(New York Times
, July 9, 1937).

10: 1937–1940

F
ROM
J
UNE
1937
TO
S
EPTEMBER
1939, M
ARLENE
Dietrich did not receive any offer to work; her career had suddenly stopped, although she had by this time achieved international fame and unprecedented compensation.

She was certainly not without a minor but effective talent, but this had mostly to do with her relationship to the camera; she was no Duse, and she knew it. Dietrich was, however, absolutely
sui generis
, and she never indulged in the petty hypocrisies of many stars. She stamped her own trademark, lived according to her own creeds, forged an image that was a direct reflection of her own social and sexual complexity. In important ways, therefore, she was perhaps the first triumphant example of self-promotion.

The suppressed passion, the mysterious allure and the almost diffident sensuality Dietrich conveyed were regarded by audiences during the Great Depression with the same adoration offered to Greta Garbo. But styles were changing, and in surveys conducted in fan magazines and theater lobbies, moviegoers listed their female
favorites as Ginger Rogers, Irene Dunne, Luise Rainer, Bette Davis, Jean Arthur and Claudette Colbert—all of them more accessible, more
real
, somehow, less elusive and illusory—and none of them radiating the fatal sensuality of Dietrich or the inviolable allure of Garbo, both of whom were more suited to the earlier conventions of deliberately artificial, more romantic films. Much of this change derived from the techniques of cinematography and lighting, which by the late 1930s were sharper, more clarified—just as audiences no longer required the ever more fantastic escapist fare popular at the height of economic disaster. None of this was part of anything like a programmed approach to the business of moviemaking. Studios continued, on the contrary, to operate as they always had, responding seasonally to the whims of audiences and occasionally risking, on order from an executive, the creation of a new star.