Marlene (11 page)

Later, I also sent telegrams in English which made things easier. But I could never manage to be brief on the phone. I spoke with my daughter in the morning and in the evening. Otherwise I
busied myself as best I could. I cooked, worked in the garden of my little house, waited to be called to the studio, tried to get used to the strange environment and to the homesickness that constantly plagued me—especially in the morning when the sun was shining and the palm trees stood motionless and I stood in front of the house on the lookout for the mailman. Waiting for the mailman was to become a habit during all the years spent far from my country, at any rate, for so long as Germany remained my country.

When I decided to renounce my German citizenship, America opened its arms to me.

To give up your homeland and mother tongue, even when forced to by circumstance, is an almost unendurable ordeal. Only German, this lovely language, has remained to me as a legacy. I came very close to forgetting it the more securely I settled in America and felt sufficiently at home in English. To be sure, I still don't have a perfect mastery of English (to the degree that I would like), but I'm familiar with it now, and that's the main thing.

Of all the languages I know English is the most precise, which makes my work easier. With von Sternberg's help I learned new words, new expressions every day—enough to grant the usual interviews and to survive them satisfactorily, that is, as far as the studio was concerned.

Although I was still young, these long “conversation exercises” in a foreign language were physically difficult for me. I didn't understand why I would almost faint from fatigue at sundown. Yet I seldom rebelled. I had a great respect for the efforts of others. Compared to the way things were to go later, the studio at that time radiated peace and tranquility. Perhaps everybody was taking a deep breath for the upcoming work on my first American film in the hope that it would be a success. At that time the postal workers were in no danger of being buried under avalanches of my fan mail. The unknown actress by the name of Marlene Dietrich wasn't a burden for anybody, and the reverse was likewise true. My only ventures in the outside world were limited to walks to a drugstore in the neighborhood or to visits to the movies with Resi.

The Blue Angel
had not yet been distributed in America, so I could go where I pleased without being recognized.

Although the Paramount executives had purchased the film, they deliberately kept it under lock and key, since they wanted to show it in the movie theaters only after my first American film. They were afraid “The Blue Angel image,” the image of the “dissolute young girl,” would stick to me, in any case they wanted to avoid my being permanently pinned to a type.

In my opinion I have always played “dissolute young girls,” and they were, as von Sternberg once said, certainly more interesting than the “nice roles.”

“I then put her into the crucible of my conception, blended her image to correspond with mine, pouring lights on her until the alchemy was complete.”

—Josef von Sternberg

I
BELIEVE I'VE ALWAYS
been very lucky.

Von Sternberg drew everyone he met under his spell. I was too young and too stupid to understand that. But I admired him, and as a well-mannered student of the Max Reinhardt Drama School, I took pains to follow my director as well as possible.

I never gave up this devotion, this recognition of supreme competence and authority during my entire acting career.

On the day of my arrival in New York I was wearing a gray dress, my favorite travel outfit in Europe. A charming envoy of Paramount Studios, a Mr. Blumenthal, explained that I couldn't leave the ship in “those” clothes. I was at a total loss. Resi, my
dressing room assistant, was still sick. Blumenthal persuaded me to go ashore in a black dress and a mink coat,
if
I had one.

The sun was shining and it was nearly ten o'clock in the morning. I couldn't decide whether to make myself so sartorially elegant at this time of day. But it was made clear to me that I had to follow instructions.

My big overseas trunks were in the hold, so I had to go down there, keys in hand, hoping to find some clothes that would please my American hosts. Finally, at ten o'clock, I set foot on the New York waterfront attired in a black dress and a mink coat. Naturally, I was ashamed to be wearing such an outfit. But it seemed to correspond to the customs of the country. After this incident, I resolutely refused to follow the studio's orders in such matters and dressed as I pleased.

I wore trousers most of the time. Since we lived in a hilly area not far from the beach, they were more practical than dresses and stockings.

Everything seemed simple to me, but this was an enormous self-deception. I realized it only very much later, of course. Von Sternberg battled the Paramount publicity agents on my behalf. He took everything upon himself without my ever having to interfere. From this I drew the conclusion that it was up to him to guide me, to advise me, and to explain America's strange customs to me. And in the process he must have gone through some bad moments. I was stubborn and still young. In retrospect I realize that he showed infinite patience.

When I started to work for von Sternberg, I didn't understand very much. The moment I got a call from the makeup artist, I would rush over to the studio as early as five or six-thirty in the morning.

There new difficulties would come up. In general, takes of my red-blond hair (probably because of its reddish gleam) were made in subdued lighting. So I was advised to have it bleached to make it look more natural, more ordinary.

My hair looked too dark on film. Since I refused to have my hair bleached, and since von Sternberg backed me up, the studio had to give in. In normal life I was a blond, but on the screen I
turned into a brunette. This completely confused the “Big Bosses” at Paramount. A floodlight was beamed on my hair from above, from the side and, above all, from the rear so that the tips of my hair lit up, creating a halo effect.

My hair constantly drove me to despair. Nobody liked my “baby hair.” It simply couldn't be curled, combed through, or given a form suitable to the face from which some fabulous aura was supposed to emanate. From six o'clock in the morning on we dabbled with curlers, hair dryers irritated my scalp—in vain. Finally, we resorted to curling irons so that I could let myself be seen before the camera again.

By noon the curls were gone. The script girls would almost go crazy, as my hair style turned out different from the day before. So we retreated to my dressing room and tried to save the situation. Everybody joked about it, except me and my hairdresser, Nelly Manley. The photographs taken at that time prove that we did a very good job nevertheless.

When there was no time to curl my hair, we used spit, also a very effective expedient. During the filming of
The Garden of Allah,
in 1936 in the Arizona desert, the trouble with my hair became a little drama in itself. It was impossible to restore the coiffure of the day before. I came to hate working on that movie: My curls, the bombastic script—everything annoyed me. Yet once you've committed yourself to make a film, even if you find it bad, you must drink the cup to the dregs.

Backlighting became very fashionable. To realize this it is enough to look at photos of that time. But backlighting also has its disadvantages. The cameraman always insisted that you never turn your head to one side, otherwise the light behind the actress would fall on her nose, which would immediately resemble W. C. Fields's proboscis.

Consequently, most of the scenes with a partner were very stiff, to put it mildly. While speaking to one another, we would stare straight ahead instead of looking into each other's eyes, even during love scenes. We all looked splendid in the circle of light emitted by the reflector in back of us, but we remained rooted to the spot. Who was at fault? The actors, of course! Of me it was
said: “She never moves.” One day when I timidly tried to move so as to look at my partner, the cameraman rushed over to me and insistently asked me never to do it again. I obeyed.

At the beginning of our collaboration, Josef von Sternberg didn't belong to the cameramen's union. So, like a skilled diplomat, he had to content himself with making “suggestions” regarding lighting and camera angles.

Here I would like for a moment to revert to my arrival in America, that “unknown country.” As it was to all Germans, America was a riddle to me. In Germany we had heard about Indians slaughtering groups of white settlers, but little else.

Today, and I say this without the slightest ulterior motive, I love America and Americans, including those who committed mistakes and those who have been “badly treated.” I've known some gangsters who were friendly to me and whose “moral code” was absolutely compatible with mine.

I came to America at the height of Prohibition.

As the ship moored and I stood in the morning sun in a black dress and a mink coat, I was both fearful and enthusiastic. Officials of Paramount Studios came to my rescue, and I was taken to the Hotel Ambassador. Two hours later, I was told, I had to be ready and properly dressed for the “cocktail hour” (I didn't know what that expression meant) at four o'clock in the afternoon. But my own priority was to find new dentures for Resi, my dressing room attendant.

I spoke with the members of the reception committee about it. Once they realized it didn't involve me, they refused to help me. Yet, with Teutonic stubbornness, I managed to find a dentist in this unfamiliar city, left Resi in his office, and then went on to the press conference organized by Paramount. I was much more concerned about Resi's new dentures than the press conference. Who would have thought that the young actress, hailed as “the discovery of the century” by von Sternberg, was wandering about New York looking for a dentist for her dressing room attendant? It was unthinkable. Loyal as ever to my principles, I didn't care what people might say. So I managed to locate a dentist, and after he treated her, I returned to bring Resi back to the hotel.

On that night the vice president of Paramount, Walter Wanger, said that he would come with his wife to pick me up and show me around New York. I phoned Sternberg in Hollywood and told him how things were going. He advised me to do what was asked of me, but to phone him immediately should any difficulties arise.

So Walter Wanger appeared at the Hotel Ambassador. He waited for me at the reception desk. “My wife's not feeling well,” he explained, “so we'll have a tête-à-tête dinner.” Credulous, I asked no further questions and went with him to a restaurant. Later I learned that this type of establishment was called a “speakeasy,” in which all the guests surreptitiously reached under the table for a bottle of Scotch or Bourbon.

I sat stiff as a board in this dark hall in which everybody was drinking. Walter Wanger had met a friend named Chrisie (I no longer remember how one properly writes his name). In the course of the conversation, Wanger said: “In one of your interviews you said that you'd like to hear Richman. Well, here he is.” And in fact Harry Richman entered the tiny stage and sang a song that had been a favorite of mine for a long time, “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” To see this singer, whom I admired, in the flesh moved me to tears, and before I knew it Walter Wanger had dragged me off to the dance floor.

Annoyed over this abrupt, authoritarian gesture, I, in turn, made a move to go back to the table to get my handbag. The moment Walter Wanger released me, I grabbed my handbag and made my quick exit from the speakeasy. I ran through the streets of this unfamiliar city without knowing where I was heading. Finally, I hailed a taxi driver and gave him my address, “Hotel Ambassador.”

Once in the hotel (the doorman paid for the taxi), I phoned von Sternberg in Hollywood and told him about my adventure. He was quiet for a moment and then he said, “Come here tomorrow by train. Ask the doorman to reserve seats for you. Don't talk with anybody,
anybody,
understand? Leave New York immediately.”

I woke Resi up; we packed our possessions in the trunk and didn't sleep a wink until we were seated on the “Twentieth Century” en route to Chicago. There we were to board a Santa Fe line
train. I slept for two entire days, woke up, ate the tasteless meals that were served in our luxury compartment by polite waiters, after which we again went to sleep, all the while wondering why we ever came to this darn land.

Von Sternberg had promised to meet us in New Mexico. Naturally, I thought he meant Mexico. I had never heard of New Mexico before. The heat was unendurable. We spread bedsheets over the seats of the compartment and joked, but our hearts were heavy.

Every time the train came to a stop—and that was very often—we wanted to get off to stretch our legs, but the heat drove us right back to the compartment. It was as though a red-hot pillow was being pressed on our faces. Von Sternberg, at last, showed up on one of the stations along the way. He was unruffled. We went with him to his compartment, and he suggested that we try to relax. Now everything was going well—as always with him, he had “taken us over.” The train rode on and on, but at last we arrived in Pasadena. We weren't far from Los Angeles.

Automobiles, drivers, trucks were waiting there to load our luggage. And not a single journalist. Thank God. I felt good, full of confidence, ready to shift all my problems onto von Sternberg.

Resi, who had gotten used to her new dentures, was insatiable. So was I. Hunger tormented me around the clock, which worried me very much. Up to then I had never given any thought to going on a diet. Yet on the way to Hollywood and to the splendid sylphs who ruled there, I suddenly felt too fat. I really was fat, but up to then I had paid it no attention. Yet now that I was on my way to Hollywood …

Von Sternberg refused to share my worries on this score. He found me perfect; I matched the image he had of me to perfection. I was the only one who thought that I had to satisfy a definite “ideal of beauty.” The woman, whom von Sternberg wanted to bring to life on the screen, was by no means to be thin and sexless, but well fed, full of life, with ankles, breasts and sex appeal—in short, the dream of the little man.