Marlene (39 page)

“She believes in the stars but makes her own luck. Impresarios unnerve her. She has no agent or business manager except herself. Where once, in the high noon of the thirties, she depended on Josef von Sternberg, she now looks to Burt Bacharach, her youthful arranger and conductor. In his absence, she frets, at his excuses, she expressively shrugs. Burt is her generalissimo, the musical overlord on whom, quite asexually, she dotes.

“She laughs a lot, making a honking sound that is not without melancholy. A special note of mournful bitchery invades her voice when the conversation turns to jumped-up starlets who need to be put down. (‘What
about
that picture? She has to be out of her mind. Honey, it's to
die!
') This professional Marlene is not what anyone would call a woman's woman. I was not surprised to learn that she had never met Greta Garbo, her major rival in the World Eroticism Stakes of the prewar era. She venerates many kinds of men—great strenuous helpers of our species like Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin; great life-enhancing performers like
Jean Gabin and Orson Welles, great self-revealing writers like Ernest Hemingway and Konstantin Paustovsky; great masters of timing and nuance like Noel Coward, and men of great power like General Patton, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and—the latest recruit to the clan—Moshe Dayan. Marlene relishes the breath of power. She is rabidly antiwar, but just as rabidly pro-Israeli. This paradox in her nature sometimes worries me.

“Aloof, imperious, unfeeling, icy and calculating: These are some of the things she is not. Proud, involved, challenging, ironic and outgoing: These are apter epithets. On stage, in the solo act to which she has devoted the last decade or so, she stands as if astonished to be there, like a statue unveiled every night to its own inexhaustible amazement. She shows herself to the audience like the Host to the congregation. And delivers the sacred goods. She
knows
where all the flowers went—buried in the mud of Passchendaele, blasted to ash at Hiroshima, napalmed to a crisp in Vietnam—and she carries the knowledge in her voice. She once assured me that she could play Bertolt Brecht's
Mother Courage,
and I expect she was right. I can picture her pulling a wagon across the battlefields, chanting those dark and stoical Brechtian songs, and setting up shop wherever the action erupts, as she did in France during the Ardennes offensive—this queen of camp followers, the Empress Lili Marlene.

“What we have here, by way of summary, is a defiant and regal lady with no hobbies except perfectionism, no vices except self-exploitation, and no dangerous habits except an infallible gift for eliciting prose as monumentally lush as this from otherwise rational men. Marlene makes blurb writers of us all. She is advice to the lovelorn, influence in high places, a word to the wise, and the territorial imperative. She is also Whispering Jack Schmidt, Wilhelmina the Moocher, the deep purple falling, the smoke in your eyes, how to live alone and like it, the survival of the fittest, the age of anxiety, the liberal imagination, nobody's fool and every dead soldier's widow. On top of which, she has limitations and knows them.” (From “One or two things I know of her …”)

I agree with Tynan—not completely, but with his last sentence, at any rate. I do, in fact, know my limits, and never overstep them, or almost never.

I'm easily discouraged. A shrug of the shoulders is enough to send me back into my shell. On the other hand, I defend my principles like a lioness, and I defend a friend, whether or not he's in need. I've fought for my friends whenever I've felt they were being attacked, even when they themselves were utterly indifferent, even risking danger to myself, which didn't matter at all to me, either then or now. I don't think I'll ever change.

I've never been very self-confident, either in films or on the stage. On the stage, Burt Bacharach's praise gave me a much-needed feeling of security. It's already known who gave me this feeling in films. But outside of these two areas, I'm as helpless as a newborn. I'm not really strong; I have firm convictions. But, as regards a crisis, I feel unsure. I'm speaking here of my own crises, I courageously confront a misfortune that strikes my family or friends, since I feel it's my duty to help—a feeling that gives me a certain strength.

I've been unable to apply this “philosophy” to myself. When a misfortune strikes me, I sink into deep despair. Even my closest friends are not aware of this weakness, which I cannot overcome. And since I learned long ago that self-pity is strictly forbidden, I had to get used to this disaster and could not bother others with my troubles.

Death has wrested many friends from me, my best friends. I've lost my husband, my most painful loss of all. Every friend who departs from us deepens our loneliness. It hurts me to no longer be able to pick up a phone and hear a beloved voice, and I confess I'm tired of suffering.

I miss Hemingway and the jokes he would shout to me from the other end of the world, his humorous advice, which he concluded with a “Sleep well.” These words haunt me, and my early rage flares up again. But that doesn't help me through the night. But is there a remedy against sleepless nights? Nobody knows any. And, although the “professors,” as Hemingway called them, still
write thick, learned books on this subject, no remedy exists against this nightly angst. That's the way it is.

I've spent almost all of my life with highly intelligent men. They're not like other men. Their spirit is great and stimulating. They hate strife, indeed they reject it. Their imaginations are aware of those around them. Their inventive gifts are boundless. They demand devotion and obedience. And a sense of humor. I happily gave all this. I was lucky to be chosen and clever enough to understand them.

Women who have problems (men have fewer) run to their psychiatrists and pay them to listen to them. (I know an analyst who has an earphone that he can turn on or off as he pleases, but always gives the impression that he is listening attentively to his patient's problems.) Naturally as a realist, I've never understood how one could pay a stranger cold cash to listen to him or her.

When people of my generation look back on their lives, many of them feel they have wasted their youth. I think that, at that time, we didn't know that we were squandering our time. We lived from one day to the next, only the moment counted, as it does for all young people, then as now. “After me, the deluge …” That's a wonderful expression and perhaps not the worst attitude. It would have been a good title for this book, but it doesn't really communicate the feelings we experienced in our youth. We never thought of the “deluge.” On the other hand, the youth of today know that such a deluge is possible.

At that time, or so we thought, everything was simpler. I'm sure that today's young people, who don't interest themselves in politics—who pursue their daily jobs, as we did then—would say the same. This wonderful attitude of youth triumphs over all. I hope it doesn't decline and that it will be able to confront the terrifying events threatening the world, that it will survive and preserve its peace of mind.

I detest modern-day “self-exiles.” I've read all the books on them. Also those of Elia Kazan. Such people should find a place where there are no laws, where no restrictions disturb their aim
less lives, where they can beg for their food, go utterly to the dogs. First sell their possessions and then their own bodies, and finally have themselves killed and carried off in anonymous coffins, bearing the inscription, “Family Unknown.”

Since so many people ask how I spend my time, I'll be frank: I read incessantly. I receive almost all the new books published in America—good as well as bad. I've read the new god of modern literature, Peter Handke, in German. But he remains a riddle to me. He has declared that he cannot live in Germany and prefers to live in Paris. He seems to have had enough of Germany, and of life in general. Moreover, I consider him to be deeply masochistic—one of the chief reasons why I can't identify with the characters of his books. But I'm not a critic, just an ordinary reader. After his third book I felt bored, nauseated, and finally gave up. Probably my fault! Perhaps his books are better in the English translation. But I don't like to be disappointed. As for German writers, I'll have to stick with Heinrich Boll and Günter Grass. But I find it easier to read French authors. Of course, I like English and American writers most of all and spend whole nights with their books.

Time doesn't heal all wounds. Now as before, I'm astonished at the permanence of sadness and its power over humans. Perhaps time does heal superficial wounds, but it has no power over deep wounds. Over the years, the scars hurt as much as the wounds. “Keep your head high,” “Chin up,” “This, too, will pass,” etc.—none of this advice is very useful. What is important is to spin a cocoon around your heart, to suppress the pull of the past. Don't count on the sympathy of others. You can manage very well without them. I know that.

What remains is solitude.

Note

I
N THE 1920S MARLENE
Dietrich performed in plays and films not mentioned in this book or listed in this chronology. Her Berlin stage credits for this period include
The Circle, A Midsummer Night's Dream, When the New Vine Blossoms, The Imaginary Invalid, Spring's Awakening, From Mouth to Mouth, Broadway, Duel on the Lido, Die Schule von Uznach,
and
Back to Methuselah.
Her film credits include
The Little Napoleon, Man by the Roadside, The Leap into Life, The Joyless Street, A Modern DuBarry, Madame Doesn't Want Children, Heads Up, Charly!, The Imaginary Baron, His Greatest Bluff, Cafe Electric, Princess Olala, The Woman One Longs For, The Ship of Lost Men,
and
Dangers of the Engagement Period.