Book Reviewed: Marlene: Marlene Dietrich, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler

Blue Angel Author Charlotte Chandler reminisces about her conversation with Marlene Dietrich when she was leading a reclusive life in Paris. It relies extensively on the star’s own words to reveal her intriguing and fascinating life, but the focus of discussion changes from one section to the next often confusing the reader. For example, in one section the author describes how actor Mae West described Marlene’s friendship but used Dietrich’s own words. This biography is incomplete which depends on Dietrich’s words rather than researching her life with documents and interviewing friends, family, and her associates. The facts provided in this book comes in sharp contrast to the narratives of other biographers who researched Dietrich’s life. Dietrich devoted herself to glamour for over forty years: in stage performances, on screen, and in concert. A modern and transgressive woman, she didn’t hesitate to break the rules by dressing in menswear (she was Yves Saint Laurent’s muse for his iconic tuxedos). She didn’t mind being with her husband and her lovers (both male and female), but it was Dietrich’s unwavering confidence, gender fluidity, and firm stand against Nazism that made her a revolutionary and an icon. Dietrich would stand up to the Nazis and galvanize American troops, eventually earning the Congressional Medal of Freedom. In her final years, she would make herself visibly invisible, devoting herself to the immortality of her legend. Marlene Dietrich crafted and maintained her professional career, but her personal life was anything but normal. She enjoyed thriving gay bars and drag balls of 1920s Berlin. She defied conventional gender roles by training in boxing at a local boxing ring. Dietrich had affairs with actors like Gary Cooper, John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., James Stewart, John Wayne, Yul Brynner, Errol Flynn, Kirk Douglas, and Frank Sinatra. Playwright and political activist George Bernard Shaw, President John F. Kennedy, and his father Joe Kennedy were also her lovers. Her female sexual partners include, Suzanne Baulé, a coach and cabaret host, Cuban American writer Mercedes de Acosta, Ann Warner (wife of Jack L. Warner of the Warner studios), female actors, Lili Damita (wife of Errol Flynn), Claudette Colbert, Dolores del Río, and French singer Edith Piaf. Few facts of Marlene’s life are ignored in this book. For example, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo were big rivals in Hollywood. Both were European imports of the 1920s studios system. MGM Studios brought her to the United States to cash in on her beauty and sex appeal. Paramount Pictures responded to that challenge by bringing Marlene Dietrich from Germany. Both women worked in Berlin in 1920s and throughout their career denied having ever met each other even when the two simultaneously shared lovers like Mercedes de Acosta, Erich Maria Remarque (husband of Paulette Goddard), and John Gilbert who was once engaged to be married to Garbo but left him at the wedding altar. Biographer Diana McClellan did research into their lives for her book “The Girls - Sappho Goes to Hollywood” and provide evidence that they worked together in the 1925 German film G. W. Pabst’s 1925 movie “Die Freudlose Gasse” (Joyless Street). Marlene's appearance was uncredited in the film, but she appeared in publicity stills. Another interesting fact author Charlotte Chandler reveals is about the time when Marlene becomes pregnant with James Stewart when she was casted in the western-comedy “Destry Rides Again (1939). Marlene informs her secret with Stewart, but his reaction stunned her, and she was deeply hurt when he asked, “what are you going to do about it.” Marlene recalls how it felt when he should have said “what are we going to about it.” This story is different from what I read in another biography of Dietrich, in which it said that writer/director Peter Bogdanovich revealed that Marlene Dietrich had told him that she became pregnant with James Stewart and had a surreptitious abortion without the knowledge of Stewart. The story revealed in this book is believable. There are several biographies about Dietrich, and Maria Riva’s biography of her mother, Marlene Dietrich has the depth and resonance that captures the passion of her mother. But this book, despite some inaccuracies still makes a fun read.