Dearest Papitsch,
I’ve finally gotten around to writing to you. Have my first free day—and even this chance is possible only because I have worked at night for the whole week. . . . I look sweet in the movie, very young—as I said, in the movie. In real life, I have the wrinkles on my cheeks that you already discovered once. I’m just getting old. What is Tami doing—is she putting eggs on her face, and who is laughing with her? The Arden mask she got me is quite lovely. Apart from that, there isn’t much that can be done. I still need a good cream for the night. I long so terribly to see you and Tami. And you could be of such great help at work. . . . You would have a fabulous and interesting position here. Maybe you’ll think it over after all and come here. I never suggested it to you before because of you, so as not to push you into an inadequate position, but now things are different. . . .
Please leave right away if danger is looming. Do me the favor of buying big suitcases tomorrow so you can throw everything into them and get out. You know that suitcases are always in short supply at the last minute. And if you’re trying to take everything with you in a hurry, it can spoil everything if you don’t have suitcases. Please do it. Please, Tami, help me make sure that he gets everything ready so that he can leave Paris in a couple of hours if possible—he’ll always find ships. Your things can be packed quickly, but his papers and books and other things take up a lot of space. Please, please do it!
I’ve taken out accident insurance, 600 dollars a year, premium of 25,000 dollars in case of death, 1,000 dollars a month for 52 weeks if unable to work. I signed the life insurance policy on Monday. 100,000 dollars payable to you upon my death. 200,000 dollars if the death results from an accident. (But I firmly believe that I will not die in bed.) . . . I find that it is irresponsible not to be insured. This way our child will have an inheritance and you will have no worries. Darling, I miss you so much. Even though you sometimes gripe, you are the best and truest. I love you, your Mutti.79
There was a new tone in this letter. She was feeling old. Almost shyly, she was making an offer to her husband to work with her and von Sternberg. This was a sensitive subject, because Sieber felt inferior to von Sternberg. The passage about the suitcases always being in short supply while ships are always available is symptomatic of Dietrich’s life. After she left Berlin, she lived out of suitcases. Her innumerable suitcases, which were perennially en route between Europe and America, encased her like protective armor. She never attached much importance to houses, but suitcases were quite another matter.
Despite her enduring feelings of unhappiness and melancholy, Dietrich was voracious in her quest for love affairs. At a Harald Kreutzberg dance performance in September 1932, she had met Mercedes de Acosta. De Acosta was trying her hand at screenwriting, and all of Hollywood was whispering about her relationship with Greta Garbo. But Garbo had gone off to Europe and had left the “White Prince,” as de Acosta liked to call herself, alone in America. The initiative for the affair supposedly came from Dietrich, who is said to have positively besieged de Acosta.80 On September 16, Dietrich and de Acosta spent their first night together, as we gather from a letter from de Acosta two months later: “On the 16th of this month it will be eight small weeks since that holy and flaming night that you gave yourself to me.” De Acosta’s letters show that she was an utterly unhappy, lonely woman desperate for attention. She was one of the many unsuccessful and penniless screenwriters in Hollywood. Time and again, Dietrich lent her large sums of money, for which she expressed her gratitude in florid prose: “Always I remember the beauty of your gesture in giving me this money.”81 Often she could pay back only a fraction of the money, or nothing at all. De Acosta advised Dietrich never to ask anyone for money. The rule of the film business was to appear indifferent and rich. De Acosta’s letters to Dietrich were one long affirmation of her love, yet all she could come up with was hackneyed pathos. As for Dietrich, the idea of sharing a lover with Garbo might have been intriguing.82 Supposedly the two of them never met, but their lives intersected again and again. Mamoulian shot his next film after Song of Songs with Garbo. In Queen Christine, Garbo was a Swedish queen, while Dietrich was playing Catherine the Great at virtually the same time. De Acosta’s penchant for Hollywood gossip was her undoing. Dietrich felt betrayed by her and ended the relationship. Her farewell letter to de Acosta speaks volumes.
In which manner Mr. von Sternberg treats me on the set is nobodys affair and to tell Twardowski about the signing or not signing up of an actor because I liked him is too much. . . . I understand that you are alone and have the desire to talk to someone—please leave me out of these conversations. Excuse my English and the mistakes; I must go to the studio and am in a hurry. Marlene83
Dietrich then embarked on an affair with her colleague Brian Aherne, whom she had met during the filming of Song of Songs. Aherne was a British theater actor who had been working in Hollywood since 1930. Perhaps she shifted her homesickness for Europe from France to England, and replaced Chevalier with Aherne. Aherne’s letters provide a glimpse into the quintessential course of a love affair with Dietrich. At first he was overwhelmed by the fact that this beautiful woman had chosen him to be her lover and felt a bit haughty toward his predecessors. Aherne sent poetic letters embellished with quotations from Shakespeare. He liked to write while sitting in his dressing room at the theater waiting to go onstage. He was surrounded by things she had sent him: an ashtray, pajamas, a cigarette case, and even a hairbrush. There would appear to be a strategy at work here. She gave generous gifts to all her lovers. At first they were delighted, but when all that remained of the affair were the gifts themselves and Dietrich no longer showed her face, these objects of memory became a source of torment. Aherne was no exception. He started in on the usual litany of complaints about her failure to contact him, declaring that he was eager to follow her anywhere—if he only knew where she was. She did not reply. His notes to her took on a tone of desperation, and his only consolation lay in picturing the times they had spent together. When he spoke to her on the telephone, her voice was cold and unfeeling. He wrote: “Do you think, Dietrich, that you might manage one day to say something nice to me on the telephone?”84 Jealousy and doubts welled up in him, even as he tried to convince himself that he ought to be happy about what he had shared with her. Aherne wrote letters of the sort Dietrich had read many times before. He was sitting in some hotel room feeling lonesome, tired, and unhappy, with only one wish, namely to take her in his arms and make love to her. Eventually he started to find his own letters and declarations of love tedious. In any case, Dietrich turned a deaf ear to his pleas, and Aherne despised himself for his love and desire. She covered up the fact that her love had faded by soothing him with a home-baked cake and shopping for him when he was shooting his next film in Hollywood, but she made herself scarce when he wanted to eat with her.
While Dietrich was in Europe, Aherne came over to shoot a film in Austria. He had accepted this offer only because they had made plans to meet in Munich or Salzburg. Now he was stuck in a remote Tyrolean village. The rain never let up, the food was inedible, the evening entertainment was limited to folk dancing, and he spent his nights freezing under a heavy blanket. Clinging to his faith in her, he sent her ardent love letters, and when she did not reply, he called her up and found out that she had gone to Salzburg. He felt betrayed. Shortly before he left Tyrol, she sent him a startling telegram stating that they would not be able to get together at all because she was on her way to Vienna, and on September 20, she would be heading back to the United States. “I have never in my whole life been so willfully hurt,” he wrote.85 Aherne was forced to realize that Dietrich had already plunged into her next love affair, and he had been shunted aside. She scanned his letters and telegrams only for compliments and declarations of love; nothing else interested her.
In late October 1933, Rudi Sieber supplied facts and figures to show her that it was not worth keeping the apartment in Berlin until the lease ran out in 19
36. He wanted to close up the apartment once and for all and store their furniture with Josefine von Losch. Dietrich found it difficult to warm up to this idea. She was homesick: “I’m very unhappy, full of longing. . . . You have to come if I can’t travel after this movie. Frankly, I’m horrified at the thought of packing up again and dragging the whole cavalcade across the ocean. We could get together in New York. . . . Or doesn’t Tami feel like doing that? Kisses kisses kisses always, Your adoring Mutti.”86
Although Dietrich was blessed with lovers, sunshine, and luxuries of every kind, she was unhappy. All the back and forth between Europe and America was taking a toll on her. A brittle, faded letter from Sieber to the state authority in Prague, dated November 30, 1933, indicates that the Siebers were attempting to apply for Czech citizenship. Sieber cited his merits on behalf of the country in World War I and asserted that he and his wife had taken on German citizenship against their will.
My wife is acting in Hollywood under her stage name, Marlene Dietrich . . . and has not gone back to Berlin since March 31, 1930 apart from a brief vacation in 1931. Likewise, I have not been in Berlin at all since 1931, but instead have been steadily employed in Paris as an executive producer at Paramount and as of April 1931 I gave up my residency in Berlin permanently.
He affirmed that they intended to transfer their assets and settle down in the town of Aussig, although it may be hard to picture Dietrich leaving Hollywood to live there with her husband and their child. Once the fees were due and they were required to disclose their finances, the Siebers withdrew their application.87 As is evident here and elsewhere, their lack of money was a central theme of their relationship. Even though they had given up their apartment in Berlin, two households still had to be maintained. Sieber hesitated to come to America because Tamara had only a Nansen passport that was issued to stateless individuals. The question was whether she would be able to get a visa for the United States. “Of course it would interest me to work with you in a position that is worthy of you, or of me as ‘Herr Dietrich.’ But how do we solve the problem of ‘Tami’?”88
The last movie Dietrich made with von Sternberg was The Devil is a Woman. Von Sternberg gave her no directives, yet she put in a brilliant performance. She first appeared on screen as a veiled beauty in a horse-driven carriage on the occasion of the Carnival celebrations. Dietrich did not know what von Sternberg had in mind until she was already standing in the carriage. Balloons were covering her face. Then he shot at the balloons with an air gun. “When the scene began, I took aim and exploded the concealing balloons to reveal one of the most fearless and charming countenances in the history of films. Not a quiver of an eyelash, nor the slightest twitch in the wide gleaming smile was recorded by the camera at a time when anyone other than this extraordinary woman would have trembled in fear.”89 One last time, he would assert his power on the set over the woman he loved. He was quite sure that she would not bat an eyelash when he shot the pellets. As the daughter of a Prussian soldier, she was able to weather sadistic attacks of this kind. Right down to the end, she let him be her creator. Making up at home was just as much a part of this game as humiliation in front of everyone else. After his death, she admitted that she had suffered under him. “Before I finish this chapter, I would like still to mention what I feared most in him: his contempt. A shocking experience. Several times during the day, he would send me back to my dressing room so that I could cry in peace. After talking to me in German, he would turn to the technicians and say: ‘Smoking break. Miss Dietrich is having one of her crying fits.’ ”90 When he scorned her, she was seized with panic that he would send her back where he had found her. Dietrich believed that she could not act without the safeguard of von Sternberg’s genius.
The movie was based on the book La Femme et le pantin (The Woman and the Puppet) by Pierre Louys; John Dos Passos helped develop the screenplay. Dietrich played Concha Perez, who, like Bizet’s Carmen, works in a cigarette factory, where an older, high-ranking officer named Don Pasqual takes an interest in her. Concha is out to destroy him. He squanders his fortune on her and has to give up his military career, all for a woman who no longer even lets him kiss her and is openly cheating on him. The Devil is a Woman is set during Carnival. Confetti, masks, costumes, balls, and streamers form the background of the movie. Everyone is in high spirits, and everything seems permissible. But death can lurk behind any mask. The only one who seems to fear neither death nor devil is Concha. Dietrich pulls out all the stops: she sweet-talks, pouts, offends, beguiles, triumphs, lies, seduces, deceives, and savors the power of a woman. Draped in fine lace, caressed by light and shadows, she waits like a spider for men to enter her web. Her wide-brimmed hats and high mantillas make every man—even those in uniform or masks—appear small next to her. In this movie, Dietrich sings a seductive little song yet barely shows her legs, and seems to be brimming with energy. She often strikes her signature pose with arms akimbo, looking daggers at everybody and upstaging them all.
In April 1934, she wrote to her friend Max Kolpé in Paris that she fell quite ill after the filming of Scarlet Empress was completed:
This movie was the hardest thing we ever made. I don’t know if I’m any good—I don’t think so. I’m not bad either, but insignificant, it seems to me. Sternberg was a pure genius once again. . . . Maybe because it’s the spring over there, but all of a sudden I’m longing for Berlin. Here, in the everlasting summer, I really miss that. I think back to late afternoons in a car with the top down (down for the first time that season), heading along the Kurfürstendamm, and, for no apparent reason, a chuckle in my throat. Perhaps it was because we were young and at home. I am fighting so hard against feeling dead here and against feeling dead in general, against the hollow feeling inside. I keep giving, and I get nothing in return. The child is all grown up now. Please do write to me Marlene.91
There she was, sitting in her villa in Hollywood with a swimming pool, everlasting sunshine, and a Rolls Royce, and she was longing for a spring drive on the Kurfürstendamm. She recalls the “chuckle in my throat” that welled up “for no apparent reason.” That kind of thing had not happened for quite some time, because in Hollywood nothing comes about inadvertently. Once the final movie with Jo had been shot, Dietrich felt as though she had no home. She was feeling her youth slipping away at the age of thirty-three. She could not complain about a lack of lovers, but she was afraid of what the future held. And now she had to cope with the end of her work with Jo. The hollow feeling inside came back, a feeling that Jo had been able to assuage every now and then. To whom could she confide her doubts about her talent once Jo was gone? Dietrich was enough of a professional to know that their relationship had reached an impasse. As a lover, he became more and more draining, and in the film industry he was no longer considered a bigwig after a series of flops. The critics wrote that he had made her a “Paramount whore.” She needed to leave him in order to advance her career, and he gave the artist Marlene Dietrich back to the larger world of film. Directors were already lining up to show the world what fabulous movies they could make with her. With The Devil is a Woman, von Sternberg was intent on paying a final tribute to the woman he loved and the artist he had created, and she declared that this was her favorite film. On May 3, 1935, their last motion picture together premiered in New York. From then on, their cinematic partnership was history.
Dietrich could always be sure of von Sternberg. Time and again he took her back, no matter whom she thought she loved at the time. Now that she was over thirty, she was forced to see love in a new light, not the way she had back in Berlin when she was in her twenties. Even a woman like Dietrich could not get around the fact that a list of things she had not achieved and might never achieve was taking clear shape. Von Sternberg, who loved her, had shielded her from ideas of this kind. When she was an old woman—long after von Sternberg had died—she took the blame upon herself for what had gone wrong. Von Sternberg would love Dietrich for the rest of his life. A smile still lit up his
otherwise serious face when he saw Lola Lola on the screen during a 1961 interview. When Peter Bogdanovich met with von Sternberg in his later years, he sensed the latter’s deep sorrow and pain about the love he had lost.92 Von Sternberg was extremely reluctant to discuss his films with Bogdanovich because doing so touched on the most sensitive spot of his emotional life, namely his unrequited love for Dietrich. His movies were his way of wooing her. He offered her his artistic services, and demanded unconditional compliance in return. For him, training went hand in hand with discipline, and Dietrich, the daughter of a Prussian soldier, understood that. “It was not my beauty or charm that fascinated him, but rather my peculiar capacity for discipline, which is almost unheard of among actresses, that attracted him to me.”93 She would love him in her way, but he was head over heels in love with her. In 1935, he parted ways with his divine “Miss Dietrich.”
Dietrich worked under subsequent directors with the disdain of someone who is accustomed to better. And once she was gone, von Sternberg was no longer capable of effecting transformations. They would both experience phantom pain for the rest of their lives.
“A slight man with one of those obligatory cashmere polo coats, complete with trailing belt. He was sharp, quick-witted, with a sense of humor and New York savvy.”94 This was Maria Riva’s description of Harry Edington, Dietrich’s right-hand man. As her agent, he saw to all the details: the story, the director, the pay, the cameraman, the dressing room—and in a matter that had now become essential, he made sure that her partner was not too young. He dealt with her landladies and made it his business to find her good housekeepers, rooms in hotels, and secretaries. He took care of every matter, large and small, right down to which dresses, capes, and trousers would be arriving on which ship. He discreetly steered her away from movie magazines to which she would be better off not granting interviews and told her what fees were appropriate for what tasks. On top of that, he made every effort to ensure her well-being and sent her telegraphs with invitations to games of tennis or dinners. Edington, who also represented Greta Garbo, was regarded in Hollywood as one of the agents who had free access to the studio bosses. For Dietrich’s next film, Desire, he negotiated a fee of two hundred thousand dollars. Frank Borzage was the director, and Ernst Lubitsch oversaw the artistic direction. By working with Lubitsch, Dietrich was in a sense returning to Berlin, yet at the same time the opportunity to work with Lubitsch meant that she had truly arrived in America. Lubitsch was born on Schönhauser Strasse in Berlin and began his career at the Deutsches Theater; now he was a Hollywood hot shot, and the Americans loved his sophisticated comedies.
Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives Page 23
