Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives

by Wieland, Karin

  Even at the Côte d’Azur, the ominous signs of the times could not be missed: “Evenings, while we’re swimming, three big gray French war ships putting out to sea.”134 Befitting their social status, they stayed at the opulent Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. Dietrich was a regular guest at this hotel, which was run like a private club. The price of this exclusivity was immense. Dietrich paid for everybody, even though she had no source of income and no prospects lined up. She stayed in connecting suites with Remarque and her husband on the upper floor. Tamara Matul and Maria had separate accommodations. Dietrich and her entourage went on outings in the area and put in appearances in Cannes and Juan-les-Pins. On a photograph from one of these outings, we see a tanned Dietrich at a restaurant table with Sieber, Matul, and Remarque. Dietrich and Sieber are looking into the camera, while Remarque is shielding his face. He hated these kinds of public appearances with flashbulbs popping. They spent most of their time together at the sea. Remarque stood around in large white bathing trunks, wearing sunglasses that he would not take off when a camera was on him. He was perfectly coiffed, as always, puffing on a cigarette and looking like someone who was uncomfortable in his skin. His half-naked body seems oddly soft and ungainly. In a suit, he was a good-looking man, but in swim trunks he lost his virile elegance. His diary entries make it evident that the sea air and beach life did nothing to ameliorate his feeling of suffocation. Love in a family setting was unbearable for him, even at the Côte d’Azur. But when he finally had a chance to be alone with “the puma,” as he called Dietrich, all was well again. For him, she was “nothing but seduction.” Even so, he sensed that both he and she were feeling that their love affair was coming to an end. Remarque was not enough for Dietrich. In late August, she began an affair with a Canadian millionaire named Marion Barbara Carstairs, who went by the nickname Joe. Joe Carstairs’s brawny female physique contrasted sharply with Remarque’s feeble-looking male body. Everyone at the luxurious holiday resort bore witness to Dietrich’s humiliation of Remarque. He would stand in front of her closed door, and everyone—including him—knew that she was with Joe. “The puma” hated reproaches and commitments. Sieber helped her carry out her betrayal of Remarque. In his role as the lifelong cuckold, he was content when it happened to someone else. As always, he was Dietrich’s confidant, and he presumably offered Remarque wise words of comfort. But Remarque was clever. Although he was so deeply wounded by Dietrich’s behavior that he stood in front of his mirror and wept, he presented a cheerful façade to her. That was the best way to handle it, because Dietrich did not appreciate displays of weakness.

  This undignified charade was accompanied by a steadily growing fear of war. On July 4, 1938, two weeks before Remarque arrived in Cap d’Antibes, his German citizenship had been revoked. He regarded it as an honor to be expatriated by the Nazis. In mid-September, when they returned to Paris and learned from Dietrich’s personal assistant, Resi, that draft notices had been sent out in Germany and it was rumored that the French were drafting the stateless, Dietrich changed the subject. She was distraught by the fact that Remarque had been in France for four months and had yet to receive his carte d’identité. “Sat at the radio until midnight. Ultimatum expired. Eleven dead. Czech government first demanded silence, then negotiations. Went out onto the street. Met Kolpé. Went to Le Jour. Then to Fouquet. Sat till two. Puma developed plans the whole evening. Wanted to go to Porto Ronco for me, get all of us onto a ship—go to the American embassy.”135

  No sooner had they arrived at the hotel than the subject of world politics was cast aside and the sexual hijinks started up again. Dietrich wanted to spend the night with Carstairs, but she was already asleep. Remarque was disgusted by her behavior, but she had a firm hold on him. She admitted to him that she never missed having men in her bed—only women. Even so, Dietrich asked him to buy her a wedding ring. Remarque agreed, and they headed off to Van Cleef & Arpels. He noted in his diary: “Slept with the puma. During the night she clung to me through to the morning. Had taken off Jo’s ring and watch band.”136

  Remarque knew that her soft side never lasted long. If her standoffishness got to be too much for him, he played the little boy “Alfred,” which was sure to delight her. It took a fair amount of coaxing to get her to show affection. “In the morning, the tender puma, tender, intimate, without sex. Explained she loved me and would be unhappy in America. I said she would find someone for massages, hair combing, chatting, and sleeping next to her. Maybe it’s true that for women tenderness is a more frequent need than sex. Certainly for Puma.”137 Remarque recalled that their love had once been more passionate than companionate, and he wondered what had happened to their desire.

  When “the puma” finally boarded her ship in Le Havre on November 18, 1938, he returned to his house at the lake and devoted himself to his writing. By early December, he was working on the Ravic novel, the book designed for Dietrich. It did not take long after her departure for his longing and veneration to set in. On the last day of the year 1938, he wrote her a long love letter. Remarque began the new year with a feeling of restored youth. He was calm and happy, and he was able to work because she answered his letters with letters of her own. From Dietrich’s correspondence with Sieber at this same time, we know that she complained if “Boni” (as she called Remarque) did not write or call her immediately. He was one of her links in Europe and needed to be at her beck and call around the clock, otherwise she would ask her husband to find out where her lover was. In February 1939, Remarque completed the first polished draft of his novel Flotsam, which bore the epigraph: “It takes a strong heart to live without roots.” On March 18, he took the Queen Mary from Cherbourg to New York.

  “Very early in the morning, at about five o’clock, the skyline of New York, gray and massive against the bright sky, surprising and not surprising, often seen in photos, but magnificent, of course.”138 His agent showed him the night life. He enjoyed seeing the lovely shades of gray as the light played on the concrete buildings, and admired the neon lights in the evenings, the skyscraper canyons, and jazz music. When he got back to his hotel at four in the morning, there was a message from Puma, who scolded him for behavior with journalists that was not to her liking. He knew that the best way to win her over was to feign indifference and put her in the position of courting him. Four days later, when he arrived in Los Angeles, he found Dietrich in front of her house, looking bashful and beautiful in a yellow outfit. She was excited to show him her home and hoped that he would like it. “Pretty and atrocious, but very comfortable and a great deal of effort went into setting it up for me.”139 The quarreling started up a few days later. Dietrich was still without a movie contract. She had expected Remarque to bring her a text she could use for a movie. “Puma terribly disappointed that I did a book about emigration and not Ravic. Finds the book bad. Also disappointed that I didn’t bring any material for a film. Looks at the newspapers every day to see if we’re in them. Guess she expects it—and expects me to help her. But how? Material for films? Where would I get that?”140

  His hopes and dreams of love burst asunder in the cold light of day with Dietrich, the fallen Hollywood star. When they were invited to a film preview at Warner Brothers, she was worried about whether Remarque would look good in photographs. “It makes me a little sick, although I do understand it. I’m not a show dog.”141 At the premiere, they ran into Thomas Mann, who could not stand Remarque and was envious of the brisk sales of Remarque’s books. “Remarque and Dietrich, inferior,” he noted that evening in his diary.142 Remarque did not like Hollywood. Dietrich was either congested, jealous, ill-tempered, hostile, or temperamental. Lovemaking was out of the question, and he generally slept alone. He soon tired of rum cocktails and Hawaiian cuisine. The puma he loved had nothing in common with the Dietrich who appeared in magazines or at public events. He had written her a fretful letter even before he came to America to ask what she really stood to gain from these characters in the movie magazines.

  OK, you may e
arn money there—but is that worth the effort? To throw away your life, which is getting more and more precious, piece by piece? It would be one thing if this were about achieving major goals—but in the age of Shirley Temple? . . . You can earn your living anywhere—so that Mr. Sieber feels a bit more secure with somewhat more money? Or your child? Your child will get by. There is enough for that purpose. Rudi could try to work for once. And you could finally start to live the way you deserve.”143

  His appeals did not get through to her. Remarque was baffled by his puma’s desire to hold her own among the cretins of Hollywood and enjoy herself with people who were constantly striking a pose in the hope of being photographed. Remarque loathed the very things that made Dietrich’s professional survival possible. By 1939 she could no longer delude herself. She had to face the fact that no one wanted to make a movie with her anymore. It was not that she cared about Hollywood, but she did need money.

  On June 9, 1939, Dietrich swore an oath of allegiance to the American Constitution. She must have hoped that Edington was right in prophesying that she would be interesting to the studios once she had her American citizenship. She was in bad shape. Dissatisfied and distracted, she made a mountain out of every molehill. At times she was preoccupied with her daughter’s weight, and at other times with some item in the newspaper. Everything else paled into insignificance as far as she was concerned, including her love for Remarque. Athough he kept toying with the idea of leaving, he stayed. His trip was not a success. In June 1939, the two of them took a train to New York. Sieber, Maria, and von Sternberg were waiting for them there, and they all planned to cross the ocean to Europe together. But now that she was taking her first trip as an American citizen, Dietrich ran into difficulties with the Internal Revenue Service. Two officials showed up, demanding $240,000 in back taxes.144 It turned out that as an American she could not be detained, but her husband could. In the end, she was able to settle this debt by handing over her jewels.

  Remarque found Dietrich’s moods hard to take. To calm his nerves, he got together with his friend Walter Feilchenfeldt, who was an art dealer in Zurich, and bought two Cézannes and a Daumier. Owning European art was his compensation for the shortcomings of living in America. In late July, the caravan moved on from Paris to Antibes. This time von Sternberg joined the group as well, which did not make things any easier. Von Sternberg was jealous of Remarque, even though he claimed to be in love with Dolly Mollinger. Pictures of von Sternberg from the summer of 1939 give new meaning to the phrase, “He looks like a shadow of his former self.”

  In Dietrich’s home movies, this final summer at the Côte d’Azur before the war was captured in Technicolor. As usual, they spent their days together at the seaside. The sparkling light of the Mediterranean sun gave their bodies a brown cast; the sea was blue, and their clothing quite colorful. The Kennedys were there as well, and the young John F. Kennedy can be seen in a bathrobe with a predatory grin, baring his absolutely perfect teeth. Despite the sun and luxury, however, no one was really happy, with the threat of war looming.

  Remarque was drinking and agonizing about frittering away his time, his love, and his life. Matul needed antidepressants to get through the day. Sieber was tormented by the fear that she would leave him. He confided to Remarque that she was planning to run off with a Russian man, and if she did, what would happen to him? He was sure that Tamara was the only woman who would put up with him and this situation. Maria, who had been sent off to a Swiss boarding school, was no longer the bright-eyed, pretty child she had been. She had pubescent unhappiness written all over her face. And Remarque described Dietrich as distracted, exhausted, and melancholy. “Surrounded by my husband, my daughter, Erich Maria Remarque, Josef von Sternberg, and a group of friends, I would always wonder: ‘To which world do I belong? Am I a bad star, a has-been star, or simply a zero?’ ‘Box office poison’ was the judgment of those gentlemen in Hollywood. But I had the same feeling as at the beginning of my career: what if I were to be a disappointment?”145

  It was in this mood that she received a call from Hollywood. Joe Pasternak, who had been so taken with her in Babelsberg, was now a Hollywood producer. He knew quite a bit about what the public wanted to see, yet he still chose good artists for his movies. Always open to new perspectives, Pasternak was willing to take a chance on offering a role to Dietrich, the “box office poison.” She would be playing a bargirl in a Western. Pasternak figured people would enjoy that. Dietrich accepted the offer in spite of the ludicrous salary of $75,000. The summer in Cap d’Antibes came to an abrupt end. Von Sternberg was the first in the group to learn that war was just days away. Dietrich became quite agitated and immediately planned to leave. Remarque wrote this in his diary on August 16, 1939: “The small, brightly lit, bare train station in Antibes. The train bleu. The puma gets in. Rudi insulted her at the last minute by saying that in the future she ought to respect him more. The train started up—waving—and with that, the summer was over.” Fifteen days later Hitler invaded Poland, and World War II began.

  BERLIN

  Leni Riefenstahl had to have known whom she was dealing with. In May 1933, when she resumed her relationship with Adolf Hitler, a great deal had come to pass in Germany. In the first days of February, the Reichstag had been dissolved and new parliamentary elections were slated for March 5. On February 27, the Reichstag was set ablaze. Arrests began in the early morning hours of February 28. Thousands of leftist party officials and other individuals who were deemed unwanted were hauled into cellars and prisons where they were beaten, tortured, and even murdered. The next morning, this state of affairs was legalized. An emergency decree “for the protection of people and state” suspended civil liberties for an indefinite period of time: freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, as well as the privacy that had been guaranteed to postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications. The constitutional state of the Weimar Republic was replaced by an ongoing state of emergency under Nazi rule. Political scientist Ernst Fraenkel called this law “the constitutional charter of the Third Reich.”

  For Riefenstahl, by contrast, the best time of her life began in 1933. Within the space of five years, she would be world famous and finally attain the success for which she had yearned for so long. She achieved this status by means of unwavering cooperation with the new Führer of the Germans. “Adolf Hitler had achieved his goal, but as Reich Chancellor he interested me far less than he had before the takeover,” she later wrote in her memoir.1 In Hitler’s milieu, of which she was a part, everyone made a point of saying “takeover of power” rather than “seizure of power.”2 Her remark that he interested her less once he was chancellor is odd, since she had spent the previous year preparing for this very situation. She claimed to know nothing about National Socialist anti-Semitic policies until she came back from the mountains.

  Riefenstahl had spent the previous five months abroad and could stay abreast of the political events in Germany by reading independent newspapers. Still, she pleaded ignorance about the boycott of Jewish businesses, quotas for Jewish students, destruction of the unions, burning of books, and the Ermächtigungsgesetz (enabling act), which gave the government the right to pass laws without parliamentary consent. Riefenstahl feigned astonishment at the changes: “Many great Jewish actors and actresses, such as Elisabeth Bergner, were no longer performing, and Max Reinhardt and Erich Pommer had also left Germany by this point. What terrible things must have happened there! I couldn’t understand any of that. What was I to do? I hadn’t heard anything from Hitler since December or, of course, from Goebbels, which I was happy about.”3

  She maintained that she now fared badly in Berlin. Because of her extended absence, she was unable to capitalize on the success of The Blue Light, and she was running low on money. She decided to get in touch with Harry Sokal, to whom she had “trustingly” left everything. But when she called him up, she found out that he had left, which was understandable, in her opinion, because “Sokal was half-Jewish.”4 She dec
lared in frustration that he had not given her a penny of the profits from her “international triumph” and had even taken the original negative of the movie with him.