73 “We went into the studio during the filming of Morocco [USA, 1930], with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper. There was a deathly silence. A crowd scene: a packed Moroccan cabaret and not a sound. A platform in the middle of the studio. He was on that platform, in a black velvet jacket. A hand supported his head. He was thinking. Everyone was silent, holding their breath. Ten minutes . . . fifteen. It didn’t work. He was not accepted into the higher circle of Hollywood society. He tried to humble ‘this Hollywood’ by a Europeanism.” S. M. Eisenstein, Selected Works, vol. 4: Beyond the Stars: The Memoirs of Sergei Eisenstein, trans. William Powell, ed. Richard Taylor (London: BFI Publishing, 1995), p. 322.
74 Riva, Marlene Dietrich, pp. 293–94.
75 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 116.
76 In Time magazine, their relationship was described as “the strangest director–star relationship of U.S. cinema”; Time, November 30, 1936.
77 Josef von Sternberg to Marlene Dietrich, June 4, 1933, MDCB.
78 Andrew Sarris, The Films of Josef von Sternberg (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966), p. 5.
79 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, November 7, 1933, MDCB.
80 See Hugo Vickers, Loving Garbo: The Story of Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton, and Mercedes de Acosta (New York: Random House, 1994), pp. 55–60.
81 Mercedes de Acosta to Marlene Dietrich, n.d. 1932, MDCB.
82 Sam Green, a friend of Greta Garbo’s, remarked to Garbo biographer Karen Swenson: “Everyone had to be a lesbian in the thirties, even if they didn’t want to be. They certainly dressed up and went to lesbian bars—it was the thing to do.” Karen Swenson, Greta Garbo: A Life Apart (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 250.
83 Marlene Dietrich to Mercedes de Acosta, n.d., MDCB. For a brief time, the actor Hans Heinrich von Twardowski and his friend Martin Kosleck were in Dietrich’s circle of friends. Twardowski had a minor role in The Scarlet Empress.
84 Brian Aherne to Marlene Dietrich, n.d., MDCB.
85 Brian Aherne to Marlene Dietrich, September 21, 1933, MDCB.
86 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, November 21, 1933, MDCB.
87 According to Silke Ronneburg, Sieber applied for Czech citizenship for himself and his wife in order to avoid paying back taxes in Germany.
88 Rudi Sieber to Marlene Dietrich, December 7, 1933, MDCB.
89 Von Sternberg, Fun in a Chinese Laundry, p. 268.
90 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 142.
91 Marlene Dietrich to Max Kolpé, April 2, 1934, MDCB.
92 See Peter Bogdanovich, “Marlene Dietrich,” in Bogdanovich, Who the Hell’s In It?, pp. 375–91.
93 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 115.
94 Riva, Marlene Dietrich, p. 159.
95 Marlene Dietrich in Daily Sketch, December 24, 1936; quoted in Alexander Walker, Dietrich (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 125f.
96 “Dearest . . . how strange that you, too, have to drink—in order to be able to sleep—I am finding the very same thing! I must say, though, that I am distressed by the thought that it could do damage to your face—the drinking!” Letter from Willi Forst to Marlene Dietrich, January 15, 1935, MDCB.
97 “[T]he essence of Los Angeles lies in the fact that it hardly has a center. It is, if one can say this, a fluid, a ‘moving’ city, not only a city that moves itself—but also a city in which movement, freedom of movement, is a strong premise of life.” Cees Nooteboom, “Autopia,” in Charles G. Salas and Michael S. Roth, eds., Looking for Los Angeles: Architecture, Film, Photography, and the Urban Landscape (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2001), pp. 13–21; this passage is on p. 15.
98 Information from Cornelius Schnauber, Los Angeles.
99 Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown Publishers, 1988), p. 340.
100 Josefine von Losch to Marlene Dietrich, May 21, 1931, MDCB.
101 Josefine von Losch to Marlene Dietrich, March 24, 1934, MDCB.
102 Josefine von Losch to Marlene Dietrich, August 3, 1935, MDCB.
103 Elisabeth Bergner to Marlene Dietrich, April 16, 1935, MDCB. Silke Ronneburg reports that it took a long time to figure out who this “Lisl” might be. On the basis of Rudi Sieber’s telegram bills—he kept an account of his wife’s expenditures—the inescapable conclusion was that “Lisl” was Elisabeth Bergner.
104 Riva, Marlene Dietrich, p. 392.
105 Graham Greene on Film: Collected Film Criticism 1935–1940, ed. John Russell Taylor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), p. 126.
106 See Hans Dieter Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewusstsein. Deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945 (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1981).
107 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated December 21, 1933, in Elke Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2, October 1932–March 1934 (Munich: De Gruyter Saur, 2006), p. 341.
108 “Desire with Marlene Dietrich and Cooper, who are both great actors. Especially Dietrich, whom we unfortunately no longer have in Germany.” Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated April 2, 1936, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels.
109 Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda to Alexander von der Heyde, December 12, 1936, MDCB.
110 Richard Neutra and Josef von Sternberg were too egocentric to get along. Neutra never visited von Sternberg in his house, and von Sternberg sold it before 1939—to Ayn Rand. In 1971 it went to an investor, who converted it into condominiums.
111 Josef von Sternberg to Marlene Dietrich, Fall 1936, MDCB.
112 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, after December 24, 1937, MDCB.
113 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, April 3, 1938, MDCB.
114 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, December 14, 1938, MDCB.
115 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 210.
116 Quoted in Werner Fuld’s introduction, in Werner Fuld and Thomas F. Schneider, eds., “Sag mir, dass Du mich liebst.” Erich Maria Remarque—Marlene Dietrich, Zeugnisse einer Leidenschaft (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2001), pp. 13–19; this passage is on p. 15.
117 He sent her a postcard from Ascona showing the lake framed by the mountains and several houses on the banks. He proudly noted on the card: “That is my house!” MDCB.
118 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, n.d., MDCB.
119 Harry Edington to Marlene Dietrich, August 9, 1937, MDCB.
120 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated November 7, 1937, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels.
121 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated November 12, 1937, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels.
122 “Telegram Klement. Film of the book sold to Metro. Can’t really believe it yet. Would be marvelous. Perhaps a Cézanne in it.” Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated July 17, 1937; quoted in Wilhelm von Sternburg, “Als wäre alles das letzte Mal.” Erich Maria Remarque. Eine Biographie (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998), p. 267.
123 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, February 24, 1938, MDCB.
124 Erich Maria Remarque met Ilse Jutta Zambona, a dancer and actress, in 1923, and they were married in Berlin in 1925. Their unhappy, turbulent marriage ended in divorce in 1930. They remarried in St. Moritz in 1938.
125 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, n.d., MDCB.
126 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, n.d., MDCB.
127 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, February 24, 1938, MDCB.
128 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, n.d., MDCB.
129 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated February 21, 1938, in Erich Maria Remarque, Das unbekannte Werk, vol. 5: Briefe und Tagebücher (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998), p. 280.
130 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, n.d., MDCB.
131 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated June 21, 1938, in Remarque, Das unbekannte Werk, vol. 5, p. 284.
132 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entr
y dated September 4, 1938, in ibid., p. 289.
133 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated July 9, 1938, in ibid., p. 285.
134 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated July 20, 1938, in ibid., p. 286.
135 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated September 14, 1938, in ibid., p. 290.
136 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated September 23, 1938, in ibid., p. 292.
137 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated November 1, 1938, in ibid., p. 295.
138 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated March 23, 1939, in ibid., p. 299.
139 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated March 27, 1939, in ibid., p. 302.
140 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated March 30, 1939, in ibid., p. 303.
141 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated April 7, 1939, in ibid., p. 303.
142 Thomas Mann, Tagebücher 1937–1939, ed. Peter de Mendelssohn (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1980), p. 378.
143 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, n.d., MDCB.
144 Remarque reports that they initially asked for $120,000, then raised the required sum to $240,000. Diary entry dated June 22, 1939, in Remarque, Das unbekannte Werk, vol. 5, p. 306.
145 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 250.
Berlin
1 Leni Riefenstahl, Memoiren (Munich: Albrecht Knaus, 1987), p. 193.
2 For a detailed discussion of this terminology, see Norbert Frei, “Machtergreifung. Anmerkungen zu einem historischen Begriff,” VfZ 31 (1983): 136–45.
3 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 194.
4 Ibid., pp. 194, 195.
5 Ibid., p. 196.
6 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated May 17, 1933, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2, October 1932–March 1934 (Munich: De Gruyter Saur, 2006).
7 In 1992, in the former “Special Archive” in Moscow, the historian Elke Fröhlich discovered the contemporary glass-plate copies of the entire set that had been produced from the original diary entries on Goebbels’s orders.
8 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated November 3, 1932, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2.
9 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated November 22, 1932, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2.
10 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated December 6, 1932, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2.
11 In a newspaper interview near the end of her life, Riefenstahl claimed, “I did not gain Hitler’s trust and rarely got together with him. I had only one telephone conversation with him in all those years.” “ ‘Zum 100. Mein neuer Film.’ Ihr Werk, ihr Verhältnis zu Hitler, ihr Tauchprojekt. Leni Riefenstahl mit Hilmar Hoffmann,” in Die Welt, January 7, 2002.
12 Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir, trans. Oliver Pretzel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002), p. 194.
13 Two years earlier, Marlene Dietrich had played the spy X-27 and Greta Garbo, Mata Hari.
14 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated December 1, 1929, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2/1, December 1929–May 1931 (Munich: De Gruyter Saur, 2005).
15 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated June 12, 1933, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2.
16 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated July 19, 1933, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2.
17 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated August 16, 1933, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2.
18 Film-Kurier, no. 199 (August 25, 1933). The first official announcement for party members is contained in National Socialist correspondence dated August 23, 1933, BFAB.
19 Confidential memo from Lange to von Allwörden, dated August 28, 1933, BDC.
20 Arnold Raether to Hans Hinkel, September 8, 1933, BDC.
21 Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 61.
22 Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (New York: Vintage, 1996), p. 129.
23 “While the rallies of the 1920s had been comparatively isolated party affairs, this year, for the first time, the Party Day became a major national project. All the mass media of Germany were employed to drown the nations in propaganda. . . . Six hundred reporters were given special permission to attend; all the remainder were German journalists. An additional 3,000 reporters were registered to attend the Party Day, but they had no access to the indoor meetings.” Hamilton T. Burden, The Nuremberg Party Rallies: 1923–39 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), p. 66f.
24 “ ‘Der Sieg des Glaubens.’ Wie der Reichsparteitag-Film entstand: Eine Unterredung mit Leni Riefenstahl,” Film-Journal (November 19, 1933), BFAB.
25 “Imposante Wochenschauberichte. Vorschau auf den Film vom Parteitag. Leni Riefenstahl erzählt,” Lichtbild-Bühne (September 6, 1933), BFAB.
26 Film-Kurier, no. 277 (November 25, 1933), BFAB.
27 “Der Sieg des Glaubens,” Die Filmwoche 50 (1933): 1602–3; this passage is on p. 1603.
28 “Leni Riefenstahl oder die DuBarry des III. Reiches,” Paris Soir, September 13, 1936. Translated newspaper article from the literary estate of Paul Kohner, SdK NLA, Berlin.
29 Wolfgang Ertel-Breithaupt in Berliner Tagblatt, August 31, 1933.
30 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated September 5, 1933, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2.
31 All quotations from “Der Sieg des Glaubens,” Lichtbild-Bühne, December 2, 1933, BFAB.
32 “In Wannsee with L. Riefenst. Advised about the Nuremberg film. She will certainly achieve something.” Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated September 11, 1933, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2.
33 Joseph Goebbels, diary entry dated November 29, 1933, in Fröhlich, ed., Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, vol. 2.
34 The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993), directed by Ray Müller. See http://www.amazon.com/Wonderful-Horrible-Life-Leni-Riefenstahl/dp/B00000INUB.
35 Joseph Goebbels directed the party’s local group leaders not to schedule any other events for the day that the film would be shown “in order to give the party members and people at large the opportunity to attend en masse and thus to make the showing of the party convention film a powerful rally.” “Dr. Goebbels ruft auf!” Lichtbild-Bühne, no. 284 (1933), BFAB.
36 “Imposante Wochenschauberichte. Vorschau auf den Film vom Parteitag. Leni Riefenstahl erzählt,” Lichtbild-Bühne, December 6, 1933, BFAB.
37 Note by Leni Riefenstahl, December 11, 1933, BDC.
38 “Joseph Zsuffa assumes that in January 1933, Balázs was in Germany again and must have met with Riefenstahl as well, but he does not supply any sources. We don’t know whether and when Balázs may have begun to pursue his claims in court.” Hanno Loewy, Béla Balázs—Märchen, Ritual und Film (Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 2003), p. 366.
39 Her course of action seems especially disturbing when read against her depiction of her return to National Socialist Germany in her memoirs: “There was also a letter from Moscow, from Béla Balázs, with whom I had a friendly relationship. An ardent Communist, he wanted to remain in Russia for the time being, he told me, then return to his native Hungary. I wept as I held these letters in my hands.” Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 194.
40 By the spring of 1934, Ian Kershaw writes, “The position of the German economy—chronically lacking raw materials, with falling exports, soaring imports, and a hemorrhage of hard currency fast approaching disaster level—had become highly precarious.” Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), p. 507.
41 “Failure on Hitler’s part to solve the problem of the SA could conceivably lead to army leaders favoring an alternative as Head of State on Hindenburg’s death—perhaps resulting in a restoration of the monarchy, and a de facto military dictatorship. Such a development would have met with favor among sections, not just of the military old guard, but of some national-conserv
ative groups, which had favored an authoritarian, anti-democratic form of state but had become appalled by the Hitler regime.” Kershaw, Hitler, p. 500.
42 BFAB Berlin R 109I/1929b, sheet 28.
43 Quoted in Jeanpaul Goergen, “Walter Ruttmann—Ein Porträt” in Jeanpaul Goergen, Walter Ruttmann. Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Freunde der deutschen Kinamethek, 1989), pp. 17–56; this quotation is on p. 41.
44 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 221.
45 “Cahiers: Certain people have said that you were aided, in both your documentary films, by Walter Ruttmann. – Riefenstahl: I have never had either an artistic collaborator or a directorial collaborator. It has been said, in effect, and you have heard, that Mr. Walter Ruttmann, who made Berlin, collaborated on Triumph of the Will as well as Olympia. To that I answer that I know—or rather knew—Mr. Ruttmann well, but he didn’t shoot a single meter of my films Triumph of the Will and Olympia. During the shooting of these films, quite simply, he wasn’t there.” “Leni and the Wolf. Interview with Leni Riefenstahl by Michael Delahaye,” Cahiers Du Cinéma 5 (1966): 49–55; this passage is on p. 53.
46 The timetable Leni Riefenstahl laid out cannot be correct. In October, newspapers were still reporting about Ruttmann’s work on the party congress film. “Until late October, the party congress film was depicted as ‘collaborative work in the best sense.’ Afterwards, however, Ruttmann stopped being mentioned in connection with Triumph of the Will. The elaborately constructed framework is not used in the finished product.” Jeanpaul Goergen, “Walter Ruttmann—Ein Porträt,” in Goergen, Walter Ruttmann. Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Freunde der deutschen Kinamethek, 1989), pp. 17–56; this quotation is on p. 41.
47 “I did not write a single word of it; unfortunately I did not even have a chance to read it or else it would have been written in a different style.” “Hermann Weigel: Interview mit Leni Riefenstahl,” Filmkritik 16, no. 8 (August 1, 1972): 395–410.
48 “Der Triumph des Willens—ein deutsches Meisterwerk. Eine notwendige Vorbereitung für den Reichsparteitag-Film 1934,” BFAB.
49 Leni Riefenstahl, Hinter den Kulissen des Reichsparteitag-Films (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1935), p. 13f.
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