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

by Wieland, Karin

  6 Remarque wrote in his diary, “October 31, 1939. Los Angeles. At noon telephone Klement, who said that Levy, the lawyer in New York we hired for our immigration, found out there was a complication in getting Peter [nickname for Jutta Zambona] out, because the puma had worked against it at a department in Washington. Levy confirmed this news explicitly only as having come from an official at the department. I think it’s impossible, but haven’t seen the puma yet.” Remarque, Das unbekannte Werk, vol. 5, p. 316.

  7 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated July 11, 1940, New York, in ibid., p. 330.

  8 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated November 3, 1940, in ibid., p. 333f.

  9 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated April 3, 1941, in ibid., p. 349f.

  10 Marlene Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1987), p. 188.

  11 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, February 16, 1942, MDCB.

  12 Quoted in Claude Gauteur and Ginette Vincendeau, Jean Gabin. Anatomie d’un Mythe (Paris: Nouveau Monde Editions, 1993), p. 130.

  13 Marlene Dietrich to Jean Gabin, March 15, 1942, MDCB.

  14 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, March 17, 1942, MDCB.

  15 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, September 3, 1943, MDCB.

  16 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, February 16, 1942, MDCB.

  17 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, March 17, 1942, MDCB.

  18 Letter dated April 16, 1943, from Nat Wolff, Deputy Chief Domestic Radio Bureau Office of War Information, Washington, to Marlene Dietrich, MDCB.

  19 Abe Lastfogel to Marlene Dietrich, June 29, 1944.

  20 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 269.

  21 Her USO identification card states, “In event of capture by the enemy is entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war, and . . . s/he will be given the treatment and afforded privileges as an officer in the Army of the United States with the grade of captain.” MDCB.

  22 Maria Manton to Marlene Dietrich, May 8, 1944, MDCB.

  23 Interview with Marlene Dietrich in the New York Herald Tribune, August 13, 1944, MDCB.

  24 “Marlene Comes Back from Italy,” Picture News magazine, July 2, 1944.

  25 Jean Gabin to Marlene Dietrich, July 15, 1944, MDCB.

  26 Leo Lerman, “Welcome, Marlene,” Vogue, August 15, 1944, pp. 154–55 and 188–91; this passage is on p. 154.

  27 Ibid., pp. 154–55.

  28 Ibid., p. 191.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Patton wrote to his wife that Dietrich’s show was “very low comedy, almost an insult to human intelligence.” General Patton to Beatrice Ayer Patton, November 7, 1944; quoted in Stanley P. Hirshson, General Patton: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Harper, 2002), p. 554.

  31 Rudi Sieber to Marlene Dietrich, September 11, 1944, MDCB.

  32 Charlie Trezona to Marlene Dietrich, February 16, 1945, MDCB.

  33 Walter Reisch to Marlene Dietrich, December 13, 1944, MDCB.

  34 From 1942–1943, Dietrich was suspected of being a German spy, and the FBI was assigned her case. She had been denounced. Her family and her lovers were subjected to a thorough investigation. When the suspicion proved to be unfounded, the investigation was called to a halt. See Werner Sudendorf, “Marlene, Hitler und das FBI. War die Dietrich eine Spionin? Über Wahn und Unsinn eines Verdachts,” in Süddeutsche Zeitung, no. 233 (October 10/11, 1998).

  35 Hans Leip, a soldier from Hamburg, wrote the lyrics of this song in 1915. The song came to be known with a melody by Norbert Schultze, a Berlin composer, in 1938. Schultze was a Nazi party member whose other compositions including “Bombs on England” and “Tanks Roll into Africa.”

  36 Ernest Hemingway, “A Tribute to Mamma from Papa Hemingway,” Life, August 18, 1952, p. 92.

  37 Mary Welsh Hemingway, How It Was (New York: Knopf, 1976), pp. 128–29.

  38 Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich, July 13, 1950; John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Ernest Hemingway Collecton, Boston.

  39 Welsh Hemingway, How It Was, p. 127.

  40 Ibid.

  41 Lee Miller, “Players in Paris,” in Lee Miller’s War: Photographer and Correspondent with the Allies in Europe 1944–1945 (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1992), pp. 94–97; this quotation is on p. 97.

  42 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 275.

  43 After the invasion of Normandy, he noted in his diary, “Have been wearing my shoulder holster . . . so as to get myself into the spirit of the part.” General George S. Patton, quoted in Paul Fussell, Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), p. 38.

  44 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 289.

  45 Ibid., p. 293.

  V Prosecution (1945–1954)

  The Witness

  1 Marlene Dietrich to Jean Gabin, August 31, 1945, MDCB.

  2 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, September 16, 1945, MDCB.

  3 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, September 27, 1945, MDCB.

  4 “He is the pioneer of the paratroopers, started with a handful of men in 41 against all odds. Went through Sicily, Anzio Campaign, Normandy, Holland. Only division which has 4 Combat Jumps. The red things on his shoulders are the Belgian and Dutch Fouragères—maybe they will have the French by the time they get home. But for that they would need one more shoulder. He is born 1907. I am 9 months older than he, see?” Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, December 5, 1945, MDCB.

  5 “Had a pleasant visit with your mother she is fine the 82nd is looking forward to seeing you soon general gavin” August 30, 1945, MDCB.

  6 Colonel Barry Oldfield, in J. David Riva and Guy Stern, eds., A Woman at War: Marlene Dietrich Remembered (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006), pp. 49–75.

  7 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Manton [stage name of Maria Riva], Thanksgiving Day, 1945, MDCB.

  8 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, late 1945, MDCB.

  9 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, January 6, 1946, MDCB.

  10 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, December 5, 1945, MDCB.

  11 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Manton, February 10, 1946, MDCB.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, December 23, 1945, MDCB.

  14 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Manton, February 10, 1946, MDCB.

  15 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, February 9, 1946, MDCB.

  16 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, June 21, 1946, MDCB.

  17 Marlene Dietrich to Charlie Feldman, May 10, 1946, MDCB.

  18 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Manton, May 12, 1946, MDCB.

  19 Marlene Dietrich to Erich Maria Remarque, December 1, 1945, MDCB.

  20 Erich Maria Remarque to Marlene Dietrich, early 1946, MDCB.

  21 Appleton-Century, the New York publisher of Arch of Triumph, sold more than a million copies within one year.

  22 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, April 8, 1946, MDCB.

  23 Helmuth Karasek, Billy Wilder. Eine Nahaufnahme (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1992), pp. 309–10.

  24 Ibid., p. 319.

  25 Cameron Crowe, Conversations with Wilder (New York: Knopf, 1999), p. 80. In the same interview, Wilder describes his original intention to make Pringle Jewish. “What I wanted to do was not only is Captain Pringle in the American army, he also was Jewish. That is going to really cement it, you know. The American lieutenant with whom Dietrich is having the affair, and is going to marry, is Jewish. ‘What? She’s going to marry a . . . !’ That picture I would have loved to make. But then we chickened out.” Ibid., p. 75.

  26 “Marlene Dietrich and Major Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, stand at attention as Col. Robert Nourse reads citation accompanying Medal of Freedom awarded Marlene for her work in entertaining troops overseas during the war. Following the citation Gen. Taylor pins the medal on the curvaceous screen star.” “Medal for Marlene,” in Daily News, November 19, 1947, MDCB.

  27 Marlene Dietrich to Rudi Sieber, November 22, 1947, MDCB.

&nb
sp; 28 Jean Gabin to Marlene Dietrich, November 13, 1947, MDCB.

  29 “Trois machines à écrire tapaient le texte à un rythme infernal, en français, en allemande et en italien. Une des trois dactylos n’était autre que Marlene Dietrich, qui s’était à vouée a cette besogne ingrate pour aider Rossellini à faire vite. Sans maquillage, ses blondes cheveux en désordre, un tas de mégots dans le cendrier, Marlène, durant deux jours pleins, de neuf heures du matin à dix heures du soir, a traduit en effet dans SA langue d’origine les dialogues du film, sans donner le moindre signe de fatigue.” Cinemarche, September 9, 1947, MDCB.

  30 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, June 6, 1945, MDCB.

  31 Marlene Dietrich to Erich Maria Remarque, September 12, 1948, MDCB.

  32 Erich Maria Remarque, Liebe Deinen Nächsten (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2001), p. 3.

  33 “Richard had a very special place in his heart for you Marlene dear which no one has ever taken and you have it still.” Diana Tauber to Marlene Dietrich, January 9, 1948, MDCB. Tauber had kept in touch every now and then by telegram: “Dearest Marlene thanks for message so real friendship still exists thanks my thoughts and love follow yours ever Richard.” Richard Tauber to Marlene Dietrich, October 21, 1947.

  34 Charlie Feldman to Marlene Dietrich, April 13, 1951, MDCB.

  35 Quoted in Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light (New York: Harper, 2003), p. 433.

  36 François Truffaut, Hitchcock by Truffaut (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 190.

  37 Alexander Liberman, Marlene: An Intimate Photographic Memoir (New York: Random House, 1992).

  38 Billy Wilder to Marlene Dietrich, October 14, 1950, MDCB.

  39 Marlene Dietrich to Friedrich Torberg, November 11, 1950, in Marcel Atze, ed. Schreib. Nein, schreib nicht. Marlene Dietrich/Friedrich Torberg Briefwechsel 1946–1979 (Vienna: SYNEMA Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, 2008), p. 32.

  40 Ibid.

  41 Rock Brynner, Yul: The Man Who Would Be King (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), p. 103.

  42 Marlene Dietrich to Maria Riva, n.d., MDCB.

  43 Erich Maria Remarque, diary entry dated December 9, 1952, New York, in Erich Maria Remarque, Das unbekannte Werk, vol. 5: Briefe und Tagebücher (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998), p. 480.

  44 Dietrich, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin, p. 253.

  45 Ibid.

  46 Ibid., p. 255.

  47 Peter Bogdanovich, Fritz Lang in America (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 77.

  48 Cornelius Schnauber, an expert on Fritz Lang who lives in Los Angeles, replied to my question about the relationship between Lang and Dietrich as follows: “Unfortunately I did not discuss Marlene Dietrich much with Fritz Lang, or at least I can’t recall doing so. I only know that he felt she made things difficult for him in the Rancho Notorious movie—starting with the title. But I didn’t notice what had gone on before and after. Still, I do know that Lang’s wife, Lily Latté, claimed until the time of her death that her own relationship with Marlene Dietrich remained quite close.” E-mail dated June 23, 2009.

  49 Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich, July 13, 1950. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Ernest Hemingway Collection, Boston.

  50 Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich, June 27, 1950. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Ernest Hemingway Collection, Boston.

  51 Ernest Hemingway, Life magazine, August 18, 1952, p. 92.

  52 Hildegard Knef, The Gift Horse, trans. David Anthony Palastanga (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), p. 192.

  53 Ibid., p. 191.

  The Accused

  1 The whereabouts of the boxes are unknown.

  2 Leni Riefenstahl, Memoiren (Munich: Albrecht Knaus, 1987), p. 408.

  3 In a conversation with the Süddeutsche Zeitung on the occasion of her hundredth birthday, she declared that the initial postwar period had been an “entry into hell.” Joachim Käppner, “Die Frau, die mit dem Bösen paktierte,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 20, 2002.

  4 German Intelligence Section / Special Interrogation Series no. 3; This report is published in cooperation with Seventh Army Interrogation Center, Captain Hans Wallenberg and Captain Ernst Langendorf, May 3, 1945, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, F 135/3.

  5 Ibid.

  6 The Temporary Nationality Act of July 10, 1945, stipulated that the only people who could retain their Austrian citizenship were those who had been Austrian prior to March 13, 1938, or could have attained it since then in accordance with Austrian law.

  7 Budd Schulberg, “Nazi Pin-Up Girl,” in Saturday Evening Post, March 30, 1946, pp. 11, 36, 39, 41.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Christopher Hitchens, “Leni Riefenstahl Interviewed by Gordon Hitchens,” Film Culture 56/57 (Spring 1973): 94–121; this passage is on p. 96.

  10 Janet Flanner, Janet Flanner’s World: Uncollected Writings, 1932–1975 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. 98.

  11 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 447.

  12 The trustee of Leni Riefenstahl’s possessions, appointed by the Austrian government, was Hans Schneeberger.

  13 See Klaus Eisterer, Französische Besatzungspolitik. Tirol und Vorarlberg 1945/46 (Innsbruck: Haymon, 1990), p. 115.

  14 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 436.

  15 “Tatbestand und Entscheidungsgründe.” Report issued on November 9, 1948 by the Baden State Commission for Political Purgation. Denazification file for Leni Riefenstahl, Staatsarchiv Freiburg D 180/2 no. 228.165.

  16 These disputes are discussed on pp. 443–47 of Riefenstahl, Memoiren.

  17 Amtsgericht München, Aktenzeichen 7 Bs 692–693.

  18 Alfred Polgar, “Leni Riefenstahl,” in Polgar, Kleine Schriften, vol. 1: Musterung, ed. Marcel Reich-Ranicki with Ulrich Weinzierl (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1982), pp. 245–48.

  19 Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 24, 1949.

  20 “I noticed that Leni Riefenstahl was occupying an adjoining table with a group of friends. She had obviously been cleared by the denazification board of the U.S. military government in 1946 and was a free citizen once again, which did not altogether surprise me, as she had been a Nazi sympathizer and not an active war criminal.” Peter Viertel, Dangerous Friends: At Large with Huston and Hemingway in the Fifties (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1992), p. 109.

  21 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 489.

  22 Ibid., p. 525.

  VI New Chapter of Fame (1954–1976)

  The Icon

  1 “The ‘Haus’ appears to be developing into a meeting place for prominent NS figures. Besides Leni Riefenstahl, who lives in the ‘Savoy,’ Emmi Goering who lives nearby and former ‘Reichsleiter’ Max Amann frequent the place. It appears strange even to circles of former ‘old warriors’ that Amann should be getting so much leave from the labor camp in Eichstätt.” Institut für Zeitgeschichte München F 135/3.

  2. “It was a very large village and out of it came running long-legged, brown, smooth-moving men who all seemed to be of the same age and who wore their hair in a heavy, club-like queue. . . . They were all tall, their teeth were white and good, and their hair was stained a red brown and arranged in a looped fringe on their foreheads.” Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa (New York: Scribner, 1998), p. 219.

  3 Leni Riefenstahl, Memoiren (Munich: Albrecht Knaus, 1987), p. 550.

  4 Leni Riefenstahl, Die Nuba. Menschen wie von einem anderen Stern (Munich: List Verlag, 1973), p. 9.

  5 Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa, p. 219.

  6 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 557.

  7 For details on the rights situation of the films she made during the National Socialist rule, see Rainer Rother, Leni Riefenstahl: The Seduction of Genius, trans. Martin H. Bott (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 148–59.

  8 Leni Riefenstahl, “Wie ich die Nuba fand,” in Riefenstahl, Die Nuba. Menschen wie von einem anderen Stern, pp. 9–11; this passage is on p. 9.

  9 Le Village des Noubas appeared in the “Huit” series (Paris: Rupert Delpire, 1955)
and was later published in English as Village of the Nubas (London: Phaidon Press, Ltd., 1995). The text in National Geographic was by Robin Strachan, a young British colonial officer who was working in Kordofan for the British foreign ministry He indirectly gainsaid Riefenstahl’s cliché about the noble savages. George Rodger and Robin Strachan, “With the Nuba Hillmen of Kordofan,” in National Geographic 99, no. 2 (February 1951): 249–78.

  10 George Rodger to Leni Riefenstahl, n.d. [Spring 1951], Smarden Archive; quoted in Carole Naggar, George Rodger: An Adventure in Photography, 1980–1995 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), p. 190. Naggar writes that Rodger felt ambivalent toward Riefenstahl. “He kept her books (with her written dedications to him) on the shelves of his library in Smarden, along with his other books on Africa. Publicly, however, he always disparaged her. When later in his life he became a fierce advocate of the Nuba cause and was asked if he knew whether Riefenstahl was aware of what was happening to them, he growled: “ ‘I don’t really know. But if she did I doubt she would care’ ” (pp. 191–92). Naggar surmises that he had a guilty conscience, since it was his photographs that had made Riefenstahl aware of the Nuba. In the 1980s, Riefenstahl and Rodger got together for lunch in London.

  11 See Oskar Luz, “Proud Primitives, the Nuba People,” in National Geographic 130, no. 5 (November 1966): 673–99.

  12 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 634.

  13 Ibid., p. 635.

  14 “Actually, the photos were not so important to me. I went there to get to know people, and I took a few pictures there, the way I always do when I travel. . . . I photographed without ever expecting that I might publish the pictures.” Leni Riefenstahl in the Ray Müller film The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.

  15 Handwritten letter from Leni Riefenstahl in Uganda to Theo von Hörmann, March 5, 1963, personal archive of Theo von Hörmann.

  16 Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 656.

  17 Ibid., p. 740.

  18 Ibid., p. 755.

  19 Ibid., p. 757.

  20 Ibid., p. 753.

  21 Ibid., p. 800.

  22 This followed on the heels of the publication of several of her photographs in the Time-Life volume African Kingdom and in the Sunday Times Magazine, London 1967.