“Really? In what?” he asked, and I wasn’t sure if he was genuinely curious or merely making conversation. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“This and that. Nothing important.” I sensed Camilla start to bristle, clearly wanting to draw his attention back to her. “It’s very nice to meet you, Herr . . . ?”
“Sieber. Rudolph Sieber. Rudi, to my friends. Likewise, Marlene Dietrich.”
Hans said, “Oh, no. Watch out, Camilla. This virgin has claws.”
I was lighting a cigarette when I realized Herr Sieber was still looking at me. I raised my eyes again. “Yes?”
“Would you care to dance?”
Hans guffawed. “Bull’s-eye.”
Camilla’s face turned stony. Draping her arm around the brunette’s shoulders, she said, “Yes. Go on, Marlene. Dance with him. You’ll be the only two dancing with the opposite sex, though in your getup, who will know? How droll.”
Rudi escorted me to the floor, where the Charleston had given way to a slow dance, with couples swaying against each other, kissing and fondling.
This was what I wanted, why I was here. Yet as he set his hand at my waist, I wondered if he’d responded to me or sought to goad Camilla. She’d said he preferred to dive, a euphemism that was obvious, but after what I’d seen, one could never know until proven.
He held me at a discreet distance as we danced, increasing my suspicion. Hans was beautiful. Any man here would want him. Perhaps Herr Sieber did not appreciate blatancy?
“So, you work in the picture industry,” I finally said.
“And you are an actress who has done nothing important,” he replied. Up close, I saw he had a slight cleft in his well-defined chin. “Do you want to act in film or only on the stage? The Reinhardt academy is quite prestigious, but they train actors for the theater, not the camera.”
“I’ve worked before a camera; I model for magazines. And my sister’s fiancé,” I added impulsively, though I’d not seen Liesel in months, let alone met her boyfriend, “is Georg Wills, who manages the Theater des Westens. He says he can hire me after I finish my training.”
Hearing my own rush of praise for myself, as if I were verbalizing my résumé, secretly appalled me. Why did I care about impressing this stranger? But I couldn’t deny that I did. His air of sophistication, the slight pressure of his hand at my waist, and his almost disinterested smile made me feel as I had with my French schoolteacher, eager to show how skilled I was.
I want to sleep with him, I thought, and the realization opened in me like a warm bloom.
“Well, then,” he said. “You have options. In Berlin these days, options are everything.” He skillfully guided us away from a drunk couple. The floor was jammed. I was sweating in my tuxedo, my shirt drenched under my tails. I suddenly felt as if my inexperience was so evident, he could read it on me like a price tag—a girl playing dress-up in a naughty club.
“Do you like men?” he suddenly asked.
I started. “Why do you ask?”
He considered this. “Because I think I might want to see you again.”
“Then I do. If you want to see me again.”
His laughter was soft. “I think I must. You’re extraordinary. I agree with Camilla. You should come to the studio for a test, if that doesn’t present one option too many.”
I went still, stunned. The dance ended. A gong sounded and another act took to the stage—boys in lace nighties, with nectarine lips and blond wigs, dragging fringed stools with protruding dildos that they proceeded to straddle. The crowd hooted; Rudi took me aside, observing the antics with a sardonic expression. Unsure as to what to say or do, I fumbled for my cigarettes in my trousers. When I extracted one, I found him with his lighter ready. As I was leaning to it, hearing the crackle of tobacco and feeling the sting in my lungs, he said, “I’m serious about the offer. I work for Joe May. Do you know who he is?”
I almost choked on my cigarette. “I do,” I said. “He makes pictures.”
Rudi chuckled. “He’s one of the best in Germany. Your fellow students at the academy, they queue for hours to get a part, any part, in one of our pictures. So, can you come to the Tempelhof tomorrow after five? We run our tests then.”
I had a sudden lump in my throat. “I can.”
A hint of a smile crept across his mouth. “If you can, don’t tell Camilla. She’ll rake my eyes out. She’s been begging me for a test, but she’ll never be a picture actress. She’s too overt. You, on the other hand . . .” He let his gaze pass over me. “I suggest you wear something else. As enchanting as your current apparel is, Joe prefers pretty girls who dress like pretty girls.” He gave me a short bow. “Gute Nacht, Marlene Dietrich.”
He turned and strode away as if he’d said nothing of import, as if he hadn’t just upended my entire existence. A test at the Tempelhof Studio with Joe May! It was unbelievable. Had he not left me standing there, I would never have believed it. I’d have thought he was saying whatever he thought I wanted to hear to lure me into bed. Ironic, as I’d have gone to bed with him anyway, without the offer.
My evening had not gone as planned. But I wasn’t disappointed in the least. I had come here to find a man and I had found one—and he could change my future.
The question was: How would I tell Gerda?
VII
The question was superfluous. Of course I wouldn’t tell her until I was certain. A promise in a cabaret meant nothing, I thought the next day when I woke with a terrible headache, for I had stayed at Das Silhouette until closing, no longer caring if I met anyone else of interest, ignoring Camilla’s glower as I danced with Hans and flirted with the transvestites. By the end of the night, I’d made several new friends, who insisted I must come back to the club. Camilla was so furious that she left me alone to call a taxi for myself, which depleted my emergency marks.
After I brewed coffee to get rid of my hangover and saw to the cats, I called up the revue manager to tell him I was ill. He delivered a blistering threat that if I did not show up, ill or not, he’d sack me, though I’d not missed a single performance since he hired me, while other girls dropped out like flies.
“Fine,” I shouted into the telephone. “Fire me. I don’t care.” I slammed the receiver onto the hook, turning to find Trude with another of her anxious looks.
“Gerda won’t like it,” she said. “Skipping out on your job for a test.”
In my excitement, I’d confided in her. I now regretted it. “Gerda isn’t here. She has her own job. If she doesn’t like it, she can sack me, too.”
The studio was located in the Weissensee suburb. I had to take three trams and walk several blocks to reach it, arriving disheveled and lamenting my choice of attire—a white slip dress and new stockings that sagged at my knees, so that I had to keep yanking up my garters. But I gave the receptionist a bright smile and my name; a few minutes later, Rudi came out.
“I thought you might not come,” he said, cupping my elbow.
“Really?” I said, and I allowed him to lead me into labyrinthine corridors abutting shooting stages and cramped offices. “You’ll be fine,” he assured me. “Just be yourself. You look lovely. Don’t be nervous. It’s only an interview and a test.”
Easy for him to say, I thought. I was trembling as he took me into an office with posters tacked to the walls, all featuring pictures produced by May. A rotund, heavy-featured man wearing glasses and a scowl stood before a paper-heaped desk. He gave me one look before he barked at Rudi, “You kept me waiting for this?”
“Joe.” Rudi’s tone was soothing, as if he’d known the director for a long time. He drew him aside. While they murmured, I tried to hide my nerves by affecting a bored stance, a hand on my hip as I looked about in disinterest at the impressive display, though I was far from unimpressed. The posters and photos on the walls attested to May’s repute; he had produced and directed a series of highly successful crime pictures, known as noirs, as well as exotic adventures like The Indian Tomb, whose epic
lengths were screened in two parts at the kinos. I had played my violin for one of his pictures while working for the UFA: The Mistress of the World, starring his wife, Mia May. It was one of my favorites, about a woman’s revenge and the lost treasure of Sheba.
Rudi returned to me and whispered, “Do whatever he asks.”
What Herr May asked was for me to turn left, turn right, and back again. To lift my chin and look at him, then look away so he could check my profile. He asked me to smile, to pout, to feign anger, joy, and sorrow. He issued his directives with as much terseness as Herr Held at the academy, albeit without the sarcasm, before he made a clicking sound with his teeth and announced to Rudi, “She’s nice looking. But too fat under the chin and she has an upturned tip on her nose. It spoils her profile.”
“We can shoot her from the front. And she can diet.” Rudi set his palm under my jaw and pressed upward. “She’s got the right look. We only need to rid her of this excess.”
Herr May looked unconvinced. “Yes, her face is unusual. Nice, as I said, but too wide. She’ll look enormous on camera.”
“We don’t know that yet,” countered Rudi. “We need to test her first.”
“And no experience,” added May. “The leads are already cast; we have professionals in every role. I have no time to prepare a novice. We’re already running late on this picture.”
“Which is why we need a fresh face for the part. She’s not a novice. She’s studying at the Reinhardt academy and has done some modeling. She knows enough to learn on her own.”
They were talking as if I wasn’t standing there, listening to them judge me as if I were a cow at the fair. I might have made a scathing remark of my own had Rudi’s hand not been clamped below my jaw, keeping my mouth shut.
May made another sucking sound between his teeth. “Fine. Test her. But if I don’t like it, I don’t want to see her again.” He turned to his desk; as Rudi steered me out the door, May said without looking up, “Eva told me she hasn’t seen you since we returned from Prague. You’re her husband, Rudi. Stop roistering about Berlin looking for new faces and make time for her.”
Husband? As soon as we exited the office, I yanked away from him. “You’re married,” I said. I wasn’t sure why it bothered me, but it did—quite a lot, it seemed.
“Engaged,” he explained, as if that made a difference. “Eva is Joe’s daughter. Come. The light is perfect now; we’ll test you outside. We have a great cameraman, Stefan Lorant. He’ll know exactly how to shoot you.”
I found myself seething as he led me outside. He was engaged. He might as well be married. Like Reitz. Which meant complications. I had to make myself focus, remind myself that it didn’t matter. I wasn’t here to sleep with him. I was here to further my career.
We reached a field bordering the studio, where a man with a camera on a tripod waited. Rudi squeezed my elbow again. “Break a leg,” he said, the traditional good luck phrase of theater people, before, to my dismay, he retreated back into the studio.
For over an hour, I followed Lorant’s instructions as he filmed me standing by a white prop fence, sitting on the fence, falling off the fence, crawling under the fence, posing behind the fence, until I knew I must look a mess, the September balminess turning my dress translucent, my taut curls loosened into tendrils, and carefully applied makeup streaked. After Lorant was done, he showed me out. I wanted to ask him if I’d photographed well but by that point I didn’t care.
And by the time I returned home to the hungry cats and rushed about preparing the materials for my morning class, followed by rehearsals all afternoon and the evening revue, if I still had a job, I cared even less.
I never expected to see Rudi Sieber again.
WEEKS WENT BY.
The play opened to a limited run. As soon as it closed, we began rehearsing Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Herr Held believed no actor was worthy until he could play the Bard; more important, money was scarce at the academy, like everywhere else, and repertory performances of classics made a profit. As students, we were expected to earn our share and give back to the vaunted academy, which was paving our way to a profession.
I finally surrendered to the inevitable and quit the revue; the manager did not sack me as threatened, but I couldn’t devote myself to acting while dancing into an early grave. To supplement my income, I continued to go out on calls, accepting modeling jobs. It wasn’t enough to pay for more than food and the roof over my head, but I managed. Gerda wired money, too. She was still in Hannover and kept telephoning with promises to return soon, though I’d begun to think that as Camilla had claimed, her jobs away were becoming permanent. It was as though she didn’t want to return, I found myself thinking. As if she was pushing me to do the very thing she most feared, which was to betray her and leave.
Then one evening as I left the Deutsches Theater after another draining rehearsal with Held, who hissed that I had clearly failed to take his advice, I found Rudi waiting beside a two-seater blue automobile—a rarity in Berlin. I strode past him as if I didn’t know who he was.
He ran after me, taking me by the arm. I glared. “Let go.”
“What is the matter?” He appeared bewildered. “Why are you upset?”
“Upset?” I said. “Why would I be upset? You made me look like an idiot at your ‘only an interview and a test.’ You had that cameraman photograph me like a milkmaid. And,” I added, “you left me to see myself out.”
“Marlene, I had to. I couldn’t influence any decision. Joe is very particular; he doesn’t like me meddling with casting. I was already pushing my luck by bringing you in for a test.”
“I see. Well, if you don’t mind, I have a chorus to perform.” I didn’t, but I’d started to turn about anyway when he touched my arm again.
“You got the part.”
I froze. Not wanting to believe what I’d just heard, I met his eyes. He was smiling. In the ebbing summer light, he looked so young, not like the glossy stranger of the cabaret, but who he was—a twenty-something man with more charm than anyone should be allowed.
“I—I got the part?” I said.
“Yes.” He was grinning now, showing off his perfect teeth. “The test was horrible, but it showed Joe what I saw from the start. You have potential. You shine on film. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
“There wasn’t anyone else to see. And if the test was so horrible, how can I have shone?”
“You don’t understand yet what the camera can do. You try too hard and film exaggerates. But it knows how to capture you. All you have to learn is how to let it.” He softened his voice. “It’s a small part. The picture is called Tragedy of Love and you’ll play Lucie, the judge’s mistress. Two scenes, but it’s a perfect introduction. And you must wear your monocle. I told Joe about how you looked in it with your tuxedo, and he agrees . . .”
A dull roar in my ears drowned out his voice. I had a part in a picture—a Joe May production, no less. If he’d said I’d been chosen for the lead, I couldn’t have been more elated or grateful. Or terrified.
“I can’t,” I heard myself whisper. “I can’t do it. I don’t know how. You just told me,” I went on, in a panic. “I don’t know anything about the camera. I’ll make a mess of it. It’s Joe May. I’ll never get another role again—”
“Hush.” He pulled me to him, as protective as a father, though the heat coming off his body was not paternal in the slightest. “Of course you can do it. I’ll be there. It’s just acting, Marlene. Instead of an audience, there’s a camera. It’s what you want to do.”
“Do I?” I murmured, and he lifted my chin. “Yes,” he said. “You were born for this. You may not know it yet but you were. Trust me.”
Like Gerda before him, he had seen something in me that I failed to see in myself. I allowed him to take me to his automobile. When we pulled up at the curb by the boardinghouse, he got out and opened the side door for me.
“Do you want to come up?” I asked. I wanted to retur
n the immense gift he’d given me, the renewed hope for a future. I knew how. I’d felt the stir in his pants as he held me. I recognized desire when it was directed at me. It didn’t matter if he was engaged or married. He had earned it. Besides, I wanted to; it was what I had wanted from the moment I met him. Only now, I wanted more. I wanted to feel loved, if only for one night.
“Maybe later.” He averted his eyes. As I made an uncertain move toward the boardinghouse, glancing at him, motionless by his car, he said quietly, “I want you, Marlene. Very much. But not like this. Not out of gratitude or lust; I want you to want me as much as I want you. And you cannot. You have . . . other obligations.”
“So do you. A fiancée. I may live with someone but I’m not engaged.”
“True.” He held my gaze. “But engagements can be broken. Can you say the same?”
He’d obviously spoken with Camilla, who told him everything he needed to know about my arrangement with Gerda.
“I’m not who you think I am.” I turned to the door, inserting my key in the lock. “And yes,” I said over my shoulder, “I can say the same. You just need to give me a good enough reason.”
VIII
Filming on Tragedy of Love was delayed until the start of 1923. Despite his success, even Joe May had difficulty scraping together financing, but I received my script and studied my role obsessively, even as I performed in several more plays with the academy, including Timotheus in Flagranti, where I had three revolving roles. The play flopped after nine performances, but to my delight, Held offered me the begrudging compliment that I’d acquitted myself “better than most.”
But my inquiries of fellow students who’d had minor roles in pictures forewarned me that working on a film set wasn’t like the stage; nothing was painstakingly rehearsed. Scenes were often shot out of sequence, the script adjusted at a moment’s notice; and while multiple takes could erase mistakes, stamina and knowledge of one’s best angles were required. A primitive art, some declared it, not a civilized way to perfect one’s technique.
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