He gave me a long look. “I apologize. I was beyond words. Like the picture itself.”
I sank farther into my seat. “You think it’s terrible.”
“No. I think it’s a masterpiece. But my opinion doesn’t matter.” He rounded his desk to take the chair beside me. A lifelong Berliner, he wasn’t given to sympathetic gestures, but I had the feeling that if he were, he’d have patted my hand. “He can’t restrain himself, Marlene. He’s lost his perspective. A film like this is not salable to an American audience. They want reality now, not hyperbole. And he knows it. I’m afraid I’m not the only one he hates.”
I jolted upright, scalded by the implication. “You cannot mean he hates me.”
“He hates himself. From the moment he cast you as Lola-Lola, he surrendered his identity. He might declare to the press that he is Dietrich and Dietrich is him, but in his heart, he has always craved recognition in his own right. He deserves it. That is his tragedy.”
“Will you tell him?” I was overcome by his perceptive appraisal of the man I had always sought to please with my performances but had often found incomprehensible off the set.
“What good would it do?” he said. “We’ll release the picture as is, but one thing is clear: You must decide whether it’s in your best interests to continue working with him.”
I cringed at the notices. Time blasted it as “hyperbole in which von Sternberg buries Dietrich in a welter of gargoyles.” Theaters balked at screening the picture, and word of mouth ran wild that the studio would pull it, finishing von Sternberg’s and my collaboration.
Lubitsch confirmed it. “We have to do it for the sake of your career. We’ve a vested interest in retaining you. Not him.”
“But you said—you told me it was my decision!”
“I thought it was. Corporate says otherwise. We can’t afford it,” he explained. “The truth is, von Sternberg never made us enough money to justify his expense.”
“Our other pictures did well enough. You gave him control. You said he could make whatever he liked.” I paused. “You knew this would happen,” I breathed. “You wanted it.”
Lubitsch lifted his palms in mock surrender. “He gave me no choice. He said it was his way or no way. He threatened to take you with him. Was I wrong in assuming he would have?”
“No. He couldn’t. I’d already signed with the studio for two pictures.”
“Then you have one more picture with him. Make it count.”
VON STERNBERG TOOK THE NEWS IN STRIDE, which bewildered me—until he announced to the press that our next picture would be our last. The Scarlet Empress had been his revenge, a direct strike at Lubitsch, in the hope that, as with Schulberg, he could topple a rival. The realization undid me; I felt deceived, used by him in his self-destructive tangle. He had not spared a thought for how it might affect me, as long as he won his battle against Lubitsch.
I refused to answer his calls for weeks, despising his melancholic public assertion that the time had come for us to part, when he hadn’t yet bothered to inform me in person. But when he finally came to my door, I had to open it.
“You did this to us,” I said, barring his entry.
He gave a self-deprecatory shrug. “Lubitsch might be clever. I am wise.”
“Wise?” I wanted to throttle him. “Paramount pulled the picture. We are finished.”
“I am finished. Not you.” He removed a bound sheaf of papers from his coat pocket, rolled up and crumpled, stinking of the half-smoked cigarettes he always kept about his person, as if he were a vagrant. “Read it. You’ll see it’s the best thing we have ever done.”
“I’ve heard that before.” But I was taken aback that this screenplay looked complete.
“My beloved.” His voice turned disarmingly tender. “It had to end. I cannot—” He stopped himself. “Just read it. If you don’t like it, I’ll break my contract to spare you. I’ll walk away and let the studio blame me. What can they do to me that they haven’t done already?”
He set the script in my hand and returned to his car, his shoulders slumped. As I watched him depart, I suddenly understood. As Lubitsch had said, it was his way or no way. And as he couldn’t find the key with which to unlock our chain, he had decided to sever it.
I sat down to read. When I was done, I did not move, my cigarette burning out in a column of ash. Sorrow overwhelmed me.
For our farewell, my exasperating director had offered me my favorite part.
VIII
She is every man’s fantasy and every man’s terror. Dandelion-speckled mantilla and lacquer peineta, riding in her balloon-festooned carriage through rainy Seville. She might be a factory worker by day, but at night, Concha Perez is desire incarnate. The young lieutenant who’s been warned against her gazes in fascination as she passes, cruelty in her lace-masked eyes. She knows he will chase after her until he finds her invitation, inside a wind-up-toy box.
I wanted Concha to look Spanish. I was blond, blue-eyed. No matter how authentic my wardrobe might be, I did not resemble a woman from Seville. I’d heard of a doctor who assisted actors and paid him a visit. He prescribed two types of eyedrops, one to widen the pupils during shooting and the other to reduce them. I hid the bottles in my bag while I submitted to hours of special bronzing makeup to darken my complexion. Just before I went on set, I used the drops.
By the time I hit my mark, I was blind. Everything swam in a haze as I stumbled through my scene like a drunkard, until von Sternberg, furious at my inability to light a cigarette, strode over to me and hissed, “What the hell is wrong? The cigarette is right there—in your mouth.”
I took one dazed look at him and started crying. He pulled me aside, out of earshot of the technicians. “What is it?” he demanded. “You’re spoiling your makeup. Stop crying.”
“I . . . I can’t,” I whispered, my eyes stinging from the drops. Collapsed on a crate in my ruffled flamenco garb, I buried my face in my hands and wept like a child. It all came erupting to the surface, the disappointment of fame and the terror of the future without him. I knew then, as I’d never known before, that I must love him more than any other man. Not carnally, not to play with in bed or flaunt on my arm; not like Rudi, who was my rock. But as the only person I’d ever trusted in this realm of make-believe.
He stood over me. When I finally spent myself, sniffling and wiping my nose with my sleeve, he said, “Marlene,” and I looked up. He was still a blur. “What did you do?”
“I . . . I wanted black eyes. I used drops. With belladonna.”
“If you wanted black eyes, why didn’t you tell me? I can adjust the lighting, use postproduction touch-up.” He sounded exasperated. “Have you lost your mind?”
I nodded, knowing my makeup was streaked and he’d have to delay the shoot. “See? You know everything. How—” My voice snagged in my throat. I, who rarely cried, found myself fighting back another onslaught of tears. “How will I survive without you?”
He crouched before me. “You will survive because you are the reason I can do this.” There was no gentleness in his tone. He spoke as if he struggled against contempt; but I sat quiet, recognizing he was about to admit something he’d never say again. “I am the camera. The lenses. There isn’t a thing I do that can’t be done by another. Without you, there is nothing.”
“That’s not true—” I started to protest.
He cut me off. “It is.” He came to his feet. “Now, go back to your dressing room and fix this mess. I’ll call for an early lunch break, but afterward, we shoot this entire scene even if you have to use a guide dog.”
I rose carefully. The crying had helped. At least I could see my way off the set.
“Belladonna,” he muttered. “She poisons herself for me. If that’s not love, what is?”
After that day, he became a monster, roaring like a lion—“Stop waving that fucking fan as if you have a fever! She’s seducing him, not cooling off the olives. Again”—forcing me to bite back my own rage as he exact
ed take after punishing take. When the final scene was done, he flung aside his megaphone and thundered from the set, leaving me trembling, my Spanish comb, affixed with wires to my coiffure, bleeding into my scalp.
The studio executives mopped their foreheads at the preview. Lubitsch had not interfered, save to remind us of the odious Hays Office codes, which required that Concha not be seen accepting money for her favors, but perspiration dotted his upper lip. When The Devil Is a Woman opened in May 1935, his fears were justified. The critics hated it, warning audiences away, and the Spanish government, about to plunge into a savage civil war, warned that if Paramount did not pull the picture and destroy every print, they’d ban future movie exhibitions by the studio in Spain.
The executives complied. Von Sternberg called me to deliver the news. I was outraged, shouting that he’d again let us careen into chaos.
He sighed. “If we had to fail,” he said, “at least we did it magnificently. I kept an original print. I’ll send it to you, in memory of our debacle.”
He departed for New York the next day without another word.
That night, I shut myself in my bedroom and mourned like a widow.
I had worshipped and shunned him, embraced him and despaired over his tyranny. He had made me a star, lavishing upon me everything that haunted and excited him. He’d woven majesty in our name. Dietrich is me, he had said, and I am Dietrich.
My monster and creator, my angel and demon.
After six years of triumphs and defeats, he had left me alone.
SCENE SIX
THE HIGHEST PAID ACTRESS
1935–1940
“CAN YOU IMAGINE ANYONE CASTING A SPELL OVER ME?”
I
With Paramount’s contract renewal for two more pictures at $250,000 annually, I left my North Roxbury house for a palatial estate in Bel Air, west of Beverly Hills. Mercedes asked why I didn’t purchase a house, seeing that I had no intention of returning to Germany while it was under Nazi sway. I replied that I enjoyed California, especially the climate, but I didn’t consider America my home. “I’m an expatriate. We cannot grow roots in foreign soil.”
“Especially when you pay for the roots of others,” she said. “I know how much you give to every refugee who crosses your threshold.”
By now, those refugees were legion, the finest talent in Germany, fleeing Hitler and his brutal reprisals. Mercedes’s salon had proliferated; and the stories I heard there of persecution, of the Nuremberg laws depriving Jews of citizenship, and the Night of the Long Knives, during which Hitler had purged all opposition in his own party, made me dig my nails into my palms.
The land of my birth, of my first success, had become a place of unrelenting terror.
Supporting my fellow countrymen who came to Hollywood, with money, referrals to studios, and even a place to sleep, wasn’t the right thing to do, it was the only thing I could do. I kept silent, conscious now of how dangerous my speaking out could be. I was detested in the fatherland, my pictures anathema, my image defaced, my very origins questioned by Goebbels, who published an article calling me the illegitimate daughter of a Russian. I could only imagine Mutti’s outrage, but whenever I telephoned Uncle Willi, having made arrangements beforehand so she would be there, she invariably replied, “We have done nothing wrong. We joined the party as Hitler decreed. Why would they bother us?”
But they could. I feared they might, and Rudi assured me he’d not been denied permission from traveling to Germany and he would go visit my family to determine if Mutti spoke the truth. He went, reporting back that everything was as she claimed, although, he said, “You don’t want to see it. The Berlin we knew is gone.”
Meanwhile, I reunited with Gary for my next picture, Desire—an apt title, for as soon as we began shooting, we renewed our affair. He’d left Lupe or she’d left him—who could tell with them?—and was divorcing his wife. Now in his midthirties and a coveted leading man, he’d grown into his promise, more handsome than ever, and as skilled between the sheets.
Mercedes was miffed. She did not appreciate me sleeping with men, and while she and I remained occasional lovers, she returned full-time to Garbo. She even had a password she used over the phone with me—“Occupée”—whenever Garbo was in residence. I was tempted to drive to Santa Monica with Gary and park nearby, to catch a glimpse of my elusive rival, who, incredibly, I’d not yet seen in person.
“She’s not all she’s made out to be,” Gary said. “You’re much prettier, and,” he added, working his way down to my navel, “tastier.”
I cuffed him. “You never slept with her. She likes women. I have it on good authority.”
“They say that about you.” He licked me, making me shudder. “And look at you now.”
DESIRE WAS A HIT, easing my heartache over the loss of von Sternberg. As the jewel thief Madeleine, I had all the sumptuous mink and allure the public expected, and the picture benefitted from my ripe banter with Gary’s good-natured American, whom Madeleine embroils in her heist. It had a happy ending, too, like my romps with Gary, pleasing even the New York Times, which declared, “Freed from von Sternberg’s bondage, Miss Dietrich recaptures her fresh spirit.”
Lubitsch quickly assigned my next project, casting me as a chambermaid who falls for an army officer, played by the gallant French import Charles Boyer. The picture was supposed to do away with my glamorous image in favor of a more realistic approach, but the script wasn’t ready by the third week of shooting. When word came that the corporate office, upset over the delay and Paramount’s consistent loss of profit, had fired Lubitsch, I walked off the set in a fury.
I called Hemingway. We kept up regular contact, exchanging letters and phone calls, he sharing his adventures on safari or labors on his new novel, and me regaling him with Hollywood gossip and my adventures on and off the set.
“They got rid of him like they did von Sternberg. They hate us because we’re German. Lubitsch supported me; he tried to give me choices for my career. Now, I have an unfinished picture and no idea what they plan to do with me next.”
Papa chuckled. “Take a breath, Kraut. What did I tell you? Never do what you don’t want to do. You don’t like how your career is going? Don’t bitch about it. Do something.”
Tu etwas. My childhood motto.
And so I did. I hired a well-known Hollywood agent, Eddie Feldman, and had him haggle with Paramount. I’d fulfilled my contract; I couldn’t be held accountable for script delays. Chastened, the studio shelved my unfinished picture, and while they sought a new West Coast chief, loaned me out for one picture to David O. Selznick International.
I was going back to the desert with my costar, Boyer.
WE SHOT THE GARDEN OF ALLAH in the Mohave near Yuba City. The scorpions that slinked into our trailers to nest in our shoes, the freezing nights and infernal sun by day, made the shoot torturous. In my swanky monochrome wardrobe draped like Grecian shrouds, I shed ten pounds and sweated out five more, and even once, to the cast’s dismay, swooned from heatstroke.
Boyer was an affable companion, despite the temperature soaring past 135 degrees, but our roles were unsympathetic and the studio ploy to re-create the ambience of Morocco was incinerated by my anxiety over how Technicolor would render me.
I was thirty-four. In the mirror at night, I saw what makeup, lighting, and gauze filters concealed. I’d maintained my complexion by avoiding the sun, my closet full of flouncy hats and Savile Row umbrellas that I carried as other women did handbags. But I wasn’t keen on the surgical remedies to which other aging stars resorted, relying on my healthy diet and an herbal moisturizer that Travis Banton—arbiter of all things beautiful—recommended.
Still, faint lines were materializing at my eyes and mouth—“laugh lines,” Mercedes called them, “which prove you are human”—though to me, they were reminders of how the clock ticked much faster in Hollywood. This picture was my first in Technicolor, and the vivid three-process palette exaggerated everything. Before I began shoo
ting each day, I had a list of things to consult, from the position of the lights to the most beneficial camera angles for my face, enraging my director.
One afternoon as we prepared for a scene, the wind machines were gusting so hard that I felt sand grit lacerating my skin and Boyer’s toupee came unglued, flapping over his forehead. I had to press my hands on my head to stop my hairstyle from going the way of my costar’s as I called out angrily, “Turn off those machines. How can we see through all the dust?”
From his chair, the director snapped, “Even palm trees sway in the breeze. Surely a little reality will not spoil your timeless beauty.”
I hated the script and the heat, but I hated him more. And the picture did not do well at the box office, prompting me to reject another offer from Selznick—whom I didn’t like anyway—to accept a personal one from Alexander Korda in England, with whom I’d made A Modern Du Barry a decade before in Berlin. I was now eager to escape Hollywood and reinvent myself abroad.
Paramount vacillated until Eddie threatened them with my permanent departure. Korda was offering me $450,000 to play a Russian countess in his Knight Without Armor. To avoid defaulting on my contract, Paramount must agree and also pay the amount still owed to me for the aborted picture they’d shelved. Caught between two swords, the studio relented.
I pocketed a million dollars.
With Heidede and my new assistant, Betsy, I boarded the Normandie with the satisfaction of being proclaimed in the Hollywood Reporter as “the highest paid actress in the world.”
Only I had begun to doubt if I still warranted being called an actress at all.
II
They’re here again,” said Betsy, coming into my dressing room at the studio outside London. “They’ve telephoned every day this week. Maybe you should see them?”
Marlene: A Novel Page 29
