Marlene: A Novel

by C. W. Gortner

  Randolph took my hand, rubbing it as if I were an overwrought child. “But we think you’re divine. I’ll work with you on any picture. Just say the word.”

  They were so sweet to me, and so devoted to each other, I couldn’t help but fear for them. If the studio had exiled me after a bad run, what might it do to them should the press discover that two of Hollywood’s eligible bachelors did more than share a roof? Women who lived together were seen as a sorority, inoffensive and amusing, if they were discreet. But men doing the same—I had a feeling Cary and Randolph were in for a nasty upset of their own.

  Nevertheless, I was adrift, without any prospects after eight years as a star. For Christmas 1938, to celebrate the holidays and my thirty-seventh birthday, I invited all my friends over for baked ham. Afterward, we sang carols and swam naked in the pool, with Gary and me diving into the deep end, in full view of the other hotel guests, gawking at us from their balconies.

  After the festivities, I knew I couldn’t go on this way, spending money I did not have. I called Eddie and gave my permission for him to submit me for hire. I couldn’t bear to be idle another second. Without a place to go and work every day, I felt like a pariah.

  “Sure thing,” he said. “But it’ll take some time. I have to negotiate terms and locate projects not yet assigned to contracted stars. I can do it, but can you manage until then?”

  I looked about my bungalow, crammed with objects I couldn’t bear to part with, my German clocks and paintings, my books and Dresden china. It didn’t feel like home. My designation as box-office poison had accomplished the impossible: Dietrich the invincible, the Hollywood goddess of desire, had become an unemployed woman in a rented room.

  “I think I’ll go back to Europe,” I told him. “I’ll telephone you from there.”

  III

  I returned to Paris in early 1939.

  Worry over the rumors of impending war was my stated excuse; it was time to bring Heidede back with me. To pave the way before my departure, I applied for U.S. citizenship, claiming my family as dependents. The Nazi journal Der Stürmer promptly blasted me for betraying the Third Reich once again, my years of “living among Hollywood Jews” having rendered me “entirely un-German.” I laughed off the accusation, faced with a more pressing threat: studio disinterest. Despite Eddie’s offers to lower my salary, no one wanted to hire me.

  Nevertheless, Paris weaved anew her spell. Under torrential downpours, I went out to dinner and the theater with the novelist Erich Maria Remarque, whose 1929 book, All Quiet on the Western Front, and its film adaptation had been massive successes, but were now banned by the Nazis, as was Remarque himself. I’d met him onboard during my crossing and was drawn by his fatalistic view of Germany’s fiery course. Dour and in poor health, struggling to complete a new novel, he reminded me that as fellow Germans, we were as much scattered by Hitler as imprisoned by him, landless children forced to wander.

  Remarque and I became lovers, though in truth he wasn’t very amorous. He had suffered injuries during the Great War that he claimed had made him impotent. He wasn’t, not entirely, but he tended to fatalism and needed some coaxing, both in and out of bed. It suited me to be seen about town with him, the German-born movie star with the celebrated exiled German novelist. I figured the press couldn’t hurt, and I had nothing better to do with my time.

  One evening after I’d given him feedback on his work, I arrived back in my suite at the Ritz, where I was ringing up a tab I could not pay, to find Rudi waiting for me. As I dripped rain on the carpet, he said, “Headlines again. You and Remarque, parading all over Paris. Why? Why did you come here?”

  “I came,” I said, pulling off my raincoat, “because I want to bring Heidede to America. And my parade, as you call it, is for publicity. I lost my contract. Maybe if I show I’m still newsworthy, someone will hire me. Besides,” I went on, suppressing a twinge of guilt at my self-justification, “I thought we were past all this. We’re still married. What more do you want?”

  “Stop it. Stop lying to me. You only came here because at this particular moment, you have nowhere else to go.”

  He spoke without malice but his words stung. Lighting a cigarette, I paced to the window, smoking furiously as I gazed upon the rain-swept Place Vendôme. “Must you think so little of me?” I said.

  “I don’t. But I can expect more. You’ve cooked and cleaned for others. Everyone knows it: the movie goddess serving goulash to her lovers. Why not do it for me now? You’ve nothing left to prove. If Hollywood doesn’t want you, I do. Stay and live with me, as married people should.”

  I snorted. “What about Tami? Have you asked her what she thinks about my moving in?”

  “You are my wife. She has always understood that.”

  I couldn’t look at him. How could I stare him in the face and admit what he clearly had not realized by now? I did care for him, more than he knew, but I found him tiresome, predictable; he was a good man who did his best and he must indeed love me to tolerate as much as he did, yet I couldn’t imagine—indeed, had never been able to imagine—this life of compromise and bratwurst he cleaved to, this delusion that our marriage meant more than it did.

  “You know I’m not made for exclusive engagements.”

  He sighed. It wasn’t a sound of resignation. Rather, it was like the scrape of a dull scalpel across my back. When I finally turned around, he said, “Then why don’t you divorce me? Why insist on this charade? I love you, Marlene. I always will. But you don’t love or need me.”

  “I . . .” Without warning, I felt as though the floor had cracked open under my feet. “I do love you. And I need you, in my own way. Just not as you want.”

  I decided not to remind him that when we first met, I had wanted to need him. I’d wanted the security and shelter he had promised me. Only we chose another path; we put my career first. I found it demeaning that he’d reproach me now, when I was at my lowest point.

  He shook his head. For an instant, I saw him as he’d been that evening at Das Silhouette, his eyes locked on mine as if I were all he could see, his hair slicked from his brow except for one careless lock. “You don’t want a divorce because I am—how do the Americans put it?” A sour smile coiled his mouth. “Your golden parachute, in case all else fails.”

  I froze, my cigarette singeing my fingers. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  His smile faded. “It is. But more than that, it’s a sad thing to say. The very saddest any person can say to another. Because I may not be here in the end. I may leave you, instead.”

  “You won’t.” My retort was impetuous. “Who will pay the bills? You certainly can’t; your job here barely feeds you. And Heidede—if you divorce me, you divorce her. I am her mother. I’ll not stand for it. I will hire a hundred lawyers if need be to gain sole custody.”

  I meant to be cruel. To wound. To maim. In that terrible moment, he was everyone and everything that had forsaken me. He was von Sternberg and the studio, my mother and the past. He represented everything I had fought so tenaciously to overcome.

  “No.” His shoulders sagged. “You’re right. I won’t leave. But not,” he added, as I raised my chin, “because I fear losing our daughter. I won’t leave because I understand. Growing old alone is a punishment I’d never wish on anyone—especially you.”

  He turned and walked out, leaving me with ash filtering through my fingers.

  The irony of it, that the one man I’d most neglected, not touched in years, could so unnervingly give voice to my deepest fear, one I’d not even recognized I harbored.

  Solitude. Loneliness. An unacknowledged finale.

  Where had it started? When had I started to believe that the only life worth living was one that was exalted, photographed and recorded? I could search for an answer, scavenge through memories of that little girl who lost her father too soon, the quick-witted student who hated school but was infatuated with her teacher, the ardent violinist without enough talent and the struggling cabare
t performer. I had no idea. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I couldn’t reconcile the polished replica projected ten times her size on the screen with the stranger I’d become.

  Who was I? What more did I want?

  Dropping my cigarette, I squashed it into the carpet with my heel, grinding it into a mess of scorched tobacco, cinders, and nicotine stains.

  I might never know, but I knew this much: I wasn’t finished yet. Dead was dead, and there was nothing to do about it. While I was still alive, I would find some way to prevail.

  MY PARISIAN HEADLINES REACHED HOLLYWOOD. Eddie telephoned me; there was interest from Universal, which had a Western comedy slated for the studio’s male star James Stewart. The producer thought the supporting female role might be right for me. I asked to see the script, even as Eddie warned that it wasn’t my usual fare and the pay was less than a sixth of my usual fee. “But it’s a good project,” he said, “and I think I can get them to offer a contract, if you agree.”

  “Then forget the usual,” I replied. “Send it.”

  I loved the script. As Frenchy in Destry Rides Again, I would play a raucous saloon dame who falls for Stewart’s prim, law-abiding hero. It was an all-American story, which might restore my career, show off my singing and bawdy humor. It certainly wasn’t my usual fare; it parodied everything I’d cultivated—a vulgar woman down on her luck, entertaining riffraff in a dusty outpost. But the pay was indeed abysmal, so I cabled Eddie to negotiate a better salary and took advantage of the time before shooting was scheduled to embark on a holiday to southern France. I wanted to make amends to Rudi; I couldn’t bear us quarreling, and he agreed, for, like me, he disliked it, too. Tamara also needed a respite, her moods having become more erratic. We went to pick up Heidede from her Swiss school; she was slimmer and more content than I’d seen her in years. Then, together with Remarque, who unlike Douglas before him, did not care if I was married, I traveled with my lover and my family and our mountain of luggage to a cliff-side villa in Antibes, which I rented with my customary disregard for the expense. I also sent word to Mutti to join us and, if she could, to bring Liesel with her. My mother returned word by telegram that she would “see,” implying our last visit together remained a bone of contention.

  That summer changed me. The British playwright Noël Coward was vacationing nearby and invited me to come see him; his wit and flamboyant flair, coupled with his astonishing talent, had me in awe. He treated us to cocktails at the Hôtel Cap du Roc. I ended up at the piano with him, his nimble fingers stroking the keys as I crooned his music in my smoke-infused voice, including my favorite song of his, “I’ll See You Again.”

  “Darling, I had no idea you knew my tunes so well,” he said, his beautifully shaped, expressive eyes and jutting ears giving him an elvish air.

  I adored him. I knew he must be homosexual, though, like my uncle Willi, unwilling to openly acknowledge it; but he made it clear enough when he leaned to me and whispered, “There is someone here you must meet. A stunning Frenchman and, I believe, an admirer of yours—the actor Jean Gabin.”

  Rudi, Tami, and Heidede had gone to bed, tired from sun and frolic, while Remarque had disappeared, no doubt on one of his solitary walks to converse with the shadows in his mind.

  “Gabin?” I breathed. I knew the name. His gangster picture Pépé Le Moko had been a smash hit in France and been remade in America as Algiers, with none other than my friend Charles Boyer. Gabin’s rugged masculinity, unkempt thatch of dark blond hair, and sharp narrow blue eyes had attracted Hollywood notice, but he’d refused all offers and remained in France, collaborating with such distinguished French directors as Jean Renoir, son of the painter.

  “I see you admire him, too.” Coward pouted. “But you’re so . . . overbooked,” he said, alluding in his cunning way to Remarque. “However will you manage it?”

  “I’ll manage,” I assured him, and with a gleeful clap of his hands, he arranged our introduction at his home, where, after drinks and a Mediterranean repast, he made himself scarce.

  Gabin may have admired me, but he did not show it at first. With a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his thin-lipped mouth—he told me tobacco should only be hand-rolled and set out to teach me how, resulting in a very misshapen lump—and his strong nose and that barrel chest under his striped sailor shirt, he resembled a working-class Parisian as he eyed me, seated with my legs crossed by the pool, before he said in his gravelly voice, “You should make pictures here. You speak excellent French, and the Americans—such expensive merde they churn out. You are not the same woman as you look on-screen.”

  I returned his stare. He reminded me of von Sternberg, telling me how terrible I was in my Berlin pictures, and how he could make me a star; but other than that, they were nothing alike. My director had been like a perverse housecat, eccentric and vicious with his claw swipes. Gabin was a lion, feral and blunt.

  “Better? Or worse?” I asked him, peering at him from under my eyelashes.

  He growled, “Don’t play the coquette with me. What do you think?”

  I took it as a compliment. “I think you’re right. I’m not the woman that Hollywood pretends I am. I make bad pictures there for the money.”

  “Ah.” He grunted. “Money. The scourge of the world.”

  He did not touch me until I was preparing to leave, already late to get back to my villa and my family. Mutti had sent word that she and Liesel would arrive the following week; I had to prepare their rooms and move Remarque into a hotel. He was drinking too much, obsessing over his languishing novel, and I’d rather not endure my mother’s disapproval at finding my lover, my child, my husband, and his mistress all under the same roof.

  Then, at the door, as Noël chuckled from wherever he was lurking, Gabin seized my waist in his hands, but did not yank me to him as I’d expected and hoped.

  “Vous êtes grande, Marlene,” he said, rolling the r in my name like a pebble.

  “So are you,” I replied. I meant it: He was grand, in every way a man could be, and so unmistakably French I could imagine the taste of the grime and allure of Paris on his tanned skin. “Shall we see each other again?”

  He put his mouth closer to mine and murmured, “I think we must.”

  And so we did. I finagled afternoon escapes in the sweltering heat to take long drives along the coast, picnicking on liver pâté and smoked salmon sandwiches I made for us. He told me about growing up in a village north of Paris, the son of cabaret entertainers whose drunk of a father beat him. He attended a lycée but left his studies early to work as a laborer, until at nineteen, he entered show business with a bit part at the Folies-Bergère.

  “I kept performing before I gave up and went into the military,” he said. “I hated the Folies. But after my military service, I needed money and went back, taking whatever I could get in music halls and operettas, imitating Chevalier—though unlike you”—he grinned—“I have no musical talent. I eventually found work in pictures.” He shrugged. “I started getting noticed. Then came Maria Chapdelaine, La Grande Illusion, and Pépé Le Moko. And voilà! Monsieur nobody was suddenly somebody. Ridiculous, yes?”

  It echoed my rise in Berlin; in fact, we were the same age. But he spoke of filmmaking as if it were beneath him—“Not really work, is it?”—and he was deeply troubled by the growing political unrest. “You tell your mother and sister,” he said, stabbing his finger at me, “to get out of Germany now. Hitler is a monster.”

  “You don’t know my mother,” I sighed, and he never did. He returned to Paris a few days before my family’s arrival, without sleeping with me, as much as I tried. “You are married. I consider it a sacred vow,” he said, with a shrug. “If you weren’t . . .” Even though I assured him I did not think the same about marriage, at least not in that way, he did not change his mind.

  After he left, I found myself thinking about him. He was rough-edged, unsure about being an actor, but I knew that feeling well; and he’d advised me to do the Western role when
I described it to him. “Risk, Grande,” he said, using his nickname for me. “Why not? The world could explode tomorrow.”

  The world at large did not explode, not yet, but mine did. Mutti arrived with Liesel, and I found my sister subdued, scarcely uttering a word, though I was happy to see her. Her husband, Georg Wills, on the other hand, was voluble, very pleased with himself, stout and rubicund, proclaiming he’d taken a job overseeing a chain of government-approved cinemas, as the Nazis had closed the Theater des Westens along with every other locale that reeked of decadence.

  I was outraged when my sister’s husband also conveyed another invitation from Goebbels. “He believes you were mistaken before,” he said. “You’ll be very welcome.”

  We sat at the dinner table. Delighted to see her aunt Liesel and Oma again, Heidede chattered away with them in German. As Rudi looked at me in warning and Tami kneaded her napkin, Mutti pretended to be deaf as I informed Georg tersely, “He is the one who is mistaken. I told his last envoy in London that I am not interested.”

  “That was then,” said Georg. “You don’t have a studio contract now.”

  “I have an offer.” My voice rang out, despite my attempt to control it. I was suddenly trembling. “Even if I didn’t, I’d rather wash floors in America than do anything for the Nazis.”

  The table went silent. Then Liesel ventured, “Lena, really. Georg is only doing what—”

  “What Goebbels told him to,” I said, cutting her off with an irate look. “No. And you obviously cannot stay there much longer, if they’re asking you to bring me these invitations. It’s not safe. I can arrange visas, I’m sure I can, for you and—”

  “That is enough.” Mutti’s voice sliced through the tension. “Georg, please respect my daughter’s decision,” she said, glancing pointedly at him. “She does not want to return to Germany. That is her right.” Before I could express my gratitude for her unexpected support, she went on: “But we, too, have the right to stay where we are. I will not hear another word about leaving,” she said, looking directly at me. “We are Germans. We belong in our country.”