The courtesan Marguerite violates her rules of behavior regarding men and falls in love with the sensitive Armand (Robert Taylor), from Camille.
From The Blue Angel Lola (Dietrich) pampers her new protector (Emil Jannings), at least for now.
Marlene Dietrich
—The Femme Fatale as “Domme”
As noted, Garbo’s rival in the 1930s for the role of femme fatale supreme was Marlene Dietrich. The seven films Marlene Dietrich and her director Josef von Sternberg made from 1930 to 1935 (among them are The Blue Angel, Morocco, Shanghai Express, and The Devil Is a Woman) not only solidified the iconic status of Dietrich but also reflected the couple’s own complex relationship.
The Blue Angel, based on Heinrich Mann’s 1905 novel, tells the story of the overbearing Professor Rath (Emil Jannings) and his descent from feared teacher into the lowest circle of degradation. He first meets his nemesis Lola Lola (Dietrich) while chasing down some miscreant students to a club called The Blue Angel. The hapless professor is immediately taken with Lola’s directness and lack of pretension. While everyone else in the town treats him with a deference bordering on obeisance (at least to his face), Lola puts him in his place almost immediately, reprimanding him for not taking off his hat in her presence. In her dressing room, after teasingly tossing him her panties that she has removed while changing for her next act, she soon sets him to menial tasks like holding her makeup box and scrambling under the table when he drops her cigarettes.
Dietrich displays her iconic legs in a cabaret scene from The Blue Angel in which she croons her signature song “Falling in Love Again.”
The professor, so used to controlling and browbeating his students in the classroom, now relinquishes control to this young woman. For her part, what most impresses Lola about this somewhat pompous man is not his reputation but his devotion to her. He defends her honor when she is harassed by a suitor. And, most significantly, he is willing to give up his teaching position to be with her and eventually marry her.
Although the professor cannot clearly live without his object of desire, he also finds his new life painfully humiliating. On the road he degenerates to the point of becoming part of her act, dressed as a clown, having eggs pelted at him, and crowing like a rooster (all playing upon the cuckold theme of the movie). Although he enjoys serving her, putting on her stockings and helping her prepare for shows, he finds it harder and harder to denigrate himself onstage and, more importantly, to ignore his young wife’s flings with young studs, including the strongman Mazeppa. This jealousy is what finally leads to his mental breakdown.
With Morocco (1930), Dietrich and von Sternberg establish the romantic triad that would color many of their other films: the older, more established man vying with a young, passionate man for Dietrich’s favors. In Morocco, Dietrich again plays a performer, Amy Jolly, this time in North Africa, who (it is implied) has used men ruthlessly before they could do the same to her. We first see her onstage dressed in a tuxedo, flirting with and then kissing a young woman while humiliating the woman’s date (the elements of bisexuality in Dietrich’s films reflect her own personal life). Her benefactor is the wealthy Monsieur La Bessiere (Adolphe Menjou) who resembles, as do most of the debonair older men in the Dietrich-von Sternberg collaborations, von Sternberg himself (another example of art imitating life or vice-versa).
The Professor finds his true place, on his knees before “The Blue Angel.”
Part of Dietrich’s appeal was her androgynous image—here foregrounded in the cabaret scene from Morocco.
La Bessiere symbolizes old-world culture and poise. Even though he clearly wants Amy Jolly for himself, he is the one who escorts her to the edge of the desert so she can follow, barefooted (symbolizing the depth of her passion), her wounded legionnaire into the unknown. Tom Brown (Gary Cooper) is, of course, Amy Jolly’s soul mate. They are both cynical and detached in their view of love. Their courtship is heated and playful but guarded. And although Brown plays the macho soldier (he roughly grabs her in their first scene), it is only when he shows his more feminine and sensitive side—particularly symbolized by the placement of a flower behind his ear, his graceful manipulation of her fan before lovemaking, and his abrupt disappearance so she can marry the rich La Bessiere—that Amy truly falls for him and violates her code of behavior when dealing with men.
The Devil Is a Woman (1935) is the last film in the Dietrich-von Sternberg oeuvre. The story is largely a reworking of The Blue Angel, even though it is based on the infamous decadent novel The Woman and the Puppet by Pierre Louys. During a festival in Spain, an aging roué and military hero, Don Pasqual (Lionel Atwill), tells of his relationship with the tempestuous and whimsical Concha (Dietrich), “the toast of Spain.” Like Professor Rath, Don Pasqual pursues and attempts to control the free-spirited cigarette girl/performer (the allusion to Carmen is significant here).
Concha, however, will not be pinned down. After repeated attempts to “buy” her, coerce her, and even marry her, he accepts his role as her “attendant” as she performs onstage and carries on with other lovers. In one scene, she even has Don Pasqual light a cigarette for her bullfighter and then takes money from him so they can go out. However, when he finds them in flagrante delicto in her apartment, he finally loses his temper. Concha’s response is not guilt or remorse but defiance: “What do you mean by breaking in like an assassin? Are you my father? No. Are you my husband? No. Are you my lover? No.”
Dietrich as entertainer Amy Jolly in Morocco pouts after reading the message from her young lover as her older lover La Bessiere (Adolphe Menjou) looks on with a self-satisfied smile.
Dietrich projects the disdain that audiences expected of this femme fatale, from Morocco.
Shanghai Lily (Dietrich) defends her ex-lover against the threat posed by General Chang in Shanghai Express. (Warner Oland).
After her personal and professional separation from von Sternberg, Dietrich continued to play the femme fatale in several notable films. David O. Selznick’s The Garden of Allah (1936) was designed to be a femme fatale vehicle par excellence. It had all the elements necessary: the seductive Dietrich garbed in exotic costumes set against the North African desert; a Trappist monk, seduced by her beauty and passion, who sacrifices his salvation to worship at her altar; gorgeous Technicolor photography; and impressive set design that heighten the exoticism of the locations. The film, however, became a prime example of how the Production Code Office, after 1934, neutered what they considered offensive films. Selznick bravely fought Code czar Joseph Breen, who demanded extensive cuts and rewrites of scenes but ultimately he capitulated. The film was cut down to a brief seventy-nine minutes; the result is a movie in which the passion between the sacrilegious lovers is only implied rather than shown as it had been in films like Morocco.
From Shanghai Express, on the train, veiled and mysterious, the courtesan Shanghai Lily: “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.”
Worshipped by both men and women, Dietrich maintained her charisma and glamour through most of her life, from Morocco.
Mae West
—The Vamp as Parody
Film historians often credit Mae West with singlehandedly bringing about the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1934. Although this is of course an exaggeration, it is true that production code head Joseph Breen made West his special target, and succeeded by 1935 in destroying the career of one of the 1930s most popular stars, the woman who had helped save Paramount from bankruptcy.
Mae West grew up in the New York theater, learning from not only the more legitimate array of musicals and variety shows but also from the seedier end—burlesque, vaudeville, and drag shows from which she learned some of her trademark mannerisms. In fact, all of her life she was an adamant defender of gay rights and even wrote a gay-oriented play in 1927 called The Drag. West was always a rebel and fiercely independent. In 1927, she even served ten days in jail for public obscenity because she refused to close down
the production of her play Sex.
In 1928 her play Diamond Lil was such a huge Broadway success that, even with her controversial background, agents from Paramount approached West with a movie deal. In 1932, she made her film debut in a George Raft vehicle called Night After Night. In it she played her first film vamp, Maudie Triplett. Like all of her film characters to follow and those before in her stage career, West plays a femme fatale who does not take herself too seriously. In some ways, she is a send-up of dark and somber vamps like Bara, Garbo, and Naldi. When she enters the club early in the film, surrounded by men (another West trademark), the hatcheck girl admires her jewels: “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds.” West answers in her New Yorkese–inflected, tongue-in-cheek delivery: “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.”
Mae West always enjoyed herself in her extravagant performances as evidenced in this shot from Night After Night, her first film role.
Mae West was meticulous about stylizing her image, which did not vary from film to film, here from She Done Him Wrong.
Mae West relished her omnivorous sexuality, healthy body, and clever mind (she was a vegetarian and occultist all her life). Here in I’m No Angel she eyes a potential acolyte, a young Cary Grant as Jack Clayton.
In her next film (based on her play Diamond Lil), She Done Him Wrong (1933), West was both star and co-writer (she usually wrote most of her own dialogue even in films where she was not credited as a writer). Consequently, she packed the film, much as she did her plays, with sexual innuendo delivered by means of clever one-liners like “Hello there, warm, dark, and handsome” and “Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” and by means of the none-too-subtle movements of her voluptuous frame. Her seduction of the upright temperance league Captain Cummings (played by Cary Grant who West helped make a star in this film and her next one) while juggling several other lovers creates enough comedy and sexual tension to ensure the financial success of the film.
West continued her run of financial and critical hits with I’m No Angel (1933). Early in the film, West, a circus performer, executes a sizzling hoochie-coochie dance to the song “They Call Me Sister Honky Tonk.” As in all her films, she juggles multiple lovers but has a real yen for the cutest of them all—in this case Cary Grant again, as the wealthy Jack Clayton who is sent to discourage her from dating his cousin but stays to become her love slave.
Although West struggled to maintain her sexual transgressiveness, Joseph Breen and his associates were too powerful for her. Breen personally examined every page of her scripts and every frame of her films, making copious notes as to changes that were needed in order to receive a seal of approval. Paramount caved into most of his demands and the results were films like Klondike Annie (1936) in which the femme fatale character West played was so muted that it was a travesty of her earlier performances. West’s star faded; and by 1943, she had retired from movies. In 1978, outliving her nemesis Joseph Breen and his repressive Production Code, she made one more vamp film: a very dated and campy concoction based on one of her plays from the 1920s, Sextette. Even at the age of eighty-five, West managed to project that naughty sexuality and promiscuous playfulness which marked her early career and which made her an international icon.
Anna May Wong
—The Asian Mystique
Women of color, it is no surprise to say, did not fare well in Hollywood. They were usually relegated to minor stereotyped roles: servants, menial workers, or extras to give a setting authenticity. In fact when the studios took on a project which centered around people of color they most often cast a White actor. The most relevant example of this relates directly to Anna May Wong, the first Asian vamp of the American cinema. In 1936, when MGM was casting their adaptation of The Good Earth, Pearl Buck’s tale of Chinese peasants and their struggles, they initially considered Wong—who was by then an international star. But they rejected her for a White actress who then went on to win the Academy Award for her performance.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”—Anna May Wong as Lan Ying, unhappy about her lover’s social climbing antics, from Dangerous to Know.
As Princess Ling Moy in Daughter of the Dragon, Anna May Wong again displays her talent for design in this costume for her cabaret scene. Her dance routines were more like performance art than traditional dances.
Wong displays her conflicted feelings about her father and his dark world, from Daughter of the Dragon.
Wong, born in 1905, grew up in the heart of the movie industry, Los Angeles, where her father ran a laundry. At an early age she became fascinated by the movies and convinced her disapproving father to allow her to audition for parts. In most of her early roles, Wong incarnated the Western stereotype of what Sheridan Prasso in her book The Asian Mystique calls the “China Doll”: the submissive, Madame Butterfly beauty. In fact, at the age of seventeen, Wong was cast in a rough adaptation of the Madame Butterfly story itself: The Toll of the Sea. Her character name was, appropriately, Lotus Flower.
Wong was only able to break out of those roles by adapting to yet another Western stereotype—what Prasso refers to as the “Dragon Lady” image—the exotic, devious, and lethal Asian femme fatale. Although Wong naturally chafed at being typed into playing these parts over and over, they at least allowed her to express a range of emotions as well as present Asian women as possessing true independence. Douglas Fairbanks recognized this inherent strength and deep sensuality in Wong when he cast her as the rebellious and manipulative Mongol Slave in his Arabian Nights fantasy The Thief of Bagdad (1924). As slave to the Princess she harbors thoughts of revenge on her captors and so plots with the Mongol invaders to overthrow the kingdom of Bagdad.
In 1928, Wong decided to expand her horizons and move to Europe, where she worked on stage and in the movies. Her experience there turned her into an international star as the Europeans received her warmly. In 1929, German director E.A. Dupont (Variety) collaborated with Wong on a film that would secure her reputation in Europe as well as in the United States: Piccadilly. Wong worked extensively with Dupont on her costumes and dance routines, as she did in many of her films, and the result is a luminously sensual performance that showcases the many talents Wong possessed. In the film she plays a scullery maid—Shosho—who moves from kitchen to center stage by means of her talent as well as her ability to manipulate powerful men. She is discovered by the club owner—Wilmot (Jameson Thomas)—dancing sensuously to the delight of his employees.
Intrigued by her beauty and allure, Wilmot invites her to his office late one night to “dance” for him. We never see what occurs between them, but we can guess by how she treats him throughout the rest of the film. Shosho understands the ways of the patriarchy and so plays a coy game of tease-and-denial like any true femme fatale, not allowing him to get too close to her until he has delivered on his promises. She dresses her surly servant/lover Jim (King Hou Chang) in her costumes, denying Wilmot the pleasure of seeing her in them until he has agreed to let her use wardrobe of her own design. She teases him by going out to pubs with him dressed in sensual furs and satins, but refuses him entry into her new apartments. She touches his mouth with her slender fingers and sharpened nails, and then presses them to her own full lips, denying once again his attempt to kiss her. Only when he has featured her at his club and signed her to a long-term contract, to the chagrin of his former lover and star Mabel (Gilda Gray), does she allow him beyond the shimmering veil she places over her face to incite his lust.
Shosho demonstrates her genuine pleasure at controlling not only Wilmot but her servant/lover Jim simultaneously in numerous scenes: once when she forces Jim to dress in her costume and then forces him to appear before Wilmot; and in another instance when she takes Wilmot into her apartment and then slowly turns her back to the uncomprehending Jim, who is waiting on the doorstep, and slowly pushes him out with the force of the door—as if ridding herself of an annoying salesman.
Princess Ling Moy (Wong) forcefully upbraids
her secret agent lover (Sessu Hayakawa). who may or may not reveal her secret identity, from Daughter of the Dragon.
Christian morality of course rears its head in the final scenes of the movie as Mabel confronts Shosho with a gun and kills her—or so she assumes. At the trial, we discover that Mabel actually fainted, and it was the jealous Jim who murdered his mistress. In retribution, Jim kills himself and escapes to the mortuary to be near his goddess.
In 1931 Paramount offered Wong a lucrative contract and so she returned to the U.S. and starred in an adaptation of a novel, Daughter of the Dragon, in the Sax Rohmer series centering on the incarnation of evil yellow peril: Fu Manchu (played by the very non-Asian Warner Oland). Paramount spent thousands of dollars on Wong’s costumes and allowed her input in their design. Consequently, when we first see Wong as Fu Manchu’s long-lost daughter Princess Ling Moy, she is dressed in a gown and headdress which draws its inspiration as much from traditional Chinese opera as art deco. Her performance on stage is as in Piccadilly stunning and mesmerizing.
From Daughter of the Dragon, Anna May Wong’s physical stature and dancer’s body made her a hit in theaters and nightclubs, as well as in movies. Note the headdress.
Femme Fatale: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies Page 5
