Marlene Dietrich is remembered in various ways. World War II buffs know her for singing the international hit of those years, “Lili Marlene,” that touched a chord among lonely soldiers the world over. TCM fans who have seen Dietrich scattered across her Hollywood career will recall a world-weary sophisticate in mostly second-rate movies but with a few startlingly memorable roles, especially her five minutes in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil and her small but pivotal part in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution. Academics in cultural studies have tried to unpack her daring, cross-gender image in an era when women seldom wore the pants. And for anyone who lived only in the last decades of her life, Dietrich was famous for being famous. She pretty much played out her end game from Garbo-like seclusion.
Steve Bach investigated all that and more in his 1992 biography Marlene Dietrich Life and Legend. The University of Minnesota Press' new paperback edition is an excuse to consider her from the vantage of the 21st century and to read a biography that, for once, is a joy to read rather than a tedious chronicle with authorial asides. Bach's unusual CV includes teaching American literature before becoming head of production at United Artists. He brought an intimate knowledge of show business to eloquent writing and a scholar's grasp of research. Life and Legend is hard to top.
Bach never tries to confine his enigmatic subject to any one formula for interpretation, but several chapters of her early life stand out. A schoolgirl during World War I, when men were called to the front from their normal occupations, Dietrich realized that women could fill the shoes normally worn by men. She rose to the fore in postwar Cabaret-era Berlin, a city of cynicism where everything was licensed. By the time she won her first and most significant role, as the chanteuse Lola Lola in Josef von Sternberg's made-in-Berlin classic, The Blue Angel (1930), Dietrich had achieved a rare presence on screen. The less she did, the more expressive she became. Dietrich was a low burning flame and men were moths in her presence.
Bach's analysis is cogent: “There was challenge and aspiration to Lola Lola that would never be there again, the stretch she had to make as an actress to fit a role. The roles would now have to fit her, and something got left behind in the Blue Angel cabaret.” In other words, her die was cast as an elegantly weary, unsentimental study in apathy. She played the role well, even if she was seldom given a part large enough to challenge her.
