An overflowing, enthusiastic audience of devoted Barbara Blum fans, were held in thrall at an ESRA evening when Barbara traced the life story of an icon, Marlene Dietrich.  The riveting lecture was punctuated throughout with recordings of the songs indelibly associated with the star, sung by Dietrich herself. She was the symbol of glamor for an entire generation of moviegoers, spanning the second World War and into the postwar years, and well into the 70s.

Dietrich’s life story is the stuff of legends. The boundary between who  she actually was  and the persona  created about her, is  blurred - her  many legendary affairs with both men and women,  the songs designed to make the most of her sultry, throaty, though limited-range voice, her haunting beauty – all created to provide an aura of seductive  mystery. 

Born in Berlin in 1901, she entered the famed Max Reinhardt acting school at age 20, and began her career in silent films playing small parts until 1930 when she was cast by the great director, Josef von Sternberg, in Germany’s first talking picture, The Blue Angel. Dietrich’s role was that of a cabaret artist who seduces a lonely, naive school teacher, played by the famous Emil Jannings, whom she marries, humiliates and subsequently drives to his death.

This period (end of WW 1 to 1933) saw the rise of the Weimar Republic and subsequently, the Nazi regime.  It was also the introduction of the Expressionist Art Movement with the use of sinister harsh tones, which were translated onto the screen with long, dark, murky shadows so that the world became a threatening, ominous environment – a portent of things to come.  Von Sternberg used this technique to capture those menacing images to create memorable films, such as The Blue Angel.

The film was an enormous success and established Dietrich in the role of seductress, appealing to both men and women, a part she was to play in successive films and in real life. The song she performed in The Blue Angel, called in English,“Falling in Love Again,” was identified with her throughout her life.

Although married in 1924 to Rudolph Seiber, the father of her only child, they parted after five years and remained married until he died, in what was referred to as an “open marriage.”

Sternberg became her lover and took her to Hollywood where they made another five films together. Dietrich initially went there with the understanding that if she didn’t like it in America she could leave, but Hitler made her return impossible; she was vocal in her distaste for Hitler.

Dietrich became one of the most highly paid movie stars of the time, using her intelligence to work with directors and lighting men who would make her look her most glamorous, more mysterious and more beautiful.

Her unorthodox yet fascinating lifestyle, reflected in her on-screen roles, did nothing to erase the incredible charisma of this woman, and even added to her allure which continued all though her life; nothing could dim her magnetism  in the eyes of her adoring public.

A signature scene in one of her movies became evocatively associated with her throughout her career.  In the film Morocco she performed a song dressed in a man’s tuxedo and kissed another woman … a scandalous event for that period.

In 1937 Marlene Dietrich became an American citizen and, at the height of her fame, was asked by Hitler to return to Germany, an offer she refuseed. During WW2 she gave over 500 performances for the allied troops overseas – always singing one of her numbers, “Lili Marlene.” Originally written in German it became widely popular with all the soldiers on both sides. Its haunting music and romantic lyrics were  broadcast in  English  by the BBC during  the war and subsequently translated into more than 48 languages.

Marlene Dietrich’s relationship with her homeland was complex. During the war she broadcast anti-Nazi messages to the German people in her native tongue, and then braved the wrath of her fellow Germans who called her a traitor by returning to Berlin in 1960 for a concert tour.

Dietrich was accompanied on her international tour by her then-lover, arranger and pianist, Burt Bacharach. She performed in Israel, Canada, Australia and on the Broadway stage where she wore an especially sheer gown which one critic wittily described as a “feat of engineering.”

During one of her performances in Australia in 1975 she broke her leg and never performed on stage or screen again but retired to live in seclusion in Paris until her death in 1992.

Though her love life reads like a list of the most famous persons of the time from Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier and John Wayne to Adlai Stevenson, Frank Sinatra, General Patton and three Kennedys – father Joseph and two of his sons, Joe Jr. and John F., her heart belonged to women.  Among them were Greta Garbo and Edith Piaf and the female love of her life, Mercedes de Acosta.

Dietrich was honored by the Americans who awarded her the “Medal of Freedom” and by the French Government as a “Chevalier of the Legion.”   She died at age 90 in Paris in May 1992, her funeral attended by 1,500 mourners with the coffin draped in the French flag and her medals displayed, military style, at the foot of the coffin.

It was a fitting tribute to a stunning, sensuous woman who had brought joy, romance, mystery, sex appeal, glamor and scandalous excitement at a time when the world needed it most.

Despite her complex relationship with her native Germany, she was declared an honorary citizen by the city that had shunned her as a traitor - Berlin, and this is where she was buried, next to her mother. 

The glamor of yesteryear was reawakened when Barbara Blum made us fall in love again one night, with Marlene Dietrich.