daddysprimadonna Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 Yeah,so I'm an insomniac. Anyway, I just watched the Marlene Dietrich documentary featuring interviews with her daughter,Burt Bacharach,her nephew(sister's son),Jean Gabin's biographer,Rosemary Clooney,and others. All I can say is,what a woman! I've seen and loved a few of her movies(Blue Angel,both versions),Shanghai Express,Morocco...but I didn't really know anything about her personally. It was amazing to hear how she not only entertained the troops in WWII,but eschewed the usual USO tours to go to the front lines,and share the conditions of the men there-sleeping on the ground,braving the weather,ducking German bullets-and turning her back on Nazi Germany,her homeland and family there,to assume American citizenship. The OSS(forerunner of the CIA) considered her the only star trustworthy enough to actually give a mission to! Just amazing,especially considering her original nationality. She accompanied the troops when they entered the first German city taken-Aachen-and the citizenry there recognised her,and one housewife went from house to house in order to gather ingredients to bake Marlene a cake. (If I'd a-known you wuz a-coming,I woulda baked ya a cake,LOL). She went on to Berlin to check on her mother,who was OK,but had had a bad time because of Marlene's position. Marlene revisited Germany one time,to do a concert tour,and then never returned. Amongst other things,she was appalled at what was found in the extermination camps. Her own sister and brother-in-law ran a theater for years in the town of Belsen,outside the Bergen-Belsen camp,where the Nazi guards would come to watch movies. After the war,Marlene vouched for them,but when she saw the Belsen-Bergen camp,she never spoke to them or her nephew again. So many more things in the documentary-there was so much more to her than the femme fatale who couldn't help "falling in love again". So much more. I'm really impressed with her as a woman. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iscovescu Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 Melanie, I'm sorry I missed that film. Your tribute to her was very touching and I'm gonna keep an eye out for a repeat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracey65k Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 Melanie-- I agree with you about Dietrich. She and Hepburn are 2 of my heroes, because they did it their way and did what they believed, regardless. I've seen most of her movies and as long as the material was right (NOT "Garden of Allah" she called it trash and she was right LOL) she had an amazing screen presense. She could act, she had a flair for comedy and could put a song over like no one else. Tuesday this week TCM is playing "A Foreign Affair" which is one of my favorite movies of hers. You should watch it if you get a chance. She sings "Black Market" and Illusions" amazing. The movie also has Jean Arthur and they have some really good scenes together... BTW, if you read her daughter's bio, do take it with a grain of salt. It's really a good read, but it can't have been easy growing up overweight, intelligent and complex...and being Dietrich's daughter. Tracey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracey65k Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 Oh and I think that documentary is available on DVD. Tracey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddysprimadonna Posted January 14, 2006 Author Share Posted January 14, 2006 I will look for the documentary,what caught my attention was the it was so well done on its own merits,besides the fascinating subject. In the documentary,her daughter seemed close to her-I do hope that her book isn't one of those awful "Mommie Dearest" type things. I will watch "Foreign Affair", and I just remembered that I have the tape "Judgement At Nuremberg",in which she was great. The documentary tells how she had to have a talk with Spencer Tracy in order to say the line"We didn't know",the national justification of Germany immediately after the war and the discovery of the death camps. She was so disgusted at the line,and the whole excuse,that she couldn't bear to say it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shearerchic04 Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 i saw the marlene documentary for sale on dvd at amazon.com and the book by her daughter is pretty inexpensive as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddysprimadonna Posted January 14, 2006 Author Share Posted January 14, 2006 I'll be headed to Amazon then. I wonder if any of her recordings are still in release? I'll check Ebay too,in case they're not. I really like that post-WWI Berlin cabaret atmosphere her voice has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracey65k Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 Melanie-- Maria Riva's Dietrich bio isn't a "Mommie Dearest" thing. It's more that she had mixed feelings about her mom, I think. I don't think she thought much of her mother as a mother, though she admired her as an actress and performer. She also seems to have some issues over her parents treatment of her father's mistress and her mother's endless affairs, especially those with women. You can get any number of recordings both on cd and vinyl on ebay. Tracey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddysprimadonna Posted January 15, 2006 Author Share Posted January 15, 2006 Well that's different,and understandable. I can always give a little more credence to a more three dimensional portrayal of a person,than when someone tries to act like the innocent bystander,especially once they're an adult,in writing about a famous parent. Christina Crawford really PO'd me by waiting until Joan was dead to write that garbage. I've read that she actually had begun the book and had a publisher lined up before Joan died,and Joan knew about it. And that had a lot to do with Joan leaving her out of the will-not the other way around,as Christina put forth. The two younger daughters-who have indeed been proven to be twins-completely deny the worst allegations,and will have nothing to do with Christina(who for the twentieth anniversary of the book,went on a road tour to hype the book,accompanied by a drag queen made up as Joan,wielding wire coat hangers.You'd think that someone so supposedly traumatised by that,wouldn't go around parodying it). > Melanie-- > Maria Riva's Dietrich bio isn't a "Mommie Dearest" > thing. It's more that she had mixed feelings about > her mom, I think. I don't think she thought much of > her mother as a mother, though she admired her as an > actress and performer. She also seems to have some > issues over her parents treatment of her father's > mistress and her mother's endless affairs, especially > those with women. > > You can get any number of recordings both on cd and > vinyl on ebay. > > Tracey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracey65k Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 > Christina(who for the twentieth anniversary of > the book,went on a road tour to hype the > book,accompanied by a drag queen made up as > Joan,wielding wire coat hangers.You'd think that > someone so supposedly traumatised by that,wouldn't go > around parodying it). > > Depends on how much they were paying her for it and how badly she needed the money...Riva was going to release hers before Dietrich died, but then changed her mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daddysprimadonna Posted January 15, 2006 Author Share Posted January 15, 2006 She might just consider getting a job,and stop milking the name of the dead woman by whom she claims to have been so terrorised. The other siblings seem to have managed to have done so. (Any acerbity isn't directed at you:),it's at a grown woman making a career of self-pity. If she had a story to tell,fine she did it,but grow up already.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracey65k Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 Yes, well, she could get a job, but a)it wouldn't pay as well and b0 she wouldn't get as much attention from it. I got the feeling from that book that there may have been a lot of jealousy from a daughter who wasn't all that attractive and who tried acting but never got any farther than a smal role ina soap opera. Maria Riva fared better--she was, at one time, one of the most popular dramatic actresses on live TV (in the 50's). She says she walked away because she wanted to be a full-time mother, a preference which was made at least partly possible because of her mother's financial support, as Michael Riva (the husband) was probably never able to support her in a manner befitting Dietrich's daughter. (And I don't necessarily mean that Maria expected this support--it was probably Dietrich's idea--she did after all, give the newlyweds a very nice apartment in NY, so who knows? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divacrazed Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 Hi Tracey and Melanie! As Marlene is also my hero, I just had to chime in. I wanted to say that I totally agree with your take on Maria's book Tracey. I have read it two times and think she was pretty good at keeping her bitter feelings to a minimum most of the time. Towards the end I start to cringe a little, but the stories are classic. I love the one about "the child" imitating her parents taking shots of vodka with dinner...(remember that one?) Melanie, you should absolutely read the book. I bought it from Amazon for under $10. I also totally agree with Tracey. A Foreign Affair is a must see and probably my favorite. I think Tracy and I have chatted about our love for this before??? A couple of other tidbits. You might want to grab a copy of the documentary Marlene. Maximilian Schell of Nuremberg interviews her from her Paris apartment even though she refuses to allow any video footage to be shown. Lastly, a small box set of her movies is being released on dvd in April!!! Finally! Still upset that Foreign Affair and Shanghai Express are not included, but perhaps they will be coming soon. All of her movies including the above two gems were just released in France so there is hope!!! Tracey- Garden of Allah was pretty bad! LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tracey65k Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 Hey diva-- Yeah, we probably did talk about "Affair"--I do every chance I get! LOL I loved the part with the "vodka" in Riva's book--can you imagine the looks on people's faces! ****. The end was bad--but the end of nearly every movie star book is--they get old, the fall apart, they are forgotten...sad really. And as for "Allah" Hated it! LOL Not only was it silly, she was SOOO wrong for that part. Tracey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts