Marlene (17 page)

Rudi returned to me and whispered, “Do whatever he asks.”

What Herr May asked was for me to turn left, turn right, and back again. To lift my chin and look at him, then look away so he could check my profile. He asked me to smile, to pout, to feign anger, joy, and sorrow. He issued his directives with as much terseness as Herr Held at the academy, albeit without the sarcasm, before he made a clicking sound with his teeth and announced to Rudi, “She’s nice looking. But too fat under the chin and she has an upturned tip on her nose. It spoils her profile.”

“We can shoot her from the front. And she can diet.” Rudi set his palm under my jaw and pressed upward. “She’s got the right look. We only need to rid her of this excess.”

Herr May looked unconvinced. “Yes, her face is unusual. Nice, as I said, but too wide. She’ll look enormous on camera.”

“We don’t know that yet,” countered Rudi. “We need to test her first.”

“And no experience,” added May. “The leads are already cast; we have professionals in every role. I have no time to prepare a novice. We’re already running late on this picture.”

“Which is why we need a fresh face for the part. She’s not a novice. She’s studying at the Reinhardt academy and has done some modeling. She knows enough to learn on her own.”

They were talking as if I wasn’t standing there, listening to them judge me as if I were a cow at the fair. I might have made a scathing remark of my own had Rudi’s hand not been clamped below my jaw, keeping my mouth shut.

May made another sucking sound between his teeth. “Fine. Test her. But if I don’t like it, I don’t want to see her again.” He turned to his desk; as Rudi steered me out the door, May said without looking up, “Eva told me she hasn’t seen you since we returned from Prague. You’re her husband, Rudi. Stop roistering about Berlin looking for new faces and make time for her.”

Husband?
As soon as we exited the office, I yanked away from him. “You’re married,” I said. I wasn’t sure why it bothered me, but it did—quite a lot, it seemed.

“Engaged,” he explained, as if that made a difference. “Eva is Joe’s daughter. Come. The light is perfect now; we’ll test you outside. We have a great cameraman, Stefan Lorant. He’ll know exactly how to shoot you.”

I found myself seething as he led me outside. He was engaged. He might as well be married. Like Reitz. Which meant complications. I had to make myself focus, remind myself that it didn’t matter. I wasn’t here to sleep with him. I was here to further my career.

We reached a field bordering the studio, where a man with a camera on a tripod waited. Rudi squeezed my elbow again. “Break a leg,” he said,
the traditional good luck phrase of theater people, before, to my dismay, he retreated back into the studio.

For over an hour, I followed Lorant’s instructions as he filmed me standing by a white prop fence, sitting on the fence, falling off the fence, crawling under the fence, posing behind the fence, until I knew I must look a mess, the September balminess turning my dress translucent, my taut curls loosened into tendrils, and carefully applied makeup streaked. After Lorant was done, he showed me out. I wanted to ask him if I’d photographed well but by that point I didn’t care.

And by the time I returned home to the hungry cats and rushed about preparing the materials for my morning class, followed by rehearsals all afternoon and the evening revue, if I still had a job, I cared even less.

I never expected to see Rudi Sieber again.

WEEKS WENT BY.

The play opened to a limited run. As soon as it closed, we began rehearsing Shakespeare’s
The Taming of the Shrew.
Herr Held believed no actor was worthy until he could play the Bard; more important, money was scarce at the academy, like everywhere else, and repertory performances of classics made a profit. As students, we were expected to earn our share and give back to the vaunted academy, which was paving our way to a profession.

I finally surrendered to the inevitable and quit the revue; the manager did not sack me as threatened, but I couldn’t devote myself to acting while dancing into an early grave. To supplement my income, I continued to go out on calls, accepting modeling jobs. It wasn’t enough to pay for more than food and the roof over my head, but I managed. Gerda wired money, too. She was still in Hannover and kept telephoning with promises to return soon, though I’d begun to think that as Camilla had claimed, her jobs away were becoming permanent. It was as though she didn’t want to return, I found myself thinking. As if she was pushing me to do the very thing she most feared, which was to betray her and leave.

Then one evening as I left the Deutsches Theater after another drain
ing rehearsal with Held, who hissed that I had clearly failed to take his advice, I found Rudi waiting beside a two-seater blue automobile—a rarity in Berlin. I strode past him as if I didn’t know who he was.

He ran after me, taking me by the arm. I glared. “Let go.”

“What is the matter?” He appeared bewildered. “Why are you upset?”

“Upset?” I said. “Why would I be upset? You made me look like an idiot at your ‘only an interview and a test.’ You had that cameraman photograph me like a milkmaid. And,” I added, “you left me to see myself out.”

“Marlene, I had to. I couldn’t influence any decision. Joe is very particular; he doesn’t like me meddling with casting. I was already pushing my luck by bringing you in for a test.”

“I see. Well, if you don’t mind, I have a chorus to perform.” I didn’t, but I’d started to turn about anyway when he touched my arm again.

“You got the part.”

I froze. Not wanting to believe what I’d just heard, I met his eyes. He was smiling. In the ebbing summer light, he looked so young, not like the glossy stranger of the cabaret, but who he was—a twenty-something man with more charm than anyone should be allowed.

“I—I got the part?” I said.

“Yes.” He was grinning now, showing off his perfect teeth. “The test was horrible, but it showed Joe what I saw from the start. You have potential. You shine on film. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

“There wasn’t anyone else to see. And if the test was so horrible, how can I have shone?”

“You don’t understand yet what the camera can do. You try too hard and film exaggerates. But it knows how to capture you. All you have to learn is how to let it.” He softened his voice. “It’s a small part. The picture is called
Tragedy of Love
and you’ll play Lucie, the judge’s mistress. Two scenes, but it’s a perfect introduction. And you must wear your monocle. I told Joe about how you looked in it with your tuxedo, and he agrees . . .”

A dull roar in my ears drowned out his voice. I had a part in a picture—a Joe May production, no less. If he’d said I’d been chosen for the lead, I couldn’t have been more elated or grateful. Or terrified.

“I can’t,” I heard myself whisper. “I can’t do it. I don’t know how. You just told me,” I went on, in a panic. “I don’t know anything about the camera. I’ll make a mess of it. It’s Joe May. I’ll never get another role again—”

“Hush.” He pulled me to him, as protective as a father, though the heat coming off his body was not paternal in the slightest. “Of course you can do it. I’ll be there. It’s just acting, Marlene. Instead of an audience, there’s a camera. It’s what you want to do.”

“Do I?” I murmured, and he lifted my chin. “Yes,” he said. “You were born for this. You may not know it yet but you were. Trust me.”

Like Gerda before him, he had seen something in me that I failed to see in myself. I allowed him to take me to his automobile. When we pulled up at the curb by the boardinghouse, he got out and opened the side door for me.

“Do you want to come up?” I asked. I wanted to return the immense gift he’d given me, the renewed hope for a future. I knew how. I’d felt the stir in his pants as he held me. I recognized desire when it was directed at me. It didn’t matter if he was engaged or married. He had earned it. Besides, I wanted to; it was what I had wanted from the moment I met him. Only now, I wanted more. I wanted to feel loved, if only for one night.

“Maybe later.” He averted his eyes. As I made an uncertain move toward the boardinghouse, glancing at him, motionless by his car, he said quietly, “I want you, Marlene. Very much. But not like this. Not out of gratitude or lust; I want you to want me as much as I want you. And you cannot. You have . . . other obligations.”

“So do you. A fiancée. I may live with someone but I’m not engaged.”

“True.” He held my gaze. “But engagements can be broken. Can you say the same?”

He’d obviously spoken with Camilla, who told him everything he needed to know about my arrangement with Gerda.

“I’m not who you think I am.” I turned to the door, inserting my key in the lock. “And yes,” I said over my shoulder, “I can say the same. You just need to give me a good enough reason.”

VIII

F
ilming on
Tragedy of Love
was delayed until the start of 1923. Despite his success, even Joe May had difficulty scraping together financing, but I received my script and studied my role obsessively, even as I performed in several more plays with the academy, including
Timotheus in Flagranti,
where I had three revolving roles. The play flopped after nine performances, but to my delight, Held offered me the begrudging compliment that I’d acquitted myself “better than most.”

But my inquiries of fellow students who’d had minor roles in pictures forewarned me that working on a film set wasn’t like the stage; nothing was painstakingly rehearsed. Scenes were often shot out of sequence, the script adjusted at a moment’s notice; and while multiple takes could erase mistakes, stamina and knowledge of one’s best angles were required. A primitive art, some declared it, not a civilized way to perfect one’s technique.

None of which eased my anxiety, which escalated to such a point that I went to see Uncle Willi, imploring him to use his contacts to find me a role in any film starting now. I needed the experience, I said, citing my role in May’s picture. He made a few calls and secured me a part in
Little Napoleon,
a historical farce directed by Ernst Lubitsch about the imperial brother’s amorous exploits. I was cast as the chambermaid—a silly role, requiring
giggling and conniving as I assisted my lady in evading the hero’s advances. But I was before a camera and strived to learn enough about lighting and how to stay in character while a crew hovered nearby. Weeks later, I attended a screening of the rough cut and was dismayed; I looked like a fat potato with frizzy hair.

I put myself on a strict regimen. No cakes or meat or bread, I was subsisting on water and tiny slices of cheese. By the time production began on
Tragedy,
I had lost several pounds, confirmed by my frequent probing of that now-diminished mound under my chin.

I had to be perfect.

The leading actors in
Tragedy
were household names. Germans had not yet seen the Hollywood stars being minted like fresh coins across the ocean, except for Charles Chaplin, who, like the rest of the world, we worshipped. But the extreme devaluation of the mark made distribution of American pictures impossible, prompting us to grow our own crop of celebrities. On
Tragedy,
I worked with one of our most renowned male stars, Emil Jannings, famous for his rough-hewn looks and brooding persona. He played a brutal Parisian wrestler who murders his mistress’s lover in a fit of jealousy and is brought to stand trial. My role as Lucie, the judge’s vivacious mistress, was one of callous self-interest. The first of my two scenes was shot in close-up as I made a telephone call to my lover, cajoling him to let me attend the trial that would decide the wrestler’s fate.

The day of my scene, I was so nervous that the monocle I wore along with my feathered bed gown kept falling out. Joe May grew terse, finally demanding I leave the damn thing alone. As I sat with the phone receiver in my hand, trembling and near tears, Emil Jannings came to me with a tube of spirit glue and muttered gruffly, “Glue it on.”

“Thank you,” I whispered, applying a bit of glue about the monocle’s edges. As I inserted it back on under May’s impatient regard, Jannings told me, “You’re so lovely, Marlene. Too lovely for this bit of foolishness that May seems to think will be a masterpiece.”

His kindness did wonders for my performance. Rudi was there, too, watching from the sidelines. Taking a deep breath, I did my entire scene
in a single take, conjuring up the memory of my youthful self in Weimar with Reitz. I knew how I should look, how to use my eyes and expression to beguile an older lover, even over the telephone. After the take, the crew went silent, waiting as they always did for May’s approval or denunciation.

He grunted. “Not bad. Let’s do it again.”

In my next scene, I sat among the packed tiers at the trial. Although the judge had not relented even given her persuasion, Lucie schemes her way in, and at the last moment, I opted to employ opera glasses rather than the slippery monocle. I hid the glasses until shooting began, then whipped them out to avidly watch like a bird of prey as the wrestler was found guilty and sentenced to die. I had no lines but made the most of my moment, imbuing Lucie with the zeal of a Roman empress on her balcony as lions devoured Christians in the arena.

After four days of shooting my scenes, May signaled to me. I expected a reprimand; opera glasses were not in my wardrobe. Rudi had loved the idea, but he, too, looked apprehensive while May scanned me up and down as he had at my initial test before he said, “The lorgnette was a good touch. But next time, Fräulein Dietrich, consult with your director
before
you make any wardrobe changes. You’re not famous yet.”

“Not famous yet,” I exclaimed that night as Rudi drove me home. We were tipsy, having gone out to celebrate; the shoot would continue for another month, but my part was done and I was so excited, I’d thrown aside my customary guard around liquor and had four cocktails.

Outside the boardinghouse, Rudi took my hand. “He meant it, Marlene. He means that you will be famous sooner than you think.”