Marlene (31 page)

“No. At least, not yet. But Heidede—we want you to take her with you. Tamara and I have spoken about it, Marlene. We don’t want to send her away; we know you love her dearly, but with this business about hiding our marriage because of the studio . . .”

“Forget the studio.” I leaned to him. “What do
you
want?”

“She’s in school now,” he said. “The Nazis have support among teachers, who tell the children that Jews are our enemies. I don’t want her exposed to their propaganda.”

It horrified me to hear this, but his request also took me aback. “You want me to take our daughter away from everyone she knows, from you, Tami, and my mother? Rudi, she is German. She was born here, like you and me. I may work in America, but it’s not our country.”

“I know. But I don’t think Germany will be our country for much longer.”

“You can’t possibly be serious,” I said.

“I am,” he replied somberly, “as everyone who has heard Hitler should be.”

I made no immediate decision. I wasn’t due to leave until April, so I focused on celebrating Heidede’s birthday on December 12 and my own, my thirtieth, two weeks later, amid the Christmas and New Year’s festivities, which my family celebrated with us.

I found Mutti careworn yet as stalwart as ever, and as unimpressed by my success. “Such drivel,” she said. “That desert picture. And must you always show your legs and arms? You’re not exactly slender. Is it the new style there, to have fat women parade about half naked?”

I sighed. “Mutti, I’m not fat. And I’m under contract. I do what the studio tells me.”

She eyed me. “Or what that Austrian Jew tells you. I’m not saying being fat is bad. I’m saying you should be more discreet. Playing prostitutes and showgirls is not an honorable way to make a career.”

At least, she admitted I had a career. I knew it was useless to argue, as her opinions were engraved in stone. I gave her money, told her to stop housekeeping (she wouldn’t), and saw Liesel, who was happy in her marriage but forlorn over her inability to bear a child. During a sad afternoon with Uncle Willi, whose business had suffered from the downturn, I learned that Jolie had indeed left him—for an aviator, of all people. My uncle was disconsolate. I gave him hugs and advice, and money, as well. I longed to ask him about his homosexuality but didn’t want to force a confession or a barrage of denial; with Jolie gone, there seemed to be no point, and it was, after all, his secret to keep, even if it had cost him his marriage.

Then I went to visit my old haunts: the cabarets in the Nollendorfplatz, the Reinhardt academy, the Nelson revue, and other places where I’d performed. I was eagerly welcomed, invited to drink and dine, but my fame proved unavoidable. One night at Das Silhouette, where I’d hoped to arrive incognito, dressed in a man’s overcoat and fedora, I was identified within seconds. A mob erupted, tearing at my clothes; I had to be ferried out the back door. And when I attended Friedrich Hollaender’s new show, the audience refused to let it start until I took to the stage and sang. Eventually, I had no choice but to agree to the UFA’s repeated behest to go into
their studio and record some of my stage and film songs in German for a limited-release disc.

I wanted to feel flattered. Germany had not forgotten me. But for the first time, I realized I might never be able to return and live in my own country. I was too exposed here, without the muscle of an American studio to protect me. Becoming famous had been my ambition, but the reality of it didn’t fulfill me as much as I’d imagined. I was beginning to discover that fame could gnaw away pieces of my life that I might never recover.

And Berlin was no longer the same. The Nazis had plastered their swastika on buildings and marched down the boulevards just as they had in the past, only now in ever-increasing numbers. Just the sight of their brown shirts and the tromping of their boots made me sick. And as I heard the people cheering them on, crying
Heil Hitler!,
Rudi’s warning rang in my ears. That taint I’d sensed years ago had started to spread like a cancer.

Still, while the climate was tense, how could Hitler amount to more than a passing phase? He hadn’t contended with our character. We were too practical. His aggressive stance would unmask him as a petty tyrant, grinding his grievances on everyone’s back.

Nevertheless, the Jews bore the brunt of it. Their districts had been vandalized; I saw shocking evidence of hatred in the grand emporiums of the Wertheim chain on Leipziger Platz and the Kaufhaus des Westens on Wittenbergplatz, the display windows smashed, the facades spray-painted with insults like
Judenschwein!
In defiance, I took Heidede and Tamara with me to shop there, allowing myself to be photographed and purchasing as much as I could. But these venerable stores, some of Berlin’s most refined, were now half empty, the shelves depleted of goods and the sales staff clearly on edge.

Then von Sternberg telephoned me.
Morocco
had been the most successful picture of the year in the midst of the Depression, earning four Academy Award nominations, including one for him as director and me as best actress. Before I could absorb this incredible news, he went on to say that on the heels of
Morocco
’s success, the studio had released
The Blue
Angel.
It, too, made a significant profit, cementing my image as an erotic temptress.

“
Dishonored
may not have paid off,” von Sternberg said, “but even Garbo has been forced to take notice. A journalist asked her what she thought of you and do you know what that Swede bitch replied? ‘Marlene Dietrich? Who is she?’” He rattled on, not allowing me a moment to get a word in. “I’ve a new picture for you, about a fallen woman on a Chinese train.
Grand Hotel
on wheels. I need you back as soon as possible. Schulberg is enthused; he’s hiring the Brit Clive Brook as your love interest.”

“But the studio told me I had until April,” I exclaimed. “I only just got here.”

“You’re scheduled for fittings on the first. Be here. And don’t get fat.” He hung up.

I knew that as soon as I returned, I’d be relegated to the studio, shooting all day and often long into the night. How would Heidede fare in an American school for children of celebrities, transported to and from home in a hired car, and only if Paramount let her stay with me?

The answer to my dilemma came unexpectedly. After returning from another shopping expedition with Tamara and Heidede, we entered the apartment with our purchases to find my past waiting for me. I came to a halt, dumping hatboxes at my feet.

“It—it can’t be,” I said.

Rudi chuckled. “She called me at the studio. I have no idea how she found me.”

“I’m a journalist, remember?” said Gerda. “Or I was. Now, I’m unemployed.”

I embraced her, so overwhelmed that I started to cry.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “None of that. I won’t have it.”

Over coffee, she told me she’d been let go from her job in Munich. “That would be the genteel term to use. Actually, I was fired. My editor went on vacation, so I wrote an opinion piece on Hitler.” She grimaced. “They’re bullies, criminals, and thugs. The assistant editor agreed with me,
so we ran the piece in the Sunday edition. When our editor came back, he was enraged. Turns out he wasn’t on vacation at all; he was attending one of their rallies! He sacked both of us without a reference. He said if he has his way, we’d never work in Germany again.”

“Oh, Gerda.” I took her hands in mine. She looked the same, in her dowdy skirt and old-fashioned shirtwaist, but thinner, her cheeks hollowed and her eyes dull. And when Tamara set a plate of cakes on the table, she devoured them like a fugitive. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Get out as soon as I can.” She gave me one of her mordant looks. “It’s what we must do these days before Hitler eats us all alive.” Her mirth faded. “Only I don’t have any money.” She forced out a smile. “But enough about me. Tell me about you. I saw
The Blue Angel
. Marlene, you were wonderful! Remember how I used to make you recite Shakespeare? Who would have thought you’d end up straddling a barrel in your underwear instead?”

I laughed but didn’t let go of her hand. “Gerda, you must let me help you.”

Her hand trembled in mine, even as she said, “No. I didn’t come here for charity. I wanted to see you, and well—I had nothing else to do.”

“I’m serious. You helped me so much. Just tell me where you want to go. I insist.”

She averted her eyes. Gerda hated tears, but she was perilously close to them. “I don’t know. Paris, maybe? They must need female journalists there with no sense of fashion.” She lifted her gaze. She was crying. “I have no idea. I don’t know where I belong anymore.”

I hugged her, letting her weep on my shoulder. Heidede wandered in and stopped, staring at us. As I looked over Gerda’s shoulder at her, I suddenly knew what to do.

II

I
boarded the ship for America with my sullen daughter, who berated me for taking her away from Rudi, her grandmother, and Tamara. Perversely, she clung to Gerda, whom I’d hired to be her official governess. To my surprise, Gerda had a knack for calming my daughter’s tantrums; and once again, as with Tamara, I had to endure my child transferring her affection to a woman who wasn’t me.

It couldn’t be helped. I needed someone I could trust in America to look after my child, and once Gerda accepted my offer, I’d telephoned von Sternberg with my decision. There was a long silence during which I held my breath before he said, “Schulberg won’t like it, but what can he do? He can’t separate you from your child indefinitely.”

“Tell him I’ll do my best to keep her out of the press,” I said, suddenly anxious that I might put my contract at risk. “She has a governess, so she can be educated at home. Perhaps after this picture, we can do one where I play a mother, to prepare the public. I’ve just turned thirty. I can’t play cabaret girls forever.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

My ocean crossing was uneasy because I was uncertain if he agreed or thought me irresponsible and reckless. By the time we reached New York,
I braced for the onslaught, dressed to the teeth in my new European fashions, hoping to distract the reporters. I had Gerda and Heidede disembark first and take a private car to the Hotel Ambassador. I appeared an hour later, followed by my mounds of luggage. The press flashed their cameras in my face, besieging me with questions about my trip, but to my relief, no one asked about my husband or my child.

“Don’t think they’ve forgotten,” chided von Sternberg when we arrived in Beverly Hills. “You may have dangled couture bait to confuse them, but someone will spot the child coming and going from here, and that will be that.”

“Then I’ll tell the truth. Germany isn’t where she should be right now.”

“The truth is hardly the point. A loving mother, anxious for her child, can always be turned into good publicity, but the husband she left behind? Not so easy.”

He was astute. Within days, the
Los Angeles Times
printed on its front page a photograph of Heidede and me shopping in Berlin—leaked by Paramount’s associate and rival, the UFA, who wanted me back and must have thought adverse publicity would spoil my carefully crafted American image.

Paramount sprang into action, spinning, as von Sternberg had assured me, hay into gold. A series of studio shots supervised by my director were taken, with Heidede and me in matching velvet outfits. This visible evidence of our reunion proved irresistible to the gossip mill, with Louella Parsons herself coming to my defense. But my secret was out. Marlene Dietrich had a husband, too, the studio had to declare, lest anyone thought my child illegitimate. He worked in Berlin under Paramount’s auspices, but the studio hoped to secure him a job soon in America.

In the meantime, Heidede was tutored by Gerda, who also assumed the role of my private secretary. I went back to work.

ENVELOPED IN A SHEATH OF BLACK
and a veiled cap, egret plumage sprouting about her throat and a skullcap of raven curved enticingly
around her left cheek, Shanghai Lily has a chance encounter with a British officer and former flame upon the serpentine train traveling through war-torn China. “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily,” she purrs, but he is the man for her, and her surrender to the sadistic Communist rebel leader in order to save him brings her full circle, back into her officer’s arms.

Clive Brook played my flame. Already established in his own right, all jawline and British stoicism, he had no issues with von Sternberg’s authoritarian style or mandate that I be front and center. He understood my name had top billing and was confident enough to take it in stride. I didn’t find him nearly as engaging as Gary, but who was? He could recite his lines and knew when to step aside—and that, said von Sternberg, was all we required of him.

To my delight,
Shanghai Express
reunited me with Anna May Wong. She’d returned to Los Angeles and von Sternberg cast her as Lily’s companion-in-sin, Hui Fei. Being with Anna again was a joy; we laughed together off camera at the ridiculous script and gossiped in my dressing room, where she told me that our other sister about town, Leni Riefenstahl, was still acting in Fanck’s Alpine epics and had taken to hobnobbing with influential Nazis.

“After she lost
The Blue Angel
to you, she decided she wanted to be a director and make her own films,” said Anna, with a sarcastic roll of her eyes. “She’s become very friendly with Goebbels. Probably sleeping with him, too. Leni always did know how to work a trick.”

I grimaced. “She’ll regret it. I was in Berlin. What they’re doing there is awful.”

“Yes, I heard you made quite the splash, taking your daughter out to shop in Jewish stores.” Anna smiled at me impishly. “Did you indulge in violets while you were there?”

I lit a cigarette. “How could I? The press followed me everywhere.”

She slid her long-nailed hand over my thigh. “They like violets in Hollywood, too, though here we call them sewing circles. I could show you. It’s more common than you think. Louise Brooks and Garbo herself are
known to partake. Unlike men who suckle, everyone turns a blind eye to us, provided we’re not too outré.”