Marlene (35 page)

The very next day, I had my chauffeur drive me to the oceanfront house. In the daylight, it wasn’t so fancy, low and huddled into the cliff, but expensive enough, I assumed, located in a prime area of real estate. I’d heard Cary Grant and his lover shared a beach cottage nearby.

Before I rang the bell, Mercedes opened the door. Her hair hung loose, a cascade of midnight melting over the sloped shoulders of her Japanese robe.

“Marlene,” she said. “What took you so long?”

I FELL IN LOVE
FOR THE SECOND TIME
.

I sent lavish bouquets of roses and violets; when she sighed and said her house was starting to look like a flower shop, I sent Lalique knickknacks. I cooked German pot roast and organized her writing studio, which was a chaos of papers. I alphabetized her library, filled with books on every subject, from art to architecture, music, painting, fiction, biographies, poetry, and bound screenplays. I did her laundry and folded her sheets. I might have cleaned her floors, too—parquet got so dirty in beach houses, with all that sand and those bare feet—but she chided me, saying, “I have a maid. If you must get on your knees to please me, do it here. On my bed.”

She fascinated me, with her magpie conversation and darting caresses, her small fingers sliding inside me. I found her intoxicating; I’d never met anyone who knew so much about so many topics yet never managed to bore me with her erudition, nor anyone whose tongue could probe me like a hummingbird seeking nectar.

It was she who opened my eyes to the darkness descending upon Germany. She held private salons for exiles, many homosexual immigrants who’d fled Hitler’s stranglehold.

“They’re burning books,” Ernst Lubitsch said. Though he’d not gotten the chance to direct me, he became a friend, and like many exiles, kept a yearning eye on the fatherland. “By the Mann brothers, Marx, Freud, Einstein, and others. They’ve arrested thousands and abolished free speech. Hitler authorized a censorship office, the Lichtspielgesetz
,
which specifies regulations for creative works that conform to Aryan ideology. Soon they’ll be burning whatever doesn’t fit their requirements—and anyone who creates it.”

“Hitler used to paint postcards for a living,” I said. His very name made me see red. “He hates artists because he failed as one. He’s an ugly, envious man.”

Yet that ugly envious man was erasing the Berlin I loved, that fabulous playground of decadent joy. I wondered about the girls at Das Silhouette, Yvette and the other transvestites who’d helped me to dress Lola-Lola.
Were they being arrested, too? Had the Nazis barged in and burned all the cabarets to the ground?

“He’s not a failure now,” said Mercedes. “His manifesto
Mein Kampf
is selling by the millions, both there and abroad. I can only assume no one’s bothered to read it. He’s very clear about his intent in his book. Germany has no idea of what’s coming if he stays in power.”

Ernst Lubitsch nodded gravely. “It’s true, Marlene. Important people are being assassinated even after having left the country. The philosopher Lessing was shot at his home in Czechoslovakia by a Nazi hit squad. They’re rounding up dissidents, sending them to a work camp in Dachau. Anyone with resources is trying to get out now, before passports are revoked.”

“Then he’s insane!” I exploded. I was incensed as I looked around the circle, at their haunted, disoriented expressions. “How can we let this happen? How can Europe stand by and watch?”

“They believe Hitler is good for Germany.” Mercedes clasped my shoulder where I reclined on a cushion by her chaise; I felt her squeeze me in warning. She knew how talk of the Nazis roused me to fury, but her gesture confused me, as her salons were always open to discussion.

“Yes,” added Lubitsch. “France and Britain have implemented policies of appeasement; no one is doing anything to help the Jews.” He said to me, “Better warn von Sternberg; rumor is, he’s been making overtures to the UFA again. He’s the last person they want to see.”

After they left, I asked Mercedes why she had stopped me. “I must hear everything, no matter how awful. My husband is in Paris now, but my mother, my sister, and my uncle are still in Berlin. If they’re at risk, I need to know.”

“Are they dissidents?” she asked. “Jews? Marxists? No? Then they’re not at risk. I suggest you say as little as possible. Listen, but don’t state an opinion.”

“Why? I’ve made no secret of my loathing for Hitler. And that propaganda minister of his, Goebbels, the failed novelist with the limp—he’s been campaigning against me.”

“Let him. You must remain circumspect. You’re worried for your family?
Well, not everyone who comes here can be trusted. Goebbels is known for sending spies disguised as refugees to get a sense of the mood abroad. The Nazis are doing more than attacking Jews and dissidents; they’re passing new laws to restrict women’s rights as well. They praise Kindersegen, mothers blessed with children, as national heroines; they want German women at home, cooking, cleaning, and bearing babies for the Reich. You are Germany’s most famous movie star, but you wear men’s clothing, you live away from the fatherland and your husband, and you show off your body. If you start denouncing the Reich, imagine how they’ll react.”

I didn’t want to imagine it, but as soon as I returned home, I placed an international call to Uncle Willi—Mutti had not installed a telephone in her flat—and he reassured me, sleepy because of the time difference, that everything was fine.

“Josephine is still cleaning houses. The situation isn’t as dire as you think. Yes, we have a new chancellor”—he chuckled dryly—“but how is that any different from the last twenty years? These regimes rise and fall like hemlines.”

“You will let me know if it gets any worse?” I said. “You won’t wait?”

“Of course. But where would we go, Lena, at our age? Your mother wouldn’t hear of it. You know how she is. This is her home. She continues to behave as though the Nazis are an inconvenience one must put up with, like poor manners from a guest at the dinner table.”

I had to smile. It would take more than a few book burnings to rattle Mutti.

Ringing off with promises to call back soon, I then telephoned von Sternberg in New York, where he’d gone to see his ex-wife again, forever trying to cajole her into returning to him or at least reducing her alimony demands. Before I could deliver my warning, he said, “I’m not going. Perhaps to Europe at some later date, but not Germany. I’ve heard all about it; I’ve no wish to end up cleaning latrines in a camp. I’m headed to the South Seas to shoot a hurricane. I’ll call you when I get back. Oh, congratulations on the picture. I hear it’s going to be a great success. Didn’t I tell you? The Russian knows how to film a beautiful woman.”

I didn’t ask why on earth
he
was filming tropical storms. It seemed fitting, for him.

But he was wrong about my picture.
The Song of Songs
opened to excellent reviews but its tepid box office sealed Schulberg’s fate. He lost his job, moving to Columbia Pictures. To my delight, Lubitsch was made production chief in his stead—which explained von Sternberg’s dislike of him. A fellow émigré and competitor in the directorial chair, he couldn’t abide Lubitsch’s rise to power, though Lubitsch did not share his antipathy. When he invited me to his office, he said that given the poor receipts for
The Song of Songs,
he was open to my suggestion as to how we should move forward with my career.

“I’ve been instructed to renew your contract for two more pictures, with an increase in salary. Paramount still believes in you, Marlene. You are our biggest female star.”

“Then renew von Sternberg’s contract, too,” I said at once. “He’s the reason
The Song of Songs
failed. Had he been the director, he would have seen its flaws.”

“I already tried.” Lubitsch rubbed a sore spot on his nose from his wire-frame spectacles. “He won’t take my calls. I suspect he’s still trying to woo the UFA, but as I told you before, he won’t find any work there, and no studio here will give him the license that we do.”

I felt vindicated. As argumentative and combative as von Sternberg could be, we belonged together. I missed working with him and was certain that he missed me. I barraged his address in New York with calls and telegrams. He took his time to reply; when he did, he said he’d return to Hollywood as soon as he could, but he had other obligations to attend to first.

“What obligations?” I grumbled to Mercedes. “His wife doesn’t want him and Lubitsch does. Now he has other obligations? I don’t understand it. The man is impossible.”

“Why don’t you take a holiday?” She stifled a yawn. “You have some free time now after working so much. Paris is lovely this time of year, and your daughter must miss her father.”

I understood her meaning. With Gerda gone, I’d hired two bodyguards
to watch over Heidede while I was at the studio and my daughter attended a private school run by the studio for celebrity children. She was doing well, her English getting better than mine, but with my schedule, we only shared occasional evenings together. I fussed over her, bringing her with me on the weekends to visit Mercedes, to walk on the beach and collect seashells, but Heidede found Mercedes “creepy”—an Americanism I had to look up—and Mercedes didn’t like having a curious child underfoot. My lover was growing impatient with my domestic obligations.

“What?” I reached for my cigarettes. “Is Garbo getting jealous?”

Reclining on the bed like a sylph, she sighed. “Marlene. Why ask?”

Indeed. I went home nursing a tiny wound in my heart that appalled me.

The very next day, I booked passage for Heidede and me to Paris.

VI

I
fell in love for the third time.

Paris enamored me with her incandescence, her sweeping boulevards and cobblestone labyrinths, her spiky cathedrals and noisy cafés, her chestnut Tuileries and the open-legged thrust of her Eiffel Tower. She was glamorous and bawdy, sophisticated and vulgar. She straddled the Seine like a cabaret girl and paraded down the Champs-Élysées like a goddess. She laughed and smoked and drank red wine; she ignored the foibles of celebrity and celebrated everyday joys.

Most of all, she gave me privacy. I did not fear kidnapping threats here, and I dispensed with my security to take Heidede to the parks and open-air markets, where, when I was recognized, the interest rarely translated into a stammering request for my autograph. Parisians understood that even famous actresses still use the bidet.

I could have stayed forever.

In Paris, I found a lover who cared as much and as little as I did.

RUDI WAS CONTENT
. He and Tamara had a cozy apartment not far from his Paramount job, though the international economic malaise meant he
didn’t have too much work. No one worked too much in Paris anyway, unless you were Coco Chanel, whose atelier I visited for a fitting. She was an intense, simianlike woman, devoted to her craft, chattering nonstop about everything as she adjusted my jersey dress. She showed me newspapers with photographs of my arrival at the Gare Saint-Lazare splashed across the front pages, dressed in my beret, oversize sunglasses, pearl gray man’s suit, and chocolate mohair polo coat.

“Public transvestitism is a crime in Paris,” she jeered. “You risk arrest by the police. Not that I mind. That mohair coat is sublime. But here, we like women who
dress
like women.”

“What about the men?” I said, and she laughed, her profusion of enamel bracelets jangling. “I don’t bother with men,” she said. “And I prefer it if they don’t bother me.”

All lies of course. Her reputation for lovers exceeded mine. Besides, what she really was saying was that she liked women who dressed in
her
clothes. I ordered a dozen outfits from her, including several evening gowns, but continued to wear my suits and ties to the Hungarian restaurant on the Rue de Surène where I liked to dine, daring the police to lay a finger on me. They put me under surveillance—it became a game for me, eluding them as they dogged my steps—but I wasn’t arrested. And wherever I went, I made headlines. It might be a crime to cross-dress in Paris, but the French newspapers adored it and couldn’t get enough of me.

I decided to use the attention to shed light on the plight of refugees after Rudi arranged a visit with Kurt Weill, who wanted to meet me. Famed composer of
The Threepenny Opera,
whose ballad “Mack the Knife” had convulsed Berlin, Weill had been forced to escape the Nazis. He and his wife were now holed up in an apartment on the Left Bank, waiting for a visa to go to New York. A tremulous, nearsighted man with huge round glasses that made him look like a starving owl, he clasped my hand, bemoaning the decimation of our culture. I was deeply moved by his circumstances, and outraged that one of our finest talents had to flee Berlin like a thief. I promised to put in a good word for him with my contacts in Hollywood and he in turn implored me to record German songs as a tribute.

“You must be our voice,” he said, “before everything is lost.”

I thought it a splendid idea. I hired him to write two songs for me, but they were as gloomy as his mood, and I couldn’t sing them. I did, however, record “Allein” by the Jewish composers, Wachsmann and Colpet—a haunting anthem to the dying Weltschmerz of Berlin, our melancholic homage to a world-weary existence. I did it on purpose, to highlight the Nazis’ denial of Jewish contributions. The recording, issued by Polydor, was an immediate hit.

“Let Goebbels ban it.” I laughed with Rudi, and we went on to Vienna, where Mutti joined us. I’d sent train fare for her and Liesel, but she arrived alone, her hair newly styled for the occasion. She was smiling and conciliatory, affectionate with Heidede, but she refused to talk about the Nazis. When I asked her if she and everyone else in the family were okay, she sniffed.

“Why must you use that word? ‘Okay.’ What does it even mean? Yes of course. We are fine. We’re not Jewish. They’ve no reason to question our sympathies.”

I glanced at Rudi. He grinned. Some things, like my mother, never changed.