Marlene (43 page)

One night after a performance by Rosalind Russell, the servicemen started banging their cutlery on the tables and chanting, “Marlene! Marlene!”

I was in the back, scrubbing pots with a breathtaking new contract player named Ava Gardner, whose green-eyed beauty was matched by her sailor’s mouth. We were chuckling over MGM’s choice for her first part, an unbilled socialite. “Now, they want to put me in a fucking musical, like Judy Garland. I can’t sing like you gals,” she said, unfazed. “I guess they’ll have to dub me to make it look like I do. Pretty is as pretty does, right?” Then she paused. “Hey. Sounds like they’re calling for you.”

I went still, listening. Bette burst into the kitchen. “Take off that hairnet and get your ass out there. They want ‘Falling in Love Again.’”

Ava rolled her eyes at me. “Can’t escape that little ditty, can you?”

Jabbing her in the ribs as she laughed, I wrenched off my net and followed Bette. The explosion of shouts and applause brought me to a halt.
From the stage, clad in a silver gown that revealed her stellar legs, Rosalind crooked a finger at me and said into the microphone, “Ladies and gentlemen, your cook, Marlene Dietrich.”

As I walked onto the stage with the yowls of servicemen deafening me, Rosalind said into my ear, “I’ve cued the band.” She left me standing there, shirtsleeves rolled to my elbows and wispy curls flattened from my hairnet.

“Marlene! Marlene!”

“Hush,
Liebchens,
” I whispered into the microphone. “You make a girl nervous.” Then, as the music began, I called for a chair and one of the boys in the first row fell over his own feet to bring it to me. Straddling it, I pulled up my slacks to expose my calves. In the hush that fell, as their shining faces blurred into sudden tears I held back, I sang my heart out for them, following my signature number from
The Blue Angel
with songs from
Morocco, The Devil Is a Woman, Blonde Venus,
Destry Rides Again,
and
Seven Sinners
. I used my scarf as my sole accessory, draping it about my head, shimmying it like a boa about my shoulders, and feeling as if I were bathed in glitter. When I was done, breathless and sweating, I paused, gazing out from beneath my lids at the multitude and spoke my favorite line from
Seven Sinners
: “‘Oh, look. The navy. Will someone please give me an American . . . cigarette?’”

The boys went wild. Dozens of cigarettes flew through the air to fall around me.

As I retrieved one, every man at the first twelve tables lunged forward with their lighters, flicking flames in the low-lit salon illuminating their ecstatic faces.

“God bless you, Miss Dietrich,” I heard one whisper.

That night after the canteen closed and Bette held me, I wept. I didn’t know why. Yes, I’d been moved by all those young men, all that ardent life, soon to be shipped off to fight and die just as German boys were. But I also wept for something else, an inchoate sundering inside me for which I had no name. It came flooding like a tide—the years of hope and disappointment, the highs and lows, Gabin and the entire silly carousel, as von Sternberg had called it.

“There now.” Bette cradled me in her arms. “I had no idea you were
such a natural. Those come-hither films of yours don’t do you justice. You belong on the stage.”

“You think so?” I looked up at her. It had been so long since I’d entertained like that, without costumes or accompaniment, without cameras or artifice, that I’d wondered if I sounded like Dietrich or a middle-aged Kraut with ham on her breath.

“Don’t be coy. You heard their applause. No one could take their eyes off you.” She chuckled. “Not even Rosalind, and believe me, she’s not easily impressed.” She paused. “Why don’t you apply for a USO permit? Forget this racket. Go give our boys what they need. If I had what you do, I’d go,” she added, lifting her skirt. “But who wants to see these chicken legs?”

It was my apotheosis. Though I was scheduled to be loaned out to MGM for an Arabian-themed extravaganza, from that moment I had only one ambition:

To support my adopted nation in whichever way I could.

III

T
hough it had taken Pearl Harbor to rally the nation, America had been providing military aid and reconnaissance since 1941, when Germany declared war on us. As part of the Allied strategy with Britain and Russia, the plans to defeat Hitler were as secret and dangerous as the mounting casualties, without any certainty if we would prevail.

I worried over potential repercussions in Berlin if I went out to entertain the troops. It was an overt declaration I’d not be able to rescind, even if I told myself that no one in my family had been arrested yet and I’d done plenty already to incite it. I couldn’t hide away anymore, not with Hitler intent on ravaging Europe. Though I couldn’t vanquish the fear that my actions might bring harm to my loved ones, I had to take a stand, both as a public personality and as a German. For years, I’d sought to protect my career and my family by remaining silent. I couldn’t do it any longer. If I kept to the sidelines, I would be condoning the very thing I detested, participating in the carnage from afar because I was too frightened to do something.

In early 1944, I went to New York to submit my application for a formal United States Entertainment Organization (USO) permit, following an appearance before twelve hundred soldiers at Fort Meade. I’d
finished
Kismet
for MGM, where I’d performed an unfathomable dance number—my first and last on film—layered in Arabian veils, braided headgear, and enough gilded spray paint to turn my legs green. I worked at the canteen in my costume; Bette scolded me. The fury of servicemen trying to dance with me brought the police in to accuse her of inciting a riot. I’d also taken part in Orson Welles’s magic act for Universal’s all-star picture revue
Follow the Boys—
a showcase featuring Hollywood talent, in which I did a mesmerizing act, was sawed in half by Orson, and the studio pocketed the screening profits.

Bette fumed. “Those greedy motherfuckers. When the history of this town is written, they’re going down as collaborators. They’d exploit Hitler himself if they could sign him.”

I doubted anyone would bother with how terribly the studios behaved, but I was also so disgusted by the flagrant money grab that it sealed my decision to go off on my own, with Bette’s encouragement and Orson’s blessing to steal his mesmerizing act. Packing up three flesh-colored net gowns designed to be both provocative and practical (no ironing), I went on the road to dazzle soldiers waiting to deploy, their rousing cheers buoying me all the way to Manhattan.

At home, travails with my daughter had resulted in her own departure to live with Rudi and pursue her acting career. Despite my determination to be more attentive and my hope that studying acting would dampen her enthusiasm for it, my long days on the set and nights at the canteen had left me unaware of her precipitous affair with a fellow student until she proclaimed her engagement. Nothing I said made a difference; they went ahead despite my protests, though I deemed him a mediocre talent with no future and doubted Heidede truly loved him. She seemed lost, confused; again, I blamed myself. But she was obstinate, like me; and on principle alone, Rudi and I did not attend the wedding. I did go to their apartment after they left on their honeymoon, however, ordering some of my furniture brought from storage (I still lived in my crammed bungalow) and arranging it after I scrubbed everything from windowsills to floors. In my apron and scarf, without makeup, the building manager thought I was a maid and
gave me a two-dollar tip, suggesting I could find extra work with the other tenants. I thought Mutti would be proud that I’d apparently not forgotten how to properly wax a floor.

Six months later, Heidede, or Maria, as she now wanted to be called, rejecting her childhood name, admitted her marriage had been a mistake. She petitioned for a divorce; when I questioned her, she said flatly, “I don’t want to talk about it. It never happened.”

Rudi and I encouraged her to pursue her studies in New York. She’d never escape my shadow in Hollywood, and stage training, we told her, was essential to the rigors of the craft, even if we both had our misgivings over her hopes for a career in the midst of a world war.

But I understood her silence, because the reason I hadn’t taken to Broadway was something
I
didn’t want to talk about. The offer to star in a play titled
One Touch of Venus
should have filled me with joy. The producers courted me; Kurt Weill, he of the gloomy disposition in Paris but now happily employed in America, was the composer. The role was ideal—a statue of Venus comes to life, only to discover that mortal life isn’t what she envisioned. Weill was enthusiastic during the visit to woo me
.
Everything had been conceived with my talents in mind. “You never recorded what I wrote for you in Paris,” he said. “But now, you’ll have many songs and will be the toast of Broadway.”

Many songs, I learned, were too many. I knew it the moment I attempted the score. In addition to mastering Weill’s convoluted music, I’d not been on an actual stage in fifteen years, and the part required a vocal range I’d never had. It was also too seductive, even for me. I wasn’t Lola-Lola anymore, much as I might feign otherwise. Weill was enraged. I insisted I had a war duty to undertake, and they hired Mary Martin instead, who brought down the house.

I didn’t regret it. While waiting for FBI clearance on my USO assignment, I received a telegram from Gabin. He was in Algiers, his passage to France delayed. He’d joined a tank regiment of the Free French of course; Nazi tanks were prized Allied targets. “Grande,” he wired, “I am happy.” I had no way to send word back to him, his wire routed through several
clearances so that it had taken weeks to reach me, but I was elated that he had thought of me.

I stayed with Rudi and Tamara, saw Maria settled in her new academy, and, buoyed by the news from Gabin, began rehearsals with my accompanist, Danny Thomas, a comedian from the nightclub circuit. He taught me how to engage a temperamental audience; how to make the material seem spontaneous; and, most important, how to perform without cameras and lights. Broadway might have been too challenging but I’d been playing Dietrich all my life. As for the act itself, composed of my greatest hits, all I had to do was remember Bette’s canteen.

On April 2, 1944 (under the designation Major Dietrich in the unlikely case I was captured and required military treatment), my troupe boarded a C-54 transport with a platoon of new soldiers. It was the first aircraft I’d been on; not until we were aloft was our destination disclosed.

We were going to Casablanca, in Morocco.

I considered it a good omen.

IV

E
lectrical storms jolting the plane caused my troupe to cluster in misery, while the soldiers suddenly looked as if they wished they’d never enlisted. I’d packed a flask of cognac to keep warm, having been forewarned that the plane would be cold. Danny puked it up, but I got pleasantly drunk and distracted the soldiers with tales of my days in Berlin, singing for them as the plane veered and swooped, and anything not strapped down slid across the floor. Twenty-two hours later, after two fueling stops in Greenland and the Azores, we touched down on a pitch-black tarmac in pitch-black Casablanca, where Allied forces fought off Nazi air raids.

Slight chaos ensued when the officers in charge discovered who we were. A mistake in USO scheduling meant there was no place to lodge us. After hurried consultations on the tarmac as Danny and I nervously eyed the bomb strikes flashing on the horizon, we were escorted to a nearby empty barracks, closer to the soldiers than was permitted by regulations.

Our accommodation was a pit—dirty, smelly, with bunk beds as hard as planks, and no latrine. My troupe, composed of Danny, an accordionist, and a piano player, was wretched, exhausted from the trip and clearly wondering what kind of hell we’d signed up for. I tidied the place, took a bunk, and used my satchel packed with my gowns and makeup case as a pillow.

I was so excited, I couldn’t sleep. At last, I was about to do something worthwhile.

The next day, bouncing around in a Red Cross convoy truck, we drove along pitted, dust-choked roads to Rabat and Tangiers, where we did two shows a day for weary masses of men. We were a hit; they’d not seen anything like me before, with my sequined gowns and quick banter, but Danny warned that we shouldn’t rest on our laurels.

“These are the reserves. The guys are so bored, they’d cheer King Kong. Wait until Algiers. We’re scheduled to perform in the opera house there before over a thousand Allied soldiers, and I hear they’re a tough crowd. They threw frankfurters at Josephine Baker.”

Frankfurters and sauerkraut, I discovered, along with some unidentifiable canned meat, were the cuisine of choice when we could get it. Otherwise, it was gruel and soda crackers.

In Algiers, which was partially submerged in rubble, the shell-pocked opera house was packed to the rafters with men from all the Allied nations—soldiers who had fought, suffered losses, and were very demanding of suitable entertainment.

Danny and I had spruced up the act to include an element of surprise. But when he first bounded onto the stage in his rumpled tuxedo, two thousand angry voices derided him for not wearing a uniform. “Uniform?” he quipped. “Are you nuts? Haven’t you heard there’s a
war
?”

He broke the tension. As laughter erupted, he went on, “Marlene Dietrich was supposed to be here tonight, but an American officer pulled rank for her . . . services.”

The sudden silence confirmed that the men had no idea who’d been scheduled. Then, as more jeering boos were flung at Danny, I cried out from the back, “No. Wait. I’m here,” and I ran down the aisle in my military uniform, fleece-lined cap on my head and suitcase in hand. Onstage, I removed one of my gowns from the suitcase and began to undress.

The boys howled. Yanking me behind a tattered screen, Danny made suggestive eyes at the panting audience until I emerged minutes later in my gown.