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Dietrich the War Hero
A Woman at War: Marlene Dietrich Remembered
Edited by J. David Riva and Guy Stern
Wayne State University Press. 192 pages (63 illustrations), $50.
MARLENE DIETRICH’S grandson, David Riva, has produced, with Guy Stern, a book filled with hilarious and beautiful memories of his grandmother in a new book, A Woman at War. This Marlene is not the Von Sternberg icon so famous from the golden age of Hollywood studio icons, but rather “a woman at war” during the Nazi era in Germany.
The spirit of the real Marlene hovers over Riva’s book like a guardian angel. This beautifully assembled volume is much more than a coffee table decoration. Featuring a series of interviews with the famous—Burt Bacharach, Cher, Rosemary Clooney, Hildegard Knef, and less famous but equally wonderful people—Riva’s interviews reveal a woman that many of her fans may be may be totally unaware of: Marlene the hero.
David Riva’s quest to retrace his grandmother’s footsteps began with a conversation in her kitchen in the 1980’s while she was preparing a breakfast of her famous scrambled eggs. Mass, as she was fondly known in the family, began answering a question David had asked about performing. Before he knew it, she was relating her experiences of working for the USO and performing in the Ardennes forest during World War II. As a German, she knew what was at stake in the War, and there was never a question as to which side she was on. (As a child David loved to tell his friends that his grandmother had won the Medal of Freedom. Smiling, Marlene would say, “Be sure to tell them which side I was on.”) Having arrived in the U.S. in 1929 to continue her meteoric film career in Hollywood, she took time out both before and during the War to fight against the malevolent forces that had ascended to power in her native Germany.
As a collector of film stills and a lifelong admirer of Marlene Dietrich, I began to collect stills as well as press photographs of the actress. One photograph captured her return to Berlin after the War as demonstrators displayed signs calling her a “traitor” and instructing her to “go home.” Other photos from this visit appear in Riva’s book along with a series showing Marlene freezing her ass off with while giving aid and comfort to the Allied forces in Europe. Speaking of these experiences she commented, “It was a hard time. But it was wonderful.” This wartime backdrop is described in an interview with one William F. “Buck” Dawson, a World War II veteran of the Eighty-Second Airborne Division and one of the first Americans to enter Berlin. Dawson was in charge of the press corps, and it was he who helped put Marlene back in touch with her mother in Germany. He met her in the Ritz hotel and encountered a dirty, exhausted woman who was still dressed in combat gear. (The book has great picture of Marlene in this outfit.)
What Dawson’s interview and many others in the book reveal is how truly beautiful, remarkable, and vulnerable Dietrich really was. Here was a woman who cast aside all pretensions and went to work fighting the enemy. She understood the power of images and celebrity, donning an American uniform as she went to work for the USO and speaking out against Hitler on the radio and anywhere else she could find. Before the War she had a radio program called “Marlene Sings to Her Homeland,” which was the only way she could communicate with her mother in Berlin, she later mused. Once the War began she returned to Europe with the USO to perform for the American troops. What comes through in Riva’s book is not only how deeply committed she was to this cause, but how useful she really was to the Allied war effort. The boys loved her because she told raunchy jokes and made them laugh; she was seen as more like a buddy than a Hollywood movie star.
Guy Stern, a professor of German and Slavic studies at Wayne State University who served as an advisor for this book, was serving in Belgium during the War. He and a few buddies went to see Marlene perform. She came out on stage and stepped up to the mike and said, “Fellows, I may have to break in the middle of a song to excuse myself, and, heck, you know the reason why.” This brought down the house since they were all suffering from “the trots” due to the bad food and the generally lousy conditions.
In a wonderfully intimate interview, Rosemary Clooney speaks of Marlene’s sense of camaraderie. What comes across above all in this interview and others is Marlene’s intensity and dedication to her craft. The qualities she respected most were courage and hard work. Through these interviews and photographs, Riva has captured Marlene’s human side as distinct from her silver screen image. What emerges is someone whose beauty as a person is not damaged even when we see her “warts and all.”
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