Marlene Dietrich — Another Garbo? (1931) 🇺🇸

Marlene Dietrich, shy, sweet, a little frightened, brings a breath of old-world romance to sophisticated Hollywood.

by Helen Ludlam

It is not a wise thing to promise too much in advance. But the girl you will see on the screen in “Morocco,” Marlene’s first picture in America, will be a very different girl from the one Paramount sees every day. The girl in Morocco will be La Dietrich. The girl I am telling you about is just Marlene.

She met me at the studio and we were ushered into what is called the ‘interview room,’ a new thing in studios. A room set aside for conferences when occasion demands. We were both a little awed by the stiff formality of this place. She sat huddled in an enormous chair swathed in a luxurious mink coat and wearing a glad little cherry-colored hat. She slipped the coat off as the warmth of the room made it uncomfortable and pulled tight about her shoulders a huge cherry silk scarf. Her face was pale; no make-up on the clear skin. Tendrils of red-gold hair relieved the severe line of her hat. Her beautiful, sensitive mouth was cherry red; so were the tips of her fingers. Hat and scarf and lips and finger tips made up a symphony of color against the somber background of the fur that was quite bewitching.

Marlene Dietrich is the daughter of an army officer. Her parents planned a musical career for her and sent her to a private school where she studied violin and piano. She likes to play the psaltery, a rarely-used instrument these days. She speaks both French and English. Later she trained for the concert stage but an injury to her wrist laid her up for several months and during this time she became interested in the stage. Her parents did not approve, but she had found her vocation and finally persuaded them to her way of thinking. She entered Max Reinhardt’s school of drama which began her theatrical career. Her first role was a German version of “Broadway.”

I asked her whether she came to America with Reinhardt a few years ago when he staged his lavish productions at the Century Theater in New York. She laughed. “No, I did not come. I had married by that time and I was very busy having my baby. That took two years of my life, which,” she added quickly, “I was very happy to give.”

The casual way the modern American business or professional woman disposes of this event amuses Miss Dietrich. “I think it is marvelous,” she said smiling. “American women do things so easily — and they turn out just as well. We are much too serious in my country. When I think how careful I was of myself those times I must laugh. I wouldn’t be in a room where people were smoking for, fear the impure air would harm her. And I ate such nourishing things, such good soup and beer and everything that would make her grow. And after she came I was just as careful. Oh, I grew that fat!” she laughed delightedly and stretched her arms out as far as they would go. She never touched wines during that time, only beer, and after two years of abstinence she found she didn’t like them, so unlike most foreigners, our so-called prohibition laws were no trial to her.

“I show you her picture,” she said, extracting a little silver object from her purse which looked like a compact but opened, revealed two snapshots of a darling baby girl, about four years old.

In spite of the fact that she loves to work in America, Marlene is very homesick for her baby and her own fireside. It was a bitter blow to her when Paramount decided to have her make her second picture immediately. “But then I shall be home for Christmas. Oh, I never could stand being away for Christmas!

“I make records for her. There is a marvelous place here which records the voice almost perfectly. That is the way I write my letters to her and she makes records and sends them to me. The other night I called her on the telephone. She asked me where I was and I told her I was in bed. She wanted to know why and whether I was ill. I told her that I was in bed because it was night. It was noon in Germany and she couldn’t understand how it could be night where I was!

“When I left home my family cried and the baby comforted them. ‘Why do you cry?’ she asked, ‘Mama will come back. People who go must always come back.’ What a happy philosophy! Happy for me, too, because if she had made a fuss I never would have left her.

“I was so different. When I first went to school I used to cry so hard the man at the door would telephone my mother at recess and she would come and comfort me. Imagine! Only two blocks away from home and homesick! That is why it is hard for me to make new friends here. It is just my nature. I used to go to school crying and singing a song that started with these words, ‘He is happy who forgets all that he cannot change.’ Six years old and I sang that!”

Twice before, Hollywood tried to lure Miss Dietrich and twice she refused. When Paramount, through Josef Von Sternberg, offered her a contract she accepted. She had appeared in a picture in Germany under his direction and opposite Emil Jannings, called “The Blue Angel.” She had confidence in von Sternberg and he had told her so much about the marvelous studios in Hollywood that she was eager to work in them. “Here there is everything to make a fine picture. If I am not good, then better I never try again.

“In silent pictures it was hard for me. My nose was always something the matter with it, or my chin was wrong or my cheek or something!” she laughed. “In talking pictures those things are not as important as they used to be.

“When I am working I am always very happy. I never care how many hours I am in the studio. Everything is interesting to me. It is only when I am not working that I am unhappy. I used to go to parties when I first came out here; everyone was so very kind to me. But at parties no one seems to be having a really good time. There is much laughter, beautiful women and handsome men, but the laughter doesn’t seem to come from the heart. Or maybe it is because I am out of tune; anyhow, I stay home now.

“I brought with me my maid from home and in the evening we sit together and turn on the radio and read and I feel like a very old lady. Sometimes on Sundays we have a picnic. Because I cannot bear to stay at home on Sundays. We go to the beach and swim and lie on the sand. But without my family and friends it isn’t fun. It makes me miss them more because I want them to enjoy it with me.

“When I come back after Christmas, though, I know I shall be happier. Things out here will be familiar and I won’t feel as if I were coming to a strange land. When I am really transplanted I shall make friends, perhaps. I don’t do that quickly,” she said with her shy look.

Now you may not like La Dietrich when you see her in Morocco, but the bets are in her favor out here, and the wise boys have been trained to anticipate what the public will like. She is often compared to Garbo, a fact that upsets her very much. “How can they say so? We are not at all alike. Garbo is a great artist.” She doesn’t realize that some people think she is one, too.

Garbo is her favorite actress and she has as much hero worship for the Swedish siren as her own fans have for her.

Is the Garbo supremacy threatened, by the arrival of Marlene Dietrich, the German beauty? Garbo must have heard her potential rival acclaimed, but she remains serene through it all.

Lovely Marlene with the slanting inscrutable eyes. Comparison with Greta upsets her. “How can they say so? We are not at all alike. Garbo is a great artist!”

“Are You There?” We’ll say Paula Lenglen is! Paula, by the way, is the little dancer who has a role in Beatrice Lillie’s new talker, “Are You There?”

Collection: Screenland Magazine, January 1931

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see also John Wayne — Another Gary? (1931)