DIETRICH, MARLENE

born Dec. 27, 1901, Berlin, Ger. died May 6, 1992, Paris, France original name Marie Magdalene Dietrich, also called Marie Magdalene von Losch German-American motion-picture actress whose aura of sophistication and languid sensuality made her one of the most glamorous of all film stars. Marie Magdalene was the daughter of Ludwig Dietrich, a Royal Prussian police officer. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother remarried a cavalry officer, Edouard von Losch. Dietrich studied at a private school and learned both English and French by the age of 12. As a teenager she studied to be a concert violinist, but a wrist injury forced her to abandon her plans. She turned to acting, enrolled in Max Reinhardt's Deutsche Theaterschule, and changed her name to Marlene. She eventually joined Reinhardt's theatre company. In 1923 she attracted the attention of Rudolf Sieber, a casting director at UFA film studios, who began casting her in small roles. They married the following year and, after the birth of their daughter, Maria, Dietrich returned to theatre and film. The couple were separated in 1929. In the same year, director Josef von Sternberg saw Dietrich in a show in Germany and cast her as Lola-Lola, the sultry and world-weary female lead in Der blaue Engel (1930; The Blue Angel), Germany's first talking film. The film's success catapulted Dietrich to stardom. Von Sternberg took her to the United States and signed her with Paramount Pictures. She developed her femme fatale film persona with von Sternberg in Morocco (1930), Dishonored (1931), Shanghai Express (1932), Blond Venus (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), and The Devil Is a Woman (1935). She showed a lighter side in Desire (1936) and Destry Rides Again (1939). Dietrich's great popularity made her a trendsetter; her adoption of trousers and other mannish clothes helped launch an American fashion craze. During World War II Dietrich refused to work in Germany despite personal appeals made by Adolf Hitler, and her films were temporarily banned there. She became a U.S. citizen in 1937 and from 1943 to 1946 made more than 500 personal appearances before Allied troops. After the war she continued to make successful films, such as A Foreign Affair (1948), The Monte Carlo Story (1956), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Touch of Evil (1958), and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). She was also a popular nightclub performer. In 1978, after a period of retirement from the screen, she appeared in the film Just a Gigolo. In 1986 there appeared the documentary film Marlene, a review of her life and career, with a voice-over interview of the star by Maximilian Schell. Her autobiography, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin (I Am, Thank God, a Berliner; Eng. trans. Marlene) appeared in 1987.