瑪琳·黛德麗 / 莉莉瑪蓮 Marlene Dietrich / Lili Marlene, Lola

瑪琳·黛德麗 / 莉莉瑪蓮

Marie Magdalene Dietrich is born in Berlin on December 27, 1901. At the age
of 17, she integrates the Franz Liszt School of Music. Her desire to become a violinist will be thwarted
by a wrist injury and inflammation of the ligaments. She then choses the theatre and performs on stage
or at the movies in small roles from 1922. From 1928, she records her very first songs. She gets her
first significant role in 1929 in Die Frau, nach der Man sich sehnt, film by Curtis Bernhardt. Spotted by
Josef Von Sternberg, she is engaged to play Lola in Der Blaue Engel (1930), first talking movie made in
Germany. Paramount sees her as the ideal competitor to Greta Garbo, muse of M-G-M, and offers her a
contract. Marlene embarks for New York. She will again perform the role of a cabaret singer in Morocco,
alongside Gary Cooper. She becomes Sternberg's icon for five years: Dishonored (1931), Shanghai
Express, Blond Venus (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), The Devil is a Woman (1935). Considered as
the archetype of the "femme fatale" Marlene will continue her career with less prominent films: Desire
and The Garden of Allah (1936), Knight Without Armor and Angel (1937). She returns to success with
Destry Rides Again (1939), Seven Sinners (1940), The Flame of New Orleans & Manpower (1941) The
Lady is Willing, The Spoilers & Pittsburgh (1942). She contributes to "the war effort" alongside other
celebrities like Orson Welles. She shelters Jean Gabin from 1941 to 1943 with whom she would have a
love affair. In April 1944, she joins the front in Europe, singing to entertain the troops. In 1946, she joins
Jean Gabin in Paris with whom she plays in Martin Roumagnac. Returning to Hollywood she appears
without much enthusiasm in Golden Earrings (1947), A Foreign Affair (1948). She goes to London for the
filming of Stage Fright by Alfred Hitchcock (1949). But as far as movies are concerned, she performs
essentially for money. Without much enthusiasm, she participates in No Highway in the Sky (1951) and
Rancho Notorious (1952), before devoting herself to a song recital that she performs from December
1952 to January 1953 at The Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, then in London and Monte Carlo (1954 & 1955).
Composer Burt Bacharach becomes her lover and pianist in 1955. Their association will last a decade.
Orson Welles offers Marlene her most subtle role in Touch of Evil (1958). Starting in May 1959, she began
a marathon tour of 120 dates. In Germany, her shows are sometimes the subject of insults (Traitor! ...
Marlene Go Home!). In June 1960, in Israel, organizers try to forbid her to sing in German. She will solicit
and obtain directly permission from the public. In 1961, she appears in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at
Nuremberg. She will sing in Moscow and Leningrad in 1964 and again in Israel in 1966. Intensive tours
(150 dates around the world in 1973-74-75), and the combined misdeeds of age and alcohol will be right
to Marlene's pugnacity. She first fell on November 18, 1973, in an orchestra pit, then on August 10, 1974
at her home and finally on September 29, 1975 before entering the Sydney Opera stage, successively
fracturing her legs, her hip and the neck of a femur. She puts a definitive end to her career and appears
one last time in the film of David Hemmings Schoner Gigolo, armer Gigolo (1978). From 1980, she lives
recluse in her Paris apartment where she dies on May 6, 1992.