He was Dietrich’s entrée to the studios of Hollywood, guiding her career and molding her into the “woman of mystery” who intrigued a whole generation of American moviegoers. Von Sternberg forced Dietrich into a rigorous diet to lose weight, sculpted and glorified her face through visual tricks of the trade involving lighting and camera angles, sent her for English lessons, and masterfully deliberated over her wardrobe and make-up. The transformation of Dietrich by von Sternberg into silver screen siren is wonderfully depicted, along with the love-hate relationship between director and his star. I was especially reminded of another more modern day chanteuse’s career, namely Bette Midler and her launch to stardom at the gay baths where she learned to camp it up for a queer audience. Gortner does an especially good job of catching the milieu of Berlin’s cabaret life, the queer nightclub Das Silhouette, where Dietrich learned the diva mannerisms and camp artistry that would transform her into a star, as well as the events of her screen test for von Sternberg’s classic film.

Here is also the story of her catapult to fame at the hands of her collaborator, the German-Jewish film director Joseph von Sternberg, who directed Dietrich in her first major film role as Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel. Her cross-dressing, her specialization in portraying strong fallen women who rule by the powers of seduction and charm, and her flirtation with androgyny and lesbian desire, established her as a queer glamour goddess and a breaker of sexual taboos. Gortner’s novelization of the life of Marlene Dietrich, the German stage and film actress who became a legend in American cinema, is a rollicking good read filled with intimate details of her tempestuous sex life (her bisexuality was well-known) and the mythic rags to riches story of her ascent from the decadent Berlin of the Weimar Republic to the sound stages of Hollywood’s studio system.

Marlene by C.W. Gortner