Don't you continue to find her to be fabulous? She had quite the gay life... Marlene Dietrich, the smoky voiced Gay Icon who ending her cabaret show in the very dangerous 1950s, with this: “Please try to be gay tonight as I know it is so difficult to be gay in the morning.”
Dietrich is an ultra-icon & she had personal relationship with Gay-ness. She chose her men for show & her women for love, lust & laughs. She was a film star when film stars were film stars. Dietrich’s shtick was to be idolized, indomitable & indifferent. She didn’t like mistakes. She was a perfectionist. When her mentor- Joseph von Sternberg, the director of early films: The Blue Angel, Morocco, The Devil Is A Woman, would not relinquish control to her, she gave him up. Like Mae West, Dietrich didn’t let a little thing like a Hollywood run by men dictate what she could do.
Dietrich possessed a profoundly complex personality, including her attitude about sexuality. She had a big attraction gay people from the start of her career: the campiness of her films, her devil-may-care attitude to convention, her trouser-wearing that nearly got her arrested in post-war Paris, & her fabulous voice.
Dietrich’s was bravely anti-Nazi during World War II, she turned her back on her native Germany & for 3 years she worked against Hitler. For her courage & commitment to the Allied cause, she was awarded the Legion d’Honneur in France & the Congressional Medal of Honor in the USA, the highest honors that can be bestowed on a civilian.
Dietrich became an atheist, abandoning her Lutheran faith: "If God exists, he needs to review his plan.” She had honor, humor, &humanity. At a time when it could not have been easy, she gave the world her eye-popping style of sexual liberation. Fred Astaire stated that no one wore a white tuxedo as well as she. She was a woman ahead of her time.
Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally & personally. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage & in silent films. Her performance as Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, brought her international fame & provided her a contract with Paramount Pictures. Hollywood films such as Shanghai Express & Desire used her glamour and exotic looks, cementing her stardom, making her one of the highest paid actresses of the era. Dietrich became a USA citizen in 1939, throughout WWII she was a high profile frontline entertainer. Although she still made occasional films after the war, Dietrich spent most of the 1950s ,1960s &1970s touring the world as a successful cabaret performer.
Dietrich’s love affairs included women: Mercedes de Acosta, Garbo, Eva Le Gallienne, Isadora Duncan, Colette, & Edith Piaf. Throughout her career Dietrich had an unending string of affairs, some some lasting decades; they often overlapped & were almost all known to her husband, to whom she was in the habit of passing the love letters of her men, along with biting commentary.
During the filming of Destry Rides Again, Dietrich enjoyed a love affair with Jimmy Stewart, which ended after filming. In 1938, Dietrich met and began a relationship with the writer- Erich Maria Remarque, & from 1941-1949, with the French actor & military hero Jean Gabin. Her last great passion, when she was in her 50s, was Yul Brynner. Her love life continued well into her 70s. She conquests included: John Wayne, George Bernard Shaw & John F. Kennedy. Dietrich’s household included her husband & his mistress, first in Europe & eventually on a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, California.
Dietrich was made an honorary citizen of Berlin on 16 May 2002. Her memorial plaque reads:
"Where have all the flowers gone?"
MARLENE DIETRICH
December 12, 1901 - May 6, 1992
Marlene Dietrich, anti-fascist, bi-sexual, movie star, Vegas headliner, fashion icon, recording artist, & Gay Icon. She was friendly with Ronnie & Nancy, but I like to think of what someone like Michelle Bachmann would think of Dietrich, if Bachmann was smart enough to know who she was.
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