Blue Angel (18 page)

T
HEIR NEW PROJECT, WHICH BEGAN FILMING IN AU
tumn 1931, was set in the most exotic of the four locales so far chosen for the von Sternberg-Dietrich pictures; Berlin, Morocco and Eastern Europe now seemed overshadowed by the ersatz China of
Shanghai Express
. As Madeleine (a slight variation on her own uncontracted name, after all), Dietrich was—to quote the script—“the notorious woman who lives by her wits along the Chinese coast,” and for whom “it took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” Aboard the eponymous train she meets a former lover (Clive Brook, as a British medical officer), whose life she saves when Chinese revolutionaries waylay the train.

Von Sternberg (taking his inspiration from parts of a story by Harry Hervey) dictated his outline and script to Jules Furthman and finally had something reminiscent of
Tosca
. Dietrich was never more alluringly rendered, photographed through an endless series of veils, scrims and smoky filters—all of it apposite for the latest version of von Sternberg’s tarnished woman. As before, she is a character capable of a deeper fidelity and a higher morality than what anyone might expect—higher even than that of the minister who advises her to pray and is himself converted by her subsequent genuine piety. This happens in a single moment that transcends the film’s simplistic story, when von Sternberg illuminates only Dietrich’s cool white hands, as she slowly joins them in prayer for the safety of her former lover against a bloodthirsty Oriental brigand. (Her hands are constantly emphasized in this picture; her legs are never exposed.) Shanghai Lily, who has abandoned her name (as Marlene abandoned Maria Magdalene, the original form of hers), now risks her life
precisely because she can only be true to her onetime love: thus
Shanghai Express
carries forward motifs from
Morocco
and
Dishonored
. The train takes these principals on a kind of journey toward integration—thus the final scenes, in which the former lovers tentatively rediscover the love that once bound them. And once again, the roles are reversed: Dietrich wears the officer’s cap, brandishes his whip, takes control. She is, in fact, more active, more passionate here than in any prior film.

Von Sternberg, alternately delighted and (he felt) abandoned by Dietrich, spun a tale in which she is faithful in her infidelity while the hero remains loveless in his disjointed memories. According to cinematographer Lee Garmes (who won an Oscar for the film), “Clive Brook wanted to be Clive Brook [but] von Sternberg wanted him to be von Sternberg.” The character Jannings/von Sternberg (in
The Blue Angel
) was ruined by this woman; Menjou/von Sternberg (in
Morocco
) was abandoned; Oland/von Sternberg (in
Dishonored
) was betrayed; but Brook/von Sternberg (perhaps because of the recent history of Dietrich and von Sternberg) has another chance.

In this regard, the laces and veils through which we glimpse Dietrich in
Shanghai Express
are more than just sexy peekaboo: on the contrary, the shot of her folded hands is central to von Sternberg’s point, for it italicizes the fundamental mystery of the woman he perceived in Marlene Dietrich. “When I needed your faith, you withheld it,” she says to Brook. “Now when I don’t need it and don’t deserve it, you give it to me.” In the romantically complicated world of von Sternberg, love is of course never a matter of balance sheets, and needs and compensations rarely equalize.

After the filming was complete, Paramount arranged almost daily sessions for still photographs with cameramen like Eugene Robert Richee and John Engstead. Over these von Sternberg exerted his usual control, insisting that a high spotlight be used to bring out the shadows under her cheekbones. Often, according to Engstead, von Sternberg asked Dietrich to assume the most uncomfortable positions—to lean over a chair, for example, in an awkward contortion without support. Such a pose she held without complaint while he studied the situation and spoke to her only in German. When the stance was suitable, he began to work on her face,
and at his command her head rose and fell, her lids lowered, her mouth opened slightly and his dream took shape. If Dietrich’s expression did not suit von Sternberg, he lapsed into angry English: “Think of something—think of anything! Count the bricks on the wall!” Only when he was satisfied did he then nudge Richee or Engstead, and at last the shutter clicked.

Because of this meticulous attention to her image and the enormous publicity machine operated by Paramount, Marlene Dietrich was, by the end of 1931, simply the most famous actress working in America, and the most chronicled worldwide.
Vanity Fair
gushed its wonder over the “genuine and tremendous hold she has on the public today,” and the London
Times
hailed her “careful elimination of all emphasis; the more seemingly careless and inconsequent her gestures, the more surely do they reveal the particular shades and movements of her mind.”

Gary Cooper and Maurice Chevalier were still in Dietrich’s life, escorting her (sometimes together, by her arrangement) to night-clubs and restaurants. Paramount’s press department tried to finesse the openness of these rendezvous by claiming their meetings were really about business—that she might appear in a new film with Cooper or Chevalier, but not even the fan magazines took this subterfuge very seriously. Von Sternberg, ever accommodating, sometimes agreed to further confound the press by being the third diner at a restaurant table.

The bewilderment multiplied when Dietrich donned a man’s tweed suit, knotted a four-in-hand and danced the tango at a dimly lit Hollywood club frequented by gay women in cross-dress but not, ordinarily, by image-conscious stars. Her partner on at least two such occasions was Imperio Argentina, the popular female dancer, singer and star of Spanish films, whom Dietrich courted with the usual bouquets of violets. Their evenings together were soon quieter and more intimate—at least until Argentina’s husband, director Florian Rey, revived the ancient marital rights of an Iberian male. He appeared at Roxbury Drive late one evening with a pair of steamship tickets and ordered his wife to pack for an imminent departure—thus Imperio had danced her last tango in Hollywood.

B
Y SPRING
1932, D
IETRICH
’
S GAZE WAS ALSO DI
rected toward Europe, and she startled the press and the public (not to say the studio) by announcing her intention to return to Germany. “I have enjoyed myself in Hollywood,” she told journalist Whitney Williams, “but the urge to be among my own people is stronger than the desire to remain here. Germany is not satisfied with me. It wants to hear me in German-speaking roles.”

This was a typical Dietrich ploy; in fact she was quite aware that in 1932 few Germans abroad were going home and hundreds of thousands were emigrating. The reason for her announcement (which Paramount took as a threat if she did not like her next assignment) was to force an issue relating to von Sternberg. Before the release of
Shanghai Express
he had decided that his career (and possibly hers) would be best served if he no longer directed Dietrich. But he had not foreseen her reaction. First she accused him of simple sexual jealousy; additionally, von Sternberg said,

She accused me of being determined to demonstrate that she was worthless [and] to aggrandize myself by letting her stand on her own feet; she was nothing and could do nothing without me [she insisted], and all I had done with her was to show how great I was.

Dietrich then went further, informing the studio that she simply would not work under another director—a threat she reinforced by her public statements about returning home. As she doubtless expected, there was panic on Marathon Street before economic considerations, as so often, resolved the dilemma: Paramount offered von Sternberg—then inundated with alimony obligations and attorneys’ fees—a substantial increase in salary for his new contract if he would prepare one last picture with Miss Dietrich. He capitulated, and she spoke no more about Germany.

And so, by April 1932, von Sternberg had drafted
Blonde Venus
(with the usual assistance on some dialogue from Jules Furthman)—yet another story of an entertainer, this time a wife and mother
named Helen Faraday who returns to the stage to earn money for her mortally ill husband, Ned (Herbert Marshall). While he is abroad undergoing an expensive cure, she adds to her professional success a glamorous life as mistress of Nick Townsend, a wealthy politician (Cary Grant). Her husband, returning cured, learns about her life and claims that her immoral conduct denies her the right to keep their little boy, Johnnie (Dickie Moore). She flees with the child, is reduced to prostitution to support him, and is forced to give the boy up to her husband. Her sacrifices are duly rewarded, however, when she is later restored triumphantly to international fame and (against von Sternberg’s wishes but on the insistence of Hollywood’s moral watchdogs) to her family.

The screenplay was not completed without considerable friction between von Sternberg and Dietrich on one side and B. P. Schulberg, Paramount’s production chief, on the other. Director and star were told that her character was unsympathetic to the point of depravity, and that von Sternberg would have to tone down the episodes of the woman’s descent into prostitution. (Particular objection was made to a scene in which the child is hidden under a table while his mother flirts with a prospective customer.) Von Sternberg refused to submit to the required changes, blithely departing for a New York holiday after Schulberg brought in another writer (S. K. Lauren).

To no one’s surprise, Paramount then suspended von Sternberg, discontinuing his weekly salary when he failed to report for the first day’s shooting on Monday, April 25, 1932. But Schulberg and company did not adequately assess Dietrich’s devotion to her mentor, for she was also absent that day, announcing through her attorney Ralph Blum that she would certainly not appear in
Blonde Venus
with the newly assigned director, Richard Wallace. They had no choice but to suspend her as well, and a threat of lawsuits was announced on April 28. Some script compromises were hastily drafted, and on May 26 shooting began with scenes requiring Dietrich to act the doting mama, bathing and fussing over her little boy. By an odd coincidence, Dietrich felt her real-life motherhood threatened at the same time.

That March, the infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh had
been kidnapped, but the baby was found murdered before the abductors specified how the
50,000 ransom was to be delivered. Throughout America, wealthy and famous parents panicked, and locksmiths, bodyguards and providers of security gates were kept busy round the clock in Hollywood. The children of movie stars (those of Harold Lloyd, Ann Harding and Bebe Daniels among them) were constantly attended, and Dietrich supervised the installation of iron bars over the windows of Maria’s room. Dietrich’s chauffeur, an austere ex-prizefighter named Briggs, escorted the child to school, and she was not permitted to wander undefended even in the enclosed yard at Roxbury Drive.

Perhaps predictably, the widespread promulgation of these security tactics provoked the very threats they were meant to forestall. In mid-May, extortion letters were received by Dietrich and by one Mrs. Egon Muller, wife of a German linen importer: if money was not delivered according to specific instructions, their children’s lives would be in danger. After Dietrich obeyed police advice to ignore the threat while they tried to trace the letter, a second was received, doubling the extorted sum to
10,000. This was to be left in a package on the rear bumper of an automobile at a particular location. Meantime, Mrs. Muller (also acting under police counsel), placed
17—instead of the
500 demanded—under a designated downtown palm tree.